The Hiker reaches the foot of the mountain
And pulls out his map,
Laden with a golden path in lemniscates  
Knowing where he is to go
For he had known this since he set foot out
His door.

Day by day he scales a piece of the mountain
Face, lacking not skill, but
Having patience, knowing the safe and
Prosperous journey is the
Patient one, the one whose tree of meaning
Is rooted in passion, the passion
To wait.

The Hiker fears not the delay of the summit
For the summit is already his,
Her hand his bride, for it is known in the
Hikers name who he is meant for:
The Summit, forever and for always.

Time for something drastic.
Defining life on his own terms.
No angels. No demons.
No expectations. Just drift.
North to South.

Walk while the coast heals wounds.
The sea breeze renews.
Salt in the air acts like a baptism.
Sins of the self washed away.
North to South.

To be alone. To think. To reinvent.
Depending on oneself.
Food, water, and survival with these two hands.
Not needing much more than that.
North to South.

Not the destination.
More the journey.
Replenished.
From here, sorting life out.
North to South.

for Robin

On that frosted January day,
     you and I hiked north
along the Mississippi shore
     on a trail marked well before us.

Footfall tapestries etched in snow
     wove tales of assiduous commerce
of hosts of fur-cloaked cousins:

the playful step-slide gambit of an otter -
      rabbit paw tracks by the score.
A bald eagle soared above singing ripples
      in quest of a mid-day meal.

The distant staccato cadence
      of a pileated woodpecker
          echoed off the limestone bluffs
on that January afternoon.
     Dusk-light washed the western sky
          in pastel gold and crimson hues.

A coal barge heading south
     thundered against the floes,
scattering ice across the channel,
     then vanished beyond the bend.

And we like bargemen at their tillers,
     set our southward course
retracing footprints in the snow -
     back to the world of clocks and enterprise.
January, 2011

Square planes of glass separate me from the bristling trees,
as tall as they seem,
bursting from the ground the glasses flicker,
then gleam.
Striped like the thick rings,
they sing they sing they sing.
Hiking by myself,
gazing at clean air and a sense of free fall.
See the bay across the way.
Let the greenness seep into my weary clothes
and now I know
how these square planes of grass see,
(through me…)

Orange canoe leaves and castling roots
   and a potpourri of rocks and twigs and mosses
     hailed my pathway.
Fresh, white flowers mingled with their rusted sisters
upon the ground, like copper-splashed jasper.  
        The canoe leaves curled
as the white and rusted flowers tumbled through them
like toppled teacups and feathered, Victorian party hats.  
     Their christened sisters mirrored them among the boughs above
and talked loftily about the treetops
      as the fallen ones chattered amidst *******
      and the roots dividing the tables of their tea party—
unaware, and heedless, of how far they’d fallen.

Though the first carried more miles, the second day of the hike was totally and unapologetically uphill. 
When you ascend, hiking becomes the zen of endurance.



First, you are stripped of all the pleasures of hiking. Your excitement is boiled into lactic acid. Your love for the trail is baked, hardened and dehydrated into thoughts of laying down in the sun until the heat shrivels you into an unconscious raisin.



Try as you may to put on your “isn’t hiking just a slice of heaven?” face, strangers passing you on the downhill stride can only see your “PLEASE GOD, HELP ME OR ******* **** ME” face.

As much as hiking really is a small slice of heaven, there is no denying the living-death of taking 10 straight miles to the knees under the chaffing hell of a 50 pound sack in the relentless sun. 


But when you’re back in an office, sitting on your cushy little ergonomic chair, you long for the sweat and the torture that forces your mind to the ankle deathtraps of mountain terrain. To the deep valley behind and below you, and the crystal basin at the foot of the granite Giants.



The worst thing you can do is ignore the pain—that makes it relentless. Instead you focus on the pain until you become it. The only thing left is the moment between each step, when you remember why you are here and what it is worth. Every time your foot touches dirt, it leaves twice the footprint. One on the mountain and another in your memory where you will safeguard the misery of your ascent and hold on for dear life. One day, when your knees are too weak and your body can no longer table your pack, all the pleasures and joys of the trail that you once thought dissipated in the steam of uphill toil will come rushing back with the magnified strength of every year between you and the present you once knew and respected enough to actually live.

And if you didn’t, if you let it only be pain to get through and not to focus or dwell on, then that is what it is and will always be. A dull memory of pain, dark and somber and incomplete.

handpicked blueberries in yogurt,
tea on the porch, Ellen,
in desperation to plant a raspberry bush.

jogging through a grasshopper field
holding in screams at the small green chirps
shooting up around my ankles.

grimy trails of sweat, the daddy longlegs
crawling out from under my thigh
the dirt at home under my nails.

nickel-bright stars above
the trees, a cool tress rising,
buzzing in the porch light of
bugs going for our jugulars,
still tight and smooth.