rd king DOT net : In California

In California

The Mountains

No one thinks of the miles between here
and there.  No longer is it necessary
to approach them with concern.  We meet reminders
like:  historical marker 500 feet, rest area
      32 miles.
But these translate more specifically into minutes,
into the shortest amount of time we might remain
in the back seat of a small car.  We talk
or read a magazine or think about the latest
import to our lives as we watch the highway
run its narrow plateau before us.
And it is pleasant finally
to see and accept everything as being still
except us.

An engineer would envision this movement
cubically.  I assume he would mentally graph
his progress forward as well as upward.
But soon, and once again I'm assuming,
he should realize that his graph will be 80,
perhaps 90 times longer than its height.
The idea will be interesting, informative,
but it shall grow awkwardly in his head.
And besides, each mile will be bordered
by another mile.  And that mile will resemble
the one preceding.  The length of the miles
will not vary—except in terms of the time
needed to cross them.  And the difference
will be slight, regulated by the speed of the
      vehicle
and possibly by the incline being taken.
The concrete roadbed will always want to continue.
There will be the usual obstacles upon it:
the buses, the trucks, the travelers and their debris.
There will be the usual demands on the motorist's
      attention.
Prompted by the scenery or the denseness of the
      handsome
trees, his wife will begin a conversation
concerning the exploits of a mutual friend.
She will speak in hushed tones about the intimate
      details,
occasionally slowing to spell a word
the children won't decipher
as they eat pistachios in the rear of the station wagon
—as their lives present themselves in willing and
stunningly ordinary, arboreal consort.

Now and again the mountains will afford
marvelous vistas.  The trees will give way
to masses of granite rising up beside us,
or miles away; and the granite will have split
in the most likely places, basins hollowed by glacier
or uplift.  The lakes will have names
that lodge in the mind.  Clear, blue lakes
with delicate and graceful trees crowding beside them.
And these trees will suddenly seem more beautiful
than men.  Massive peaks will push up behind them.
And the sky will help to include everything
that it can, as if this were the necessary consequence
of its great absence.  But then, as we
begin to feel that we know something
about this, the sky delivers us its captives
which drift against the peaks like beautiful clouds.
And because of their shadows we notice how the trees
have segregated themselves according to height,
to sunlight, according to their need for water.
Sadness must be a part of this somewhere.
Alders grow along the stream banks until
the stream returns to the lake.  Old cedar stumps
rot in the grass marsh near the meadow's edge.
The lake spills a little of that which
makes it a lake.

I prefer to take the old road through Soda Springs
and follow it over the summit.
There is less traffic to contend with
than on the broad, new Interstate
and the view of Donner Lake is better.
I have seen the early morning mist so thick
that it obscures half of the lake.  And
I have seen the lake when it was a mirror.
My wife speaks of this road with her childhood fear
and the memories of the rusting chassis
that lie beneath some of the curves.
But that is in the past now.  We don't
think of the miles between here and there.
There is one cabin just below the summit
with a view of the lake.  And it is there
when I first become aware of the lodgepole pine.
Let me tell you about the lodgepole pine
since I know so little about it.
Its bark reminds me of the beaches we find
among these Sierra lakes.  Especially
the mottled sand that is clear and bright
and lying under a foot of cold mountain water.
When I notice the presence of this tree
I think of the big mountain windows—
I think of the lakes.

In Truckee I hesitate at which way to go,
which road to follow.  We could go anywhere
and we are never ready to leave the mountains
just yet.  The choice arises that we could choose
not to leave, even when no choice was foreseen
or practical at this point.  Nevada, the ruggedness,
we accept as inevitable as we watch the wind
tearing whitecaps into the sapphire skin
of Lake Tahoe.  Behind the western peaks across
      the lake,
the sun has fallen in a vivid way.  The mountains
blacken beneath the orange escarpment
which brightens, slowly begins turning blue,
slowly darkens and goes black itself.
The evening settles like a fallen leaf on our hearts.
We have seen few things as clearly as this—
we are not used to such immodest beauty—neon
ringing the casinos where no one thinks
about the miles or the vertical plane
of difference at Stateline.




 
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Collected Poetry

In California

The Mountains
