I know I said I wouldn’t write anymore about SV, but I found some more pics that had gotten lost in all the downloading and wanted to get them up and well, frankly, I’m just not quite sure I’m through with the experience. I haven’t spent much time with the poems I wrote there since I got back. I definitely need some distance from them to let them cool out in the root cellar until they’re ripe and ready to be picked, peeled and carved into the real deal. I also have an assignment, a kind of quest if you will, so kindly suggested to me by Sharon Olds in my workshop with her on that last Friday. I need to dig deeper into a subject from a poem I brought on that day and it is a really tough one. I think I need a hypnotist to get to the root of it and even then, not sure it will completely reveal itself. Poetry can be like that…take you out on an emotional limb and then leave you there to think about how cold and lonely and scary the world can be. It’s gratifying to know you can climb out there on that skinny little twig but the truth is that jumping from there into the void is really what you’re being asked to do and that is downright TERRIFYING!! Well, the gauntlet has been thrown down and I have taken it up and will keep at it until the little devil surfaces and, if I’m very lucky, I can capture it, put it down on the page and make something out of it besides a lotta misery.

I know this all sounds very cryptic but that’s the way it will have to be because I’m hanging out here on that limb and to reveal too much is to stir the winds and get the whole tree swaying like crazy. I’m guessing you have some idea about what I mean. We’ve all had those times when you either walk into the fire or go home with your tail between your legs. I’ve done too much of the latter in my lifetime and have been determined the last few years to always accept the challenge and find out where it takes me. Unfailingly, it’s to a place of elevation and awareness.
Enjoy the photos….

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David Lukas with telescope, binoculars, water, sunscreen, and assorted other necessities of the naturalist.

The Pines

The Aspens

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Poem by Stewart Mintzer
Wandering poet and dear friend

Nature Walk

The wing’s composed of many wings.
Each feather’s a wing. Flap hard and you’ll rise,
but to go forward you need some torque,

the invitation of the easy bend
to fly exquisitely contained.
Don’t look down, trust the body to know the way,
the groove of hush before the storm.

Give up being right.
Earth a web of fused connectors.
When one part’s sick, the others know it,
moist attention shifts to love the wound.
Roots of all stories underground, breathe up the middle

numinous granite, lava, ant prayers, untouched shade.
The whole ecosystem stops what it’s doing
to whisper you home. Create a flamboyant display
and pollinators come like reservoired servants of spread.
Jeffrey Pine blue green needles basal sheaths
cone scales stiff flat curved trunk bark firm vanilla
odored when one’s nose is pressed into deep furrow.
A woman kisses bark, my lips are right behind.

If you’re gonna live a long time you better get
a long term strategy. Birds sing because they love it.
Clarks Nutcrackers only eat one third of the seeds
they gather. They’re the dominant forest planter
in the Northern Hemisphere. They sing
I want a forest      here
and              here

and                          here

and

here
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Sarah & Lori in the Great Room at the Olympic Lodge. In the background is the Squaw Valley Wall of Fame.

Brett Hall Jones–She and Lisa and Kaitlin run the show–and run it with a lot of love & fun!

Loading the plates at the picnic.

Blissing out on poetry.

Enjoying hearing poems together.