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| Elephant's Foot Juniper with Cathedral Peak from West Cottage Dome © Bob Hare 2012 |
Poem dated August 12, 2011: Holding the Mountain
Drop for a
while these tired ideas of who you are
those petty
demands and grievances
those fears
of future pains and losses
You’re not
that
Open your
soul wide
To let this
mountain in
The stars
spin now around
Your
sky-silhouetted monolith
Be Immovable
Watch
yourself scramble over your own
glacier-polished
granite domes
Descend in
moonlight tasting freedom all around
Do not
hesitate on the steep part above the dark treetops
Don’t look at
your feet--no one can catch you now
Take in the
horizon of shining peaks
And the old
juniper that births you and receives your ashes
You’re home
now
Under the black
silent conifers
Be still as
the moon shadows
Falling over
the fallen trees
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| Evening Panorama from East Cottage Dome © Bob Hare 2012 |
Journal: Friday August 14, 2011, Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite NP, 8,580' Elevation
Returned to Tuolumne Lodge about 9:00 pm from my second visit to East Cottage Dome in two days. Left the Lodge in the afternoon to photograph the "Elephant's Foot Juniper" in evening glow. Found a dark andesitic? erratic boulder (a flattened oval about 14" x 18") balanced within ten feet of East Cottage dome's summit. It made a great stool since the entire dome's top is roughly-weathered feldspar crystals (which the rock climbers use as handholds and which they affectionately call "chicken heads"). Cathedral Peak granodiorite is definitely not sit- or lie down-friendly!
I found areas of glacial polish and chattermark crescents, where a boulder embedded at the bottom of the 1,000-foot-thick glacier under unimaginable pressure suddenly strike-slipped and fractured the granite over 10,000 years ago.
Had a fine walk down under the full moon. Felt the exhilaration of the wild/dramatic landscape surrounding me--all the while feeling the "edge" of hiking down alone and finding my way down steep dangerous terrain.
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| Fairview Dome, Cathedral Peak & Daff Dome from West Cottage Dome © Bob Hare 2012 |
Journal Update: October 21, 2012, Elk Grove, California
I love to seek out, find my way up onto, and wander about on the glacially-polished domes that grace the horizons between Yosemite's Tenaya Lake and Tuolumne Meadows. Some of these have official map names, others were named by rock climbers, and many remain unnamed except by dome-lovers like myself. I'll never get up onto the top of some, which, like rock climber-named Daff Dome (Dome Across From Fairview), are just too steep-sided for a rock scrambler like myself. I walked up Fairview Dome's steep south slope in 1987 when I was thirty-eight but I wouldn't try to repeat it today at sixty-three. I like it just fine that way--some peaks should remain unsummited to hold Mystery like Nepal's unclimbed holy Machhapuchhre (माछापुछ्रे) (named the "Fishtail" after the appearance of its summit).
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| Daff Dome & Cathedral Peak from West Cottage Dome © Bob Hare 2012 |
I take great joy in walking on glacier-rounded open granite elevated above the treeline with all my favorite peaks and memories of past climbs with friends surrounding me. Here one can truly be alone with the great granite horizon and the ever-changing drama of weather, the sun and moon, the clouds, soaring hawks, and the occasional marmot. The twisted trees show the effects and survival strategies of hundreds of summers and winters and perhaps a hundred thousand wheelings of the stars, the sun, and the moon. Despite my vibram-soled boots I sometimes get a glimmer of what it might be like to be a mountain lion padding softly under the new moon over these granite domes in the Great Silence.
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| The Moonprowler, scratchboard © Bob Hare 2012 |
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| Lenticular Clouds over Tenaya Peak, scratchboard, © Bob Hare 2012 |
May all Beings be well, happy, and free! May you walk on Beauty. Yours in Peace, Bob
Note:
Unless attributed to other sources all text, poems, photographs and
artwork in this blog and other blogs entitled "Wilderness Adventures
with Bob Hare" are copyrighted © 2012 by Bob Hare. The phrase
"Wilderness Adventures with Bob Hare" is a trademark ™ of Bob Hare.
