(no subject)
riding the bus amongst shapeless disordered stirred-up eyes.. the metallic ranks of buildings slantways with the left behind dust and grime of the harshness of winters (cracked scraped apart pavement). anchorage: i replay the remote wilderness walking up the long twisty quarter mile braided stream bed erupting out the bottom of the glaciers with its milky grey sedimented melt. the uphigh grizzlies prowling amongst the tart berries looking in on us as we walk, there are no barriers in this eruption of tundra earth, no illusion creating trees to bar off the sharp four-spoked black nails and toothed jaws that could turn us to carrion like the 4 foot high caribou antlers which stand like ghost trees out of a skull with a bit of red skin and fur still attached the rest sent back into the wolfmouths who come when the sun dips a little and subdues half cloaks the stalkers running high scouring for the dall sheeps\, white pixels who cling to the high edges of the green alert to all movements farfar below… alert to us with our bright synthetics who shout bright yellow fabriced tents. we stash our food in a black bear-proof canister 100yds. away from camp and then cook 100yds. away from that (an equilateral triangle). the yellow fabric waves in the wind-constant, but we’re tucked behind a little rock slope to dull it and in the sun.. i perch on the spongy moss under straw hat reading and half daydream until i stir up the sleeping brother and we day walk up to the glacier. the braids of the stream shift before our feet waving waving the rounded banged and split stones unearthed from mountains are moved in a steady knocking violence downwards, you can hear this knocking (we’ve been warned not to cross through these waters barefoot because these stones can fly into your numbed icefeet and break bones), we look for crossings cause the valley suddenly splits wide into two and following it the way it comes, we see a large descending glacier… we look and look for stone hop crossings which are none and we don’t want to sacrifice either our boots dryness nor the well-being of our toes… so we march up the left bank into the main valley until it slithers way back into a glacier which looks mostly stone cause the ice sits beneath. but out from where the melt mouth spews - an ice tunnel topped with trapped stones swings over the top of the rushing waters. b- says: do ya think we can walk across it. i don’t know, its sketchy the thing is dripping everywhere dripping the lights hung for moments in each drop… the top of this arch is covered with a layer of mud and waylayed stones left improbably balancing in a brief moment before they will be tossed in with the rest, where the rest will all go driven downward - pushed by their potential earth energies, but for now they sit comfortably balancing on this great arch of ice. b takes a few slow steps, goes halfway at the last moment runs rocks slippingskidding into the rushing waters. i follow walking soft foot slowly balancing across. this is the first time we have crossed over to the other side, 9 miles and the only place to (dryly) crossover is this precarious little ice bridge that stares into a dark tunnel mouth that leads to the center of the coldest wormdark blueblack world of ice. if the bridge collapses we would surely be sent in alongside the tumbling stones to tumble till broken up and find pathways in the fissures until alongside the caribou skull tracing the edges of the antlers finding the entrances in the eye sockets and gaping torn open bottom half to sit on the inside where a small coal glows a tiny redness that allows you to warm your hands and toes and rub the coldness out of the ends of your fingers, the coldness that runs everywhere into tendons.. a blood-redness that allows you to see a bit of the hollow insides of the skull, now a room, now a wilderness, expanding until the mountains are growing toothy in their stately lunar oxide orange polychrome and you can see the valley grasses and the rushing waters all over again and that wind which pitches white seed pods… waves the yellow fabric.