Anodyne
Saturday, September 30, 2006
 

Stargazers

Up out of the trees into the pass at twilight. Lengthening shadows all along the eastern slopes, on the gravel slides and swathes of yellow hellebore. No wind, the whole world still. Past the turnoff for the highline trail back to the lifts. Slowly gaining elevation, switchbacking up the eastern edge of the pass. The Black Tusk and Castle Towers Mountain just silhouettes against the fierce pumpkin-orange afterglow on the horizon. Stars here and there, dappling the deep blue-black bowl of sky above. The trail runs on through boulders, through powdery rock dust, through talus, vegetation shrinking back to krummholtz and finally to patches of lichen, black like blood in my headlamp's LED beam.

Fissile Peak perfectly inverted in the dark lake.

The crescent moon.

Headlamps moving, like fireflies, at the lake's eastern edge.

Quarter to eleven, the rest of the camp asleep. Leaning backwards out of my tent, wool shirt wadded up under my neck as a pillow. Tent fly unzipped, the local mouse population sneaky-peteing in one by one to nibble my bagels, shit in my wool hat, and scamper across my face in the dark. Overhead, a huge panorama of sky, light ceaselessly streaming out of the past in patterns as complex as those D. spotted in the brown ferns along the trail.

A shooting star.

The film crew's generator winding down into silence.

A deep and abiding sense of peace.
- posted by cjb @ 7:40 AM


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