Walking Alaskan BedrockAlive in the Sea of Information

with a wink and a nod to Gary Snyder*

Spruce, hemlock, pine
Rain—fine droplets—rising and falling
Walk around puddles
                           stones worn free in the path.

Noiseless drizzle (lush moss)
Silent poison blushing crimson
Trudge on and upward; slick rock terraces
Bare of lichen, adorned
With cabled hoop earrings
Rusting like the uplifted pyrite
     exposed.

Descend into the silent woods:
Alder, moss, mud, glazing rain.
Waterproof jacket, pants, boots—
Frothy mountain streams taken in a leap

Gridlock in a teenage forest:
    inch    forward
                        to a glistening rocky descent

Scenic trail—bookmark it!
A well-worn path dips down to the edge of a glacial lake—
       bushwhack to skirt the flooded trench
Ten literary scholars following
       a geologist, a biologist, and their pedagogue
Jagged rockface ripped by a receding glacier
Above, the uplifted rock ground smooth
But for a grooved fingerprint
The scored mirror of a frozen Sea
Of Information.

Lichen and clear pools
Slabs of smoothed rock
And in between, mineral-rich detritus
Like the dust between the floorboards the broom ignores
Tenacious fireweed in miniature at a mid-summer full bloom
Alder cones patiently waiting for nitrogen—
           breathe.

Sliding rock with only a film of dewy rain
And below, flowing ice
Frozen in the impassive scene and inaccurate memories.
Cameras at the ready, scramble down:
   white sheet, depressions, hollows, tunnels—
       rock gives way
       to mud the color of cement and as packed with gravel—
   an arch carved in the ice, a subterranean stream,
   the cave its rising steam expands—
       crouch on the ground
       in the frigid air
       beneath a Sea
       of Information;
       wipe melted data
       from the digital photographic apparatus—
   electric blue.

Appointments loom more impressively than the ice cliffs
The obvious path unintelligible, walk     into the wild
Move, pause, move*
Ridge-top view of unnoticed gullies
                                                                           a large pool
                                                                                                     stepping stones

       Resume the trail;
       Seek the shelter of an open-air shed.

             Cool mist and friends

       Rivulets down cheeks

             One story—thirteen tongues

       Alive    in the liquid Sea of Information.


*Gary Snyder, “Walking the New York Bedrock Alive in the Sea of Information,” The Gary Snyder Reader, 1999, New York: Counter Point, 2000. 587-91.