I am fortunate to live within a two-hour drive of gorgeous mid-elevation Sierran forests, complete with lichen-covered granite outcroppings, clear rushing rivers and many species of tall conifers. Yesterday I took a six-mile hike with some friends in the El Dorado National Forest south of Highway 50 on the way to Lake Tahoe from Sacramento. I never realized before how beautiful the Silver Fork of the American River is. The trailhead begins nine miles up a paved road from Kyburz where the road crosses the Silver Fork Bridge on the way to the Mormon Emigrant Trail.
Around this Bend in the River: An Image Poem
The bend of the Silver Fork
Sitting on grey lichened granite
Mid-elevation Mid-May
Sierran West Slope cool...
Snowmelt song
Clear green swirling
Over sand river bottom
Tree shadows...
Quivering new aspen leaves
Delicate trembling in the sun
Dancing to the rippling
Water swirling back...
Poisonous chartreuse wolf lichen
Splotching north-facing conifer
Boles and limbs
White fir Ponderosa Pine Sugar Pine Incense Cedar...
Deep breath of White-crowned Sparrow
Songful air
Coursing cumuli briefly
Blocking our star Sun…
Glacial erratics dropped from heaven
Wearing over millennia into the cobbles
Marking the river’s bend
Me more like the quivering aspen...
Sitting on grey lichened granite
Watching deep jade shadows
Swirling away
Around this bend
May all Beings be well, happy, free and awake! Walk in Peace, Bob
