And now I bow In the nave I built with my Own hands A force of will Maybe, and of Hope, and strength And love, and Power, and good Ness and weak Ness and sacrifice And longing and Grief and beginning I kneel before this Altar to my dreams Before I burn It down, before The doing and Undoing pulse Through my being And there it is Again, my knowing In the unknowing That this temple This altar this Divine expression Must ignite, must Burn, must be made Into ash, and thereby Made into everything That comes after– The garden, the Synagogue, the holiest Holy, of all the sacred Spaces, filled with the Breath, the Fire of the Divine Universe intoned In your throat, in your Heart, in your center Melted to make Way for something New
Wintery walk. Image, my own.
Gift
Sometimes the memories And myths that were woven Into your childhood become Magic again to your arcing Soul. The songs that break Forth in trumpets. The Prayers that end in good Tidings. The trees all Dressed in snow and stars Light against long December Nights which beg gathering And joy-filled repasts
Aspen and snow. Image, my own.
Roads Taken
Two roads diverged in a snowy wood And knowingly, quiet and somber I stood, looking out on the starry, moonlit way then took the path that had already been trod
With careful foot-fall through the hoary frost, after the ribbon of travelers who’d crossed the fork in the road, the decision place And rather than test the dark and the cold
I took the chance to walk along where others had gone, and bend my care instead to perceiving the moment, the present The here, the now, the trees and the fences
I shall be telling this in an age from maiden, to matron, to crone, to sage, I took the road that many had paved And made it my journey, anyway
Fern Frost. Photograph: Skip Via, West Valley Naturalists.
Braid
dark and light strands of fermion behavior spin good evil if they exist tethered whole to the same fate maybe driving Dirac’s trick as truth every particle we are made of even distantly is woven, connected to the cosmological horizon, all tangled up, simultaneously unspun strand by strand into infinity
A torche glitters in her hand, a brightly whishing brand lighting the ways– a choice, the path you take, the path you don’t, all paths you leave behind– they are equally lighted by her candle, paths you can see now and will never be
revealed again, in the flickering breath the shadows cast into the recessed flume, the light loses its brilliance, the gravel of the third way spooled out along the straighter path, and the second road banking darkly into the far side of some
gray and dusty landscape which even the brighted stars cannot now expose, So what does this goddess of the dark night and her burning wooden beam divine, does the curve of her hip signal some portent, message of direction,
no, the way, the path, the journey will not be signaled by another, you must choose, you must contemplate, intuit, and define your bounds your path will be yours, after all, your own, so you must own your choice
wavering again, the flame whispers from some fate-wind ahead, some ancient breath of the beyond, you grip the paper of your healing in your pocket and take one long breath, exhaled in the rising chill, a mist
spurled ahead, looking up into the star-strewn night the weight of the choice comes softly on the shoulders of the traveler, an unseen cloak, take a small but firm step toward the flume, the future
Canemah Bluff Nature Park. Oregon. Image, my own.
Clay
Molded and molding, shaping, shifting, pressure, smooth tension, long lines a steady firmness, spirit of water, sunlight, earth, release, become
New Moon Amulet. December 2024. Image, my own.
Talisman
Can any thing be magic? Any blob of gold or Pressing of silver, can An object, an item, a Pinecone or umber fleck of Bark be imbued with Power or general chemistry That brings transmutational Ability, alchemy, divination
Canemah Bluff Nature Park. Oregon. Image, my own.
Some grief never leaves
And I know this because of arthritis Some grief is permanent, the relationship With a parent that you’ll never have, the Child who never entered your life, the Star that never rose in its proper place There will be some things that leave Mortally permanent scars, situations Which will never be shifted into Redemptive tales. Some scars Will ever be with us to remind us How pain and grief bring understanding Gained in no other way,
Starlight street at night. Fukuōji Kazuhiko.
Journey
It began to ring true Several steps from where The grief began, the opening of the way, the continued rock and slosh of the water Eyes opened on a world And existence that was nothing Like what tiny kernel of promise In life began as. Nothing like the seed of the idea of the life you thought you’d live, the contrast was searing and startling at first. But then, by gradual degrees, it became whole, sound, founded, and sacred opportunity
Jupiter and the Pleiades. November. Northern Hemisphere. Image, my own.
Holocene
When the sky lifts, so lapis and milky blue, Your ocular senses are overwhelmed The owl calls out, into and through the pencil- Sketched branches of the cottonwood, then Down from the neighbor’s roof, as the golden
Sky continues to lift into day, a flat aquamarine The stark lines of leafless branches against The air stand beckoning, the promise and Possibility of new– growth, change, revivification Glittering diamonds of momentary snow still
Hold winter’s mystery. We do not know what We will be when the new buds come, but only What is– this moment, this tree, this Possibility of everything, anything Makes our heads spin and swim
Bounded by our humanness, mortality Consequence, but dazzled by all that is In us– the roads we’ve wandered, mountains We’ve scaled, journeys taken and joyed over And travailed. So much unknown
It still feels like the owl is a good omen Round white face, deep open amber eyes, wide And night-visioned, all the flecks and freckled feather patterns of each wing spread against dawn and dusk Gifts that portent deaths and lives to come
No Name Saloon. Park City. Image, my own.
