the albatross
Gym climber
Flagstaff
|
|
|
Topic Author's Original Post - Feb 27, 2015 - 02:59pm PT
|
Here is some poetry I had published in Alpinist magazine some years ago. Enjoy.
The Last Guidebook
1. I tiptoe up a sweeping slab. The quarter-inch bolt is a rust-colored spot only a dozen edges below. Dark granite leaves a chill on my fingertips while my stomach knots. A pair of ravens squawk from the cliff top; my partner is swallowed in tangle of brush. Something glimmers as I creep toward RP cracks: A new bolt on an ancient line? I crawl onto it, sigh, then clip several more. After a few ropelengths, we reach a shiny rap anchor forty feet from the summit. We climb on. Far off in the distance, a train whistles, and then the dunes are still.
2.
The full moon lies heavy on the eastern horizon. Warm Mojave air engulfs the truck. I look back toward the mountains, where the desert prophets of the Syndicato Granitica once chased visions across empty domes and unwritten walls. Driving down Route 66 beyond Peach Springs, I blare the oldies station in their tribute. I imagine them motoring along this lonely highway in the 1970s, years before the interstate—back when nuts were just coming into fashion and when chalk was still considered aid. What will it be like when it’s all been Bolted, Mapped and Published? Who will write the last guidebook? What will it be called? A boulder casts an enormous silhouette against the dull glow. I pull the truck over and walk into the velvet sky. I breathe in a million stars.
3.
Wind wails through the canyon, with the hope of spring. I’m climbing into the heart of a sandstorm on an unexplored cliff. Dust chokes ears, nose and eyes. Half-blinded, I hang on the crease where the sky and stone collide. The rhythmic tap of my hammer ends, and I prepare the bolt. Red powder oozes from the hole, then swirls out into infinity. Suddenly, it looks like blood. Am I, too, murdering the impossible? There’s a mark now, where before there was none. A pair of Bighorn sheep spot me, then sprint beyond the vanishing point. It’s as if I started the destruction of this secret wild land. Gumdrop-size hail bombards us. Is this my legacy? We race toward the overhang in search of shelter.
4. On a winter night, I stare into my computer screen. “Feds Plan to Remove All Bolts from Santa Claus Chimney,” reads the headline. “No Anchors Allowed in Powell’s Canyon,” proclaims the order. “Officials Remove All Bolts from Sacred Cave,” declares the blog. “Legal Concerns Prompt Landowner to Close Access,” announces the magazine. I weigh these lines against the memories of thick ripe air, sunlight on skin, hundred-mile views. Outside, snowflakes drift through darkness, covering fiery towers with a thick blanket of cold, new white. Can freedom be taken before it is even imagined?
5. I amble beside an elder mentor through a crisp spring morning. We marvel at the trickle of water in this wash—a rare gift. Quartz twinkles in the sun; we’re dazed by a wonderland of rock. Spires of desert junkoid form mute sentinels of our passage. When coyotes start singing, we giggle. Above our heads, a nameless crack floats for pitches into open azure. We whisper over lunch, gaze up once more—then walk away.
6. Desperate to beat the midday’s inferno, we’ve been awake for hours. Already a condor screams by in the infinite rays of the dawn fire. Almost extinct, this bird still manages to thrive in the stony nothing of the high desert. The night sky fades through finer shades of blue—at last into light. Morning splashes over rock with the promise of something simple, unmapped, ever new: another day. I tie in, match gazes with my partner and begin to climb.
|
Let us know!