Yosemite: Holding the Mountain

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

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.

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).

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.

  

The Moonprowler, scratchboard © Bob Hare 2012

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. 

Yosemite: Hawkshead Point

Cathedral Peak and Tenaya Lake from Hawkshead Point © Bob Hare 2012

Poem-Journal: September 19, 2010, Yosemite National Park, California, 9,200' Elevation

Hawkshead Point 

Last night’s freeze was hard and the last High Sierra Camp

closes today

Grey clouds are scudding in from the west

So I’m heading down to my valley winter home

But I can do one last climb if I drive home in the dark

Pulling past Olmsted Point

I sidle off Tioga Road and get my gear ready

I look up at a granite point like a hawk’s head

that I named last year

When you name something

you pull it out from the background

and look at it as something significant for the first time

I want to see Cathedral Peak with the Hawk’s eyes

No name, no trail

The way I like it

Skirting two ponds and stepping over logs

I climb up a draw--bedrock shelf by bedrock shelf

Western White Pine on route to Hawkshead Point © Bob Hare 2012

I flank around west to mount the Hawk’s tail

And climb up on his broad granite back

Clearing the treetops

Cathedral Peak rises majestically into view

Cathedral Peak and Tenaya Lake from Hawkshead Erratic Field © Bob Hare 2012

But the temperature is plummeting

And the wind is becoming fierce

As I top out I put on my watchcap and all my layers

But I’m still cold

I frame my shots shivering and study the clouds in all directions

Clouds are blowing in from the west and dissipating in the east

Just beyond Cathedral Peak they dry out

Tioga Pass and Conness are in blue sky and sun

The Central Valley is bathed in late Summer sunshine

So I expect the clouds to pass over me and bring me sun

But when I really look I realize the clouds are forming just west of me.

Sun all around but not over me

Hunkering Down Erratic on Hawkshead Point © Bob Hare 2012

I eat my sandwich and hunker down behind a large precariously perched erratic.

Still three cold hours to alpenglow

When I awake the clouds are gone

and Tenaya Lake is in shadow. 

Cathedral and Tenaya Peaks in Alpenglow from Hawkshead Point © Bob Hare 2012

The shadows climb the peaks all around until only Conness

The Cathedral

                        Tenaya

                                    And Clark are left in pink light

Then Tenaya and Cathedral wink out

And then the alpenglow moves up into the heavens

To strike errant clouds and the aluminum bodies of jets

The shadow of the Earth rises to the east heralding the first bright planets and stars

Suddenly I feel very alone and vulnerable

An ancient human memory stirs deep in my brain

The wyrd feeling of a dying sun in a freezing wilderness moves me to quickly pack up

and get down off the Hawk while there’s still twilight

I knew in my head I really didn’t need to rush. I had a flashlight.

But my body wanted warmth, shelter, and company. This must be what moves animals to prepare so furiously for winter.

A stumble in my hurry warned me to…Slow down

Now carefully but still quickly back down the Hawk’s back

Past the erratics

Turning east down his tail

Ducking south back under the treetops

Growing darkness in the ravine

Picking my way carefully down the rock shelves

Crossing the creek through the brush

Over the logs past the ponds

Car sounds and headlights

My headlamp unused

One hour up to Hawkshead, twenty minutes down

Find my keys, start the car, head home to family and friends for the winter

Hawkshead Point from Upper Olmsted Point Ridge © Bob Hare 2012

May all Beings be well, happy, and free! 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.

Modoc National Wildlife Refuge: The Nighthawk

Sandhill Cranes Internet Image: www.kewlwallpapers.com

 Journal Introduction

Mystical experiences are always serendipitous blessings. Without warning the mind chatter stops and the veil of ego separating inner and outer experience falls. And our senses, which usually isolate us behind a skin boundary, unexpectedly reveal a seamless world of power, beauty, and harmony. Suddenly something shifts inside us and we find ourselves standing in the midst of eternity beholding creation occurring all around and in us. I know this deeper reality is always there, but I've only entered it through doors of grace that open abruptly in the usual fabric of life.

Though unpredictable, I've found that such experiences occur most often for me in the special light of evening or night. I am almost always alone, usually in a natural place of beauty, and often seeking to resolve life's contradictions and losses.