Shoes
When your shoes wear out run like hell through tulip fields Take off to the mountains Climb every geologic Formation Just to Prove You’re alive You can You’re not dead… yet You still want To spend that moment with the crickets under night’s blackness only the stars know you’re there
When your shoes are worn out you take your daughter to the gravel pit and train your camera lens on the North Star tripod so still to prove you know where you are going even though you Don’t you depress the shutter let the sky bleed in for hours and all you are left with is time
No time left But you have those Shoes to remind you to keep you on your journey Home– Through– Around– To– To that time When the cosmos smudged its glory across the lens of your camera Film Still the most sure sign that the stars will fall in to center North Balance bringing these stars to you
Autumn Sunset. November 2024. Image, my own.
Question(s)
For all those who question: Borders Boundaries Countries Alliances Allies Friends Enemies Economies Lovers Children Fools Frauds Race Place Faith
I love you
Winter Dandelion. Acrylic on heavyweight cotton paper. Margo Elizabeth Glass. 2024
Night Guide
When Ursa Major dips so low In the Northern Hemisphere that Only her two guiding stars are Visible in the deep of darkness Black, the seven sisters start to rise Pleiades, in silent winter’s night as Cassiopeia, queen, stands out above The calm chill also pointing her way to our Closest cosmic simulacrum Andromeda The stars are there, uncaring and seemingly Cold, distant even impossibly far, and yet Known, seen, perceived though the crickets Haven’t made a sound, the air, nearly Incorporeal breaths of rest, sleep, A thousand dreams take flight
Meade Glacier + Moraine, above terminus, July 2022. Image, my own.
What is the Earth? It depends on who you ask. A geologist might tick off a list of minerals and talk of earth’s molten core and crusty mantle. An astronomer might explain that earth is a heavenly body orbiting around a G class star embedded deep in a spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. A farmer might tip back his hat, squat, and scoop up a measure of fertile brown soil in his calloused hand, “Dirt.” A child might reply, “My home.” Earth.
One answer comes from those who inhabit the second largest ice sheet on earth in Greenland. Greenland Eskimo lore tells of three inquisitive friends who wanted to discover the size, shape, and character of the earth. Setting off, they traveled for several days when they came to a huge ice-house. After some debate they decided to go inside, and to ensure that they didn’t become lost in its cavernous recesses they held on to one another and ran their hands along the seemingly endless stretch of wall.
On and on they walked, now searching to find the entrance through which they had come. Time passed–days, months, years– and they grew weary. Strength waned and they all began to crawl on and on into the ice. Eventually, the last of their strength spent, no longer able to crawl, two of the friends sat down and died. The last boy continued on, and finally found the entrance. He stumbled out of the frozen house and made his way back to the village of his birth. He was now a very old man. He told his people, “The earth is simply a very big ice-house.”
——
Melt by Megan Dickson
things melt like banana popsicles on hot sidewalks
hearts at the cuddle of a tender puppy’s nuzzle
sun as it sherberts into sunset, dreamy scoops of carnelian, fuchsia, crimson
water being sublimated into sediment, becoming sludgy mud
metal silver when heated to one thou- sand seven hundred and sixty-three degrees
falsity as you live in truth in the world as it is, not as you wish it to be
light refracted and gloriously dispersed through water into the entire color spectrum
butter bubbling, sizzling in the fry pan in anticipation of the next repast
bodies into one another, warm with the savior-vivre of desire
——
Gerwingk was the first glacier my children ever touched, but I hoped it wouldn’t be their last. Three years later, summer 2022, we drove up through Canada across the Alcan and down into Southeast Alaska. It felt like an in-depth glaciology lesson. “Ways of glaciers 1010 CRN 9110297.” If you had looked at the area from a topographic map that highlighted the icefields we drove through it was clear the route was stippled with thousands of glaciers; consequently, glacial history and present glacial phenomenon were visible from every vantage point– ice sawn peaks, razor-spined arêtes, gorgeous blue and green high lakes, U-shaped valleys, hanging glaciers, mountain glaciers, and larger long sloping glacial plains from epochs of time gone by in Earth’s climate, glacial, and geologic history.
Our destination was once again, Skagway, Alaska. The same tiny town where I’d spent five of my seven summer seasons in AK. Cruising down White Pass in our Sprinter was surreal. It was a cold, spitting, foggy, wind-whipped afternoon. We pulled on our rain jackets and stopped at the Alaska sign as we entered the U.S. again from British Columbia. Entering town an hour later, we set up camp at Pullen Creek Park, a beautiful little camp and RV spot next to Skagway’s small boat harbor. That night, in true Northern fashion we feasted on fresh Lynn Canal shrimp, wild caught crab and halibut at Fish Co. right next to the harbor. Of all the places on Earth I’ve known and loved, Skagway still felt like home.
