A Diamond in the Sky

“I was not escaping anything.  I was returning to the arena of delight.  I was stepping across the border.  I don’t mean just that the world changed the other side of the border, but that I did too.” – Mary Oliver 

For years I have been going to another part of the world to mostly pinewoods.  Often they are lodgepole pines as here, growing just below the tree line, above which no tree can survive winter.  But lodgepoles can face the bitter wind, giving up chances for girth and height for solitude.  

I came once again and set up my tent in the woods, this time at Diamond Lake.  Again, I began to appreciate, and I don’t say this lightly, the lodgepoles who knew me.  I don’t mean they know me individually and not another, but they recognize and respond to my presence and to my mood.  I began to feel them, their serene greeting as I walked beneath their branches. 

I could not sleep, could not even rest comfortably, couldn’t stop thinking.  I got up quietly, slipped on my jacket and went outside into the dark starlit night, looking up through lodgepole branches.  The milky Way—an edge-on view of the galaxy, dark bands that cross it are, I’m told, regions where clouds of cosmic dust absorb light from stars.  So vivid and clear in this unlit forest before the half moon rose.  

Twinkle, little star

I wonder what you are

above the world so high

a diamond in the sky

so many from my tent tonight 

They are like dreams of romping here and there, breaking new snow with wild feet, leaping, spinning, until the new snow is written upon in exuberant letters.  The pleasures of the body in this world—I could not have said it better myself.  

Bridger Wilderness is not like the others, the ones in national parks.  The US Forest Service allows me to camp anywhere here, without a permit, with dogs not on leashes if I want.  

I remember in 2013, when the US government shut down, and a ranger with a gin in Rocky Mountain National Park forced me out of the wilderness.  Of course I had snuck in avoiding the trailhead where they waited.  But in the adjacent national forest I could hike with impunity.  Here in the Wind River Mountains I can be like a mountain man of the 1820’s to 1850’s hunting beavers for wealthy New Yorkers who demanded beaver skin hats, coats and gloves.  It only ended because styles changed. 

Sometimes I think, if I were just a little rougher made I would go altogether to the woods—to my work and solitude, a few friends, books, ready for meditation and work, if only to escape the discouragements of civilization.  But even the most solitary of us needs some communion, just not the whirlwind of normal human behavior. 

Below here, a heron paces for fish in the pond.  I try not to disturb her breakfast, but on seeing me she rises with a powerful beating of wings, a feisty sound, a thrust and a slight uptake, the wings of angels might sound so, crossing the sky on important