Soot and Glacier-Light

• First, Nap sighted, the alert is still active, on stand-by
• Hiked Great Wass, the single most unique hike we’ve done anywhere ever
• Loop runs through scrub pines and bogs and deep woods and over granite balds three miles to the ocean then two miles along ocean then a mile of deeper woods back to car
• drip told me about Great Wass before our trip two years ago, we met at a bar on University across from Hopkins a week before that vacation, hiked Great Wass first time that vacation
• Shared pints a few times, met through this blog, maybe some of you remember him here
• I’ve no contact with drip since we met at a bar on University across from Hopkins before we took our Maine trip two years ago
• I just emailed him

• >> Deleted bleggalgaze <<
• UPDATED! drip lives!
• Rain and fog this morning, Cadillac hike postponed, wet rocks = ouch
• Driving back from Great Wass traffic was jammed getting through Milbridge, and people along the route were in their yards watching, free food giveaway, hunger relief, hundreds of cars in line
• Seen relatively few Trump signs and flags, more east and north of Ellsworth, the town associated with Mount Desert Island's entry and the east end of touristy Downeast Maine on Route 1, and not a single Biden sign but about the same number of BLM and/or Hate Has No Place Here signs as Trump signs
• Meanwhile, in a town five miles from where I am typing this sentence

• Meanwhile, cut social security and medicare
• Meanwhile, pigs tear gas and assault peacefully protesting mothers
• Meanwhile, Joe Biden, a racist, calls Donald Trump, a racist, a racist, insists Donald Trump the first racist president ever
• Meanwhile, as far as I know, no one has asked Joe Biden what he thinks about stormtroopers attacking peacefully demonstrating mothers and he's not going to voluntarily comment much less condemn until and at least until someone dies
• Meanwhile, festering
• Meanwhile, vultures
• Meanwhile, motherfucking Democrats

 





RELEASING THE SHERPAS

Campbell McGrath

The last two sherpas were the strongest,

faithful companions, their faces wind-peeled,

streaked with soot and glacier-light on the snowfield

below the summit where we stopped to rest.

 

The first was my body, snug in its cap of lynx-

fur, smelling of yak butter and fine mineral dirt,

agile, impetuous, broad-shouldered,

alive to the frozen bite of oxygen in the larynx.

 

The second was my intellect, dour and thirsty,

furrowing its fox-like brow, my calculating brain

searching for some cairn or chasm to explain

my decision to send them back without me.

 

Looking down from the next, ax-cleft serac

I saw them turn and dwindle and felt unafraid.

Blind as a diamond, sun-pure and rarefied,

whatever I was then, there was no turning back.