Lookouts

Gary Snyder


[On a backpacking trip with my first wife in the
Olympic mountains, having crossed over from the
Dosewallips drainage, descended to and forded the
Elwha and the Goldie, and climbed again
to the high country. Hiking alone down the Elwha
from Queets basin, these years later, brings it
back.]

The thin blue smoke of our campfire
down in the grassy, flowery
heather meadow
two miles from your perch.
The snowmelt pond, and Alison,
half-stooped bathing like
Swan Maiden, lovely naked,
ringed with Alpine fir and
gleaming snowy peaks. We
had come miles without trails,
you had been long alone.
We talked for half an hour up
there above the foaming creeks
and forest valleys, in our
world of snow and flowers.

I don’t know where she is now;
I never asked your name.
In this burning, muddy, lying,
blood-drenched world
that quiet meeting in the mountains
cool and gentle as the muzzles of
three elk, helps keep me sane.


fromThe Back Country, 1965.