Dead Birds in the Turbines

Buck Cove Mt Trail, Schoodic Penisula, Acadia National Park, yesterday, last hike of vacation.

Activated:

and

We'll see tonight if first luck.

UPDATE, 2:30 PM EDT same day:

• Sitting in the Portland Maine airport two hours ahead of flight home.
• I am telling you three times for the zillionth time, there is no better metaphor for motherfucking America than motherfucking helmetball. 
• UPDATE! With five minutes of tweeting out version of above, six unfollowed. Fine metaphors abound.
• The ghost pilot's last instructions.
• Twitter/blogger overlord Jon Schwartz - who I like! - tweeted 1. The most interesting thing about Ben Shapiro (the only interesting thing about him) is his deep commitment to being ignorant. Some people don't have access to knowledge. But he went to UCLA & Harvard Law School. They have libraries. His ignorance is an (unconscious) choice.
• I replied (forgive me, I'm foolish, small): Counterpoint: his ignorance is his JOB, one he chose and chooses to excel at. Stop thinking those preaching to the pig-ignorant are pig-ignorant. They are turds of a different smell.
• I do not understand granting cracker-whisperers the out of ignorance.
• I do not understand granting Liberal-whisperers the out of ignorance.
• Ben Shapiro (cashes check) doesn't know how the world works?
• NPR says car, not white racist asshole, killed anti-fascist protester.
• White supremacy has always been mainstream.
• Rachel Maddow (cashes check) doesn't know how the world works? 
• Waist deep in the Big Muddy.
• The Southwest flight to Chicago, docked at the gate our plane will dock, has dead birds in the turbines. 
• What another man spills. 
• Crash - me, not plane - not quite but almost imminent.

Last morning view from porch until next year.

We had a grief we didn't understand while standing at the edge of some low scrub hills as if humans were extra or already gone

Wonderland Trail, Acadia, yesterday, (better at other place).

Activated:

Cat drive-byer said she saw Frankie then fucked up a door. Thank you, SeatSix, for fixing.

Also too:

• STOP EATING ANIMALS! please.
• The above is another reason why I might never read Moby Dick again (though I suppose I could skip the passages of whale anguish, though...).
• The Sixth Nonsense.
• Avedon's links.
• Consumer marketing distorts everyfuckingthing.
• On Andy Goldsworthy.
• I should be better at vacations than I am. We've already made reservations for next summer here, I can't wait to get home from that vacation.

ON A DAY, IN THE WORLD

Brenda Hillman

We had a grief

we didn't understand while

           standing at the edge of

   some low scrub hills as if

humans were extra

   or already gone;—
    

what had been in us before?

          a life that asks for mostly

    wanting freedom to get things done

in order to feel less

          helpless about the end

of things alone—;
   

when i think of time on earth,

   i feel the angle of gray minutes

          entering the medium days

    yet not "built-up":: our

work together: groups, the willing

    burden of an old belief,
   

           & beyond them love, as of

    a great life going like fast

creatures peeling back marked

    seeds, gold-brown integuments

    the color time

  will be when we are gone—

A Shifting Rainbow Volatized by Ceaseless Explosion

• Humbled, me, by Cadillac Mountain South Ridge Trail, five miles up, five miles back, all but first and last half mile on treeless granite in 90 degree heat, 80% humidity. Kicked my ass. First hike this summer I feel the next morning.
• Trail head marker -  Acadia uses wood signs for trail heads and intersections, they are slowly rotting, and blazes are fading on the trails, I see no evidence of trail maintenance in the three years we've Augusted here.
• I don't know why I haven't wanted to post cairn-porn, but nine of ten miles yesterday marked by cairns, well-maintained, no doubt by hikers.
• Park is packed, trails are crowded, fees are up (not much, $5 per week, but).
• I have yet to see a Park Ranger or a Park Ranger vehicle.
• The souvenir shack at top of Cadillac - fat fucks drive to the top and buy "I Hiked Cadillac Mountain" t-shirts - staffed by 15 year olds.
• Get to your national parks while they still exist, my fellow mofos.
• Finishing first brutal climb, Earthgirl checks out the hard one to top.

• The Veneration of St Death.
• Let me be clear, this is going to lead to famines and droughts which kill hundreds of millions of people, minimum. It will lead to water and land wars. It will lead to mass migrations which make past refugee “crises” seem as nothing.
• The two biggest trends on Earth.
• Taking down Goldberg.
• Cursed image.
• Scars on 45.
• Oh dear, six Green voters from central Ohio wrecked the Clinton restoration, the Putin fools!
• Send him new words and old books.
• World is as it seems.
• Sorrentino the Metafictionist.
• I'm not, as in can't, reading this vacation, is weird.
• I yapped about The Posies with a friend last week....
• .... and went and listened to a few songs, they or me or both haven't aged well....