In early June of 1993 I was in Alturas, California conducting aerial population surveys of Canada geese for California and I had the following experience late one evening after our day of flying. 

Journal: June 1993, Modoc National Wildlife Refuge, Alturas, California, Elevation about 4,400' 

My two fellow biologists and I had just finished a mediocre dinner in one of Alturas' few restaurants. We were walking up the wide empty street under the town's monumental and loudly-flapping American flag returning to the Dunes Motel while eating ice cream cones in the evening chill. I noted the spectacular clouds towering all around the mountain-rimmed horizon and asked if anyone wanted to join me for a brief drive to the Modoc National Wildlife Refuge. My friends declined so I hopped into the truck wondering if it would be worth it given the darkening sky and the increasingly cold winds. 

Nighthawk Internet Image © blog.michaellibbephotography.com

In a few minutes I had traversed Alturas' eight-block business strip and was turning off the paved road onto the refuge. Suddenly, something like a huge moth leapt up from the muddy road into my headlights. It was a slim grey bird with long wings with striking white markings. It was a nighthawk.

Nighthawk Internet Image: www.schmoker.org

With its silent flight and flashing wings the nighthawk instantly opens an invisible door which I pass through in no time into its world. I know I'm home again. I leave the truck behind and the nighthawk takes me back to other late springs in other mountains and summer loves that passed with autumn's frosts. The nighthawk is a powerful healer of the heart. It flits around me as I walk toward the marsh. It weaves together lost joys and sorrows into one beautiful fabric of many bright and deep hues. The nighthawk stitches together the dark snow-splotched Warner Mountains and the bright wind-buffeted water. It joins the bird-filled marsh to the pearled clouds swirling around the evening's first star high overhead. The nighthawk flies right at me and through me and leaves me sobbing and slowly turning entranced in this cloak of beauty and power.

Internet Image: www.junglewalk.com

There is no distance between me and the black clouds that press on the Warners. The intensity and clarity of the colors, the light, and the sounds pierce my senses. Senser, sensation, and sensed are one. Sandhill cranes bugle somewhere in this dark marsh. Wrens scold and ducks fuss as they settle their evening territorial disputes. Calling Canada geese wing in from the fading western light to disappear into the tules. The marsh and sky and mountains and I breathe as one.

Canada Geese Internet Image © Mike Fladeland

I look up at the moon veiled by the scudding clouds. I am shivering. The western light is gone and darkness has settled in. I've lost track of time and the nighthawk. The Eye of the Soul has dimmed and the Stillness has been broken and I find myself back in fleeting time seeing only duality. I find the truck and open the door. The interior light blinds me and I climb back into my usual world. I turn the engine over and the buzzer warns me to fasten my seatbelt. I drive to the motel full of energy and peace and wonder. 


Journal Update

Such experiences show us that individual and environment are woven of the same threads of awareness, that we are created anew together each moment. This fundamental experience of oneness is what we all hunger for and search so desperately for through all our strivings and addictions. We are much greater than we fear. Nighthawk appears when we are ready to pass through the doors of grace to revisit our greater home and learn again who we truly are.

Poem: The Nighthawk, Alturas, California, June 1993

Driving into the refuge at dusk

You explode into my headlights

Like a giant moth

Leaping up from the muddy road

I pull the pickup over and dowse the lights

climbing out happy to see you again

Mysterious messenger of mountain eves

I have come back

It is you who makes this magic

Weaving together dark mountains, bright water, and rolling clouds

You flit silently across them all

And through me—making us one

I stand sobbing and wordless in the middle of your creation

Looking all around

In beauty I see

All is made new again

Poem: The View from Davis Creek Churchyard, Davis Creek, California, June 1994

This clear heaven

Is my foundation

This green earth

Is my firmament

All around the clouds

Bank up

Cascading high above

The trembling sky-reaching poplar

The nighthawk I heard

Winging for its mate

Courses between me

And the sunstruck clouds

The swallows of childhood

Build again mud nests beneath the eaves

Flitting and twittering through the heavens

Weaving eternally—sun to cloud to blossoming earth   

Poem: Mayan Nighthawk, Roof of Temple IV, Tikal, Guatemala, November 1995

Dragonflies weave the evening sky

The nighthawk parts the veil

Letting the falling sun pour its last light

Into our opened eyes

May all Beings be well, happy, and free! 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.