The next morning, we went in search of adventure. Alaskans do many things well, including subsist in a perpetually harsh environment, and air and water travel are among their specialties. When half of your state population lives in rural communities only accessible by flight or ferry, you get really robust systems for both. So up we went with TEMSCO helicopters to take a walk on the Juneau Ice Field the day after we arrived. The sun shone bright, the ice was blue, and watching my children drinking from a stream straight off the face of a glacier was sublime.
We landed that morning on the Meade glacier. One of 13 outlet glaciers from the interconnected plateau of ice that makes up the Juneau Ice Field. According to researcher Bethan Davies, and her associates, in an article published July 2, 2024 in the science journal, Nature Communications, the Juneau Ice Field boasted 1050 glaciers in 2019 with, “40 topographically confined outlet glaciers, which drain directly from the main plateau. Separate to this plateau are smaller ice bodies; 145 valley glaciers, 584 mountain glaciers, and 281 glacierets.”1 That sounds like a staggering number of glaciers suggesting an incredible volume of ice.
However, the question for Davies and other glaciologists is how long will glacial ice persist as global temperatures rise? What are the implications of accelerated glacial ice melt? Hypothesis aside, these are questions that no one has firm or easy answer for yet. What researchers like Bethan Davies and Mattia Poinelli2 do know is that the changes that have occurred in Arctic and Antarctic ice in the last ten years have been the most substantive positive melt outputs for glacial ice melt than in the previous 100 years combined.
Davies explains, “Work like this is crucial as the world’s glaciers are melting fast – all together they are currently losing more mass than the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets, and thinning rates of these glaciers worldwide has doubled over the past two decades.”3 This melting has the potential to change many of Earth’s systems including raising sea levels, shifting ocean currents, displacement of animal species, and other changes to the cryosphere that threaten to destabilize earth’s weather patterns, ecology, physical and human geography.
On this warm, July day, standing on the back of the Meade Glacier, none of these realities feel very pertinent. But it’s these kinds of questions which will undoubtedly be passed on to my boys and their children. Generations of humans who will have to work out complex climate shifts if we are unwilling to thoughtfully approach questions of climate change while we, too, are residents of Earth. Truly, we may not have started the fire, to give Billy Joel a worthy nod. Earth’s climate systems have shifted many multiple times before the first humans evolved into the sentient creatures we are today. But running, hiding, and choosing an apathete’s approach to our environment doesn’t strike me as very efficacious, either.
——
Gabriel Dawe’s work on display at the Renwick with the building’s 19th-century architectural details as a backdrop. Ron Blunt/ Renwick Gallery/ SAAM, Washington, D.C., 2015
——
Locals in Hope are fond of asking, “What’s the best thing about Portage Valley?” Quickly they’ll reply, “Anchorage in your rear-view mirror.” If you happen to leave Anchorage safely behind, you won’t have trouble figuring out which way to go. Just take The Road. The Road runs northeast along Knik Arm of Cook Inlet toward The Great One, Denali, and also escapes to the southeast, along Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet.
Ironically, the Hope Highway dead ends just past the quaint little restored mining town. This little town has known its share of cataclysmic events. The 1964 earthquake created a tsunami that engulfed part of the town, sloughing it powerfully into an extended tidal basin. Now the still-tiny town really does live by the tourist season boasting a “gold panning experience,” salmon fishing in Resurrection Creek, and during some summers a glass blowing class. Most of the residents live there only part-time or work in Anchorage to make ends meet.
Not only do Alaskans in Hope, and elsewhere, know a thing or two about cataclysmic natural disasters and severe weather, their history is peppered with feats of conquest. Originating in the Bering Sea, the Cook inlet is named for the famous explorer Captain Cook. Not the nemesis of Peter Pan, Captain James Cook FRS, of Hawaiian infamy, had no hook. But like many great explorers of his time, he tirelessly sought the Northwest Passage, which drove him past Hope, not yet a dot on any map in 1778.
Traveling up the inlet toward Portage Valley, Cook and his crew navigated the narrow stretch of sea in dangerously shallow waters. Rather than finding a passage of any kind, the crew quickly realized that Turnagain arm had no outlet. Strange tides, now known to have the second greatest range in the world, caused the stalwart seafarer, Cook, to allegedly yell to his mates, “Turn again! Turn again!” Tacking back and forth out of the waterway, zig-zagging as quickly as they could to return to the larger Gulf of Alaska and back to meet the Bearing Sea, and safety. Can you imagine? Some of the greatest explorers in the world came so close, but they never discovered Hope. And just like the Turnagain arm of Cook Inlet, the road to Hope ends. It dead ends.
*(This is the third essay in a selection of essays, poems, and reflections on ice, glaciers, family, love, loss, and the stunning power of the natural world as it is and also as it functions to support human life. Previous essays include Hope (Alaska), and Hope (and Ice). All words and images unless otherwise noted are my own.)
Crevasse on the Meade Glacier, Juneau Ice Field, July 2022. Image, my own.
Refined + Rugged 