Madonna del Parto

Forrest Gander

And then smelling it,
feeling it before
the sound even reaches
him, he kneels at
cliff’s edge and for the
first time, turns his
head toward the now
visible falls that
gush over a quarter-
mile of uplifted sheet-
granite across the valley
and he pauses,
lowering his eyes
for a moment, unable
to withstand the
tranquility—vast, unencumbered,
terrifying, and primal. That
naked river
enthroned upon
the massif altar,
bowed cypresses
congregating on both
sides of sun-gleaming rock, a rip
in the fabric of the ongoing
forest from which rises—
as he tries to stand, tottering, half-
paralyzed—a shifting
rainbow volatilized by
ceaseless explosion.

Wass

On advice of my friend drip aka Rusty aka Peter we hiked Great Wass Island Preserve yesterday. Five mile circuit, three distinct sections. First section through peatland and jack pines (fabulous, absolutely, two miles unlike anything I've hiked, I want to see in peak October), second bushwhacking two miles of cobblestone, sand, seaweed, boulders and cliffs (seashore, snore, Earthgirl's favorite section), third section Maine old forest of moss and ferns (!). Find Earthgirl in this photo from section one.

When we get where we want in Maine Maine is holyfuck, miles of nowhere exist between the holyfucks, miles. (Great Wass is 30 miles from Acadia by crow, 120 by car.)

We own the house we live in, plan to die in that house, though lately the inevitability of that game plan strikes us as not necessarily writ. I mention this solely because miles eat fun.

Also too: wore wrong shoes for rock-scrambling.

Already I Have Given Up the Moon and Snow

Yesterday: Acadia National Park: Great Notch Trail to Bernard Mt Trail to Sluiceway to Great Notch Trail to Gilley Trail to Cold Brook Trail to Long Pond Trail to Great Notch Trail to car.

Last time we did this hike a Beloved had just before sent me blog divorce email because my relentless anti-motherfucking Democrats in general and anti-Hillary in particular during run-up to....

If I am not capable to total de-clusterfucking while on vacation I'm better at it this year than then.

Photo below by woman in photo above. All I want to do is hike with her.

Red Bulb Hanging in the Blue

• 5:47 AM Sunday August 5th, sunrise over Bernard, cottage on Seal Pond.
• What's the the blue dot?
• Driving (rain) day, yesterday, rest day too, Lincoln NH to Mount Desert Island ME.
• Woke up yesterday in downpour, drove through downpour, it's 7:20 Saturday in the cottage we always stay in as I type this sentence, it's downpouring now. Tomorrow supposed to be nice.
• 260 miles (by car) almost but not quite due east, MDI from Lincoln.
• Look what was waiting for me - I knew I'd left it somewhere.

• I am telling you three times this is where I get the I am telling you three times, though I am telling you three times it's the best reading experience - three times - of the last ten years of my life.
• Read the hardback the first time, bought that paperback and read the second time, intended to read it the third time but left it here (unbeknownst to me - I just knew I lost it), bought a new one for the third reading, anyone want this one?
• I'm booked this vacation, and 4th reading scheduled for next summer.
• Rob asks a good question, but I am telling you three times, this is how I relax.

• Hummingbird evaluating my trustworthiness, seconds ago.
• We talk about retirement up here.
• I hate snow, and we've never experienced a Maine winter (or Maine mud season or Maine bug season), but we daydream.
• Anyway, songs from yesterday's drive plus links while they're fresh.

• Vital question.
• The dumbest man on television.
• How we are conditioned to be slaves.
• Why did the chicken cross the road?
• Conspiracy Theory. 
• The Gamergate School of Journalism. 
• Frances' latest article, Fighting for Environmental Justice.
• I am telling you three times: motherfucking cops.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• {feuilleton}'s weekly links.
• Does literature help us live?
• Baal bless Harriet Bulstrode, a Kind human.
• Poetry: a model or a theory of a person.
• Poetry and the racialization of women's bodies.

Bring Us Forward Notch by Notch in a Paradigm of Comfort

Lonesome Lake Trail to Fishin' Jimmy Trail (concurrent with AT) to Kinsman Ridge Trail to Lonesome Lake Trail back to car in Franconia Notch State Park, White Mountains, New Hampshire.

We are coming back next year before Acadia, will fly into Manchester, drive north on 93.

Which way is Cannon Mountain?

That red osprey, btw, best investment in a daypack ever. Sucks as a day-to-day purse like my purse the twenty year old black North Face (which sucks as a daypack), but best daypack I've ever owned.

Yes, I wear hand towels for head gear when hard hiking straight uphill in hot and humid, you don't?

We worked this year to get in shape for Acadia, next year we'll train to be in shape for White Mountains, a totally different class of hard hiking and great rewards.

The bog near Lonesome Pond, one of most beautiful and amazing places I've ever.

Photos by me but the one of me by Earthgirl.

I'll try and get you some links for Sunday - friends have posted - but no promises.

Today (Saturday) travel day (in torrential rain, at least to tell looking out the window as I type this).

Two of Friday's car songs?






