They moved up there during the lean years
of the dust bowl and depression.
A few families, one to a small meadow,
no more than a little house or two scattered here and there
as if dropped off like Dorothy by Oz’s wind.
Living on clear mountain air and poor soil,
what little moisture carried in on the morning mist.
Just enough to nourish hardy vegetables and meager crops.
On one side of a mountain the wind was so strong
rocks and sticks tossed over the cliff blew back at you.
A hard living barely anchored to thin soil,
jutting walls of stone under blue skies and buckets
of milk-white clouds rolling in on a sea so calm—
peaceful—fearful.
Trap some small game, hunt fox and deer.
Clipped whispers clinging to silence.
Living their whole lives like that.
Neat little houses. No running water. No electric.
Water drawn by windlass from a well.
Bathing in a clear cool stream surrounded by forests,
their thick leaves a mattress.
Precipitous peaks—each a monastery.
The gift of faith. Life simple as it gets—day to day.
Simple joys. Grateful.
Now they were gone. No one tended any fields.
No kerosene lamps shone on the distant mountains at night.
Each house must have been like a pagoda prayer lantern.
The few remaining wood frames were abandoned—
dilapidated, looked out of place—nearly invisible.
It hit a raw 20 below on my last night.
I woke earlier than usual to a subtle rustling outside my tent.
A red fox had come to talk and mull over the weather
and embarrassing quality of my housekeeping practices.
We eyed each other warily. Steam from our breath
slipped away like whispers into the crisp air,
and disappeared slowly with the rising fog.
As I watched, patches blue as the sky cleared,
you thought you could walk through them.
In the stillness I counted 70 deer slipping into the clearing,
to paw through a dusting of snow and feed on the grass.
A silent procession. I eventually stopped counting.
I clearly remember their scent. Unlike other days
they must have gotten used to my presence.
Maybe they wanted me there, looking on in admiration,
just staring in silence.
All morning they gathered, entering and exiting
through their own thick folds of green and shifting oyster-white
curtains that moved with the changing mask of sunlight and mist.
I did not bother to pierce the envelope of quiet.
But I, the lone and quiet unobtrusive scouting party,
was the harbinger of a new future. The company I
worked for was to gouge a road and drill a deep gas well
in the field—marring its muscle and beauty with dust
and mud and pickups and heavy machinery
scattered like acorns about the place.
After the drill rig and crews arrived, I gazed
at the sun-drenched spot where I camped.
It was the emptiest space I had ever seen.
The meadow was gone; I tried to find it again but couldn’t.
I wondered that if I used my regrets as a guide,
would I, in fact, find it and do it all over again?
Yes, for a selfish reason, just to have been there
and seen if only for an instant, and entered the old photograph
hanging on the wall before the oblivion.
Back at the office I remembered the lease said Dolly Evans.
She had died the year prior. She lived up there alone for years
after her husband died, with the squirrels and deer and foxes.
No one I knew could understand why, as if living like that
were the worst that could happen.
Her little house painted blue, yellow, and green
still shone gaily in sunlight.
How the mountains conceal a hidden sanctity.
Maybe I was not there to break the mold. Just to see.
To remember and not forget. There are no roads.
I brought the things that have nothing to do with beauty.
I revisited recently, a half a century later.
It was all gone, all of it, pitched like stones over a cliff.
Now peaks have windmills on them. But you can’t strip-
mine the high peaks because the coal seams eroded away.
Sometimes memories bear only coffins or poor seeds.
I awaken to a crazy thought, do they yet continue on
dreaming of refreshing green pastures covered with moss,
surrounded by rolling waves of forest and mist—
living the dream on scraps of soil and bare rock
under the cold embrace of beauty and stars?
The older I get I have learned to reconcile the fact things
quickly lift and disappear, along with their days and nights.
I remember what I used to think…now it brings remorse.
It’s a roundabout way of embracing time.
I have seen your sanctuary and await your return.
Stephen Cipot
Garden City Park