NOT THAT IT COULD BE FINISHED

Ann Lauterbach

She holds a conversation with her ornaments,

stray or contingent, heaped in patches

darkly and then loosened

onto the table to be consumed.

Collect me, they seem to ask,

into an assembly; construe us

like any morning onto any day.

Bring us forward notch by notch

into a paradigm of comfort

to be clasped: any cup will do.

Any dance? Take a seed

and blow it toward the curtain

which, like a bright shield

hugging breasts into radiance,

is seen and spoken of and desired.

Will any silence fit? So many

columns of air are held upright

in inebriated passage,

so many paper stacks

brittle under the weight

of what was news to attentive readers

as zones of holy strangers

feed through tunnels their imported cares.

Stare at us, they seem to say,

we are windows propped up against the sky,

quotations of light waiting to sail

into your aperture, calling because because

and now now now. And the good body

is pulled over the original rapacious body

like a huge sock, its cornucopia

of sour wind and dust emptied into the firmament.
                

Like a Downhill Brake-Burned Freight Train Full of Pig-Iron

Earthgirl climbing Mt Monadnock in sw New Hampshire. Tough but fun but plagued by summer campers, as in kids and early teens, all screaming at top of voices. Recommended hike is up the White Dot trail and down the White Cross, but White Dot full of said campers so we went up the White Cross and down the White Dot and learned why the recommendation is up the White Dot, down the White Cross. I can go up steep all freaking day long - I like uphill, lots - but down the White Dot, ouchy. My knees are old.

Typing now (7am Friday) in Lincoln New Hampshire in middle of White Mountains. This is true - I thought the hotel was in Littleton NH, twenty miles to north, and overshot Lincoln, luckily - we drove I-93 first north then south through Franconia Notch, best stretch of interstate I've ever driven. We're here and staying here until we head for Acadia tomorrow afternoon.

Today, Cannon Mountain loop then Flume Gorge. I would like to climb a Presidential, I don't think my knees can take descending a Presidential. I can go uphill all day, it's down that's hard.

Songs from yesterday's drive.





  
AND STILL IT COMES

Thomas Lux

like a downhill brakes-burned freight train

full of pig iron ingots, full of lead

life-size statues of Richard Nixon,

like an avalanche of smoke and black fog

lashed by bent pins, the broken-off tips

of switchblade knives, the dust of dried offal,

remorseless, it comes, faster when you turn your back,

faster when you turn to face it,

like a fine rain, then colder showers,

then downpour to razor sleet, then egg-size hail,

fist-size, then jagged

laser, shrapnel hail

thudding and tearing like footsteps

of drunk gods or fathers; it comes

polite, loutish, assured, suave,

breathing through its mouth

(which is a hole eaten by a cave),

it comes like an elephant annoyed,

like a black mamba terrified, it slides

down the valley, grease on grease,

like fire eating birds’ nests,

like fire melting the fuzz

off a baby’s skull, still it comes: mute

and gorging, never

to cease, insatiable, gorging

and mute.
   

Immaculate Vacation Squalor Inside

So, Earthgirl and me are in Keene New Hampshire as I type this. Flew into Portland this morning, then drove to Durham New Hampshire for a family errand of Earthgirl's, then drove towards Keene with hopes of getting a small hike in the mazes of Monadnock in late afternoon before a much longer circuit Thursday, but downpours. Had GREAT veggie Thai for dinner then found a decent bookstore off Main Street, Toadstool, which didn't have Melville on its shelves for Melville's 199th, and no corresponding gap in stocked books to suggest customers bought out the Melville books to celebrate his 199th.

Heading to Monadnock now (it's Thursday morning as I type this paragraph). Hike all day then drive north to spend tonight in Lincoln NH in the heart of White Mountains so tomorrow we can hike Grafton Notch. Saturday we drive to Mount Desert Island for our annual week of hiking Acadia and surrounding Maine.




Vacation blogging! Sorry. Expect photos in green, blue, and stone, and long posts about hikes you never had the fuck to not give about, especially those of you who come for the links, and especially, with the iPod plugged into the rental and set on shuffle for 2800+ songs, songs I haven't thought about since the last time I thought about them.
  




DEAR BOB,

Dean Young

The mountain thinks it’s the same

without you but it’s wrong. Maybe

the same stars whisking themselves

further off, the darker the brighter,

same chamomile crushed underfoot

but the little, wiry dog we loved

has preceded us into paradise, not

that I expect to join her even though

my own crappy heart’s worse, running’s

out but I may be finally learning how

to sit in a chair. I still don’t know

what to call the good morning bird

although whatever word’d be no truer

than manzanita. I think namelessness

has a crush on me, on how clean

I keep my room, the usual stunned

ruckus of wake up. But it’s a different

moon, different woman on the hotel balcony

yet the same kinda scary, vacant stare,

caryatid foreseeing what? Before

turning back to the customary, immaculate

vacation squalor inside. The cash machine

still says “enter to exit” but there’s

more water in the creek than I’ve ever seen,

the brighter the darker, in that first dream

there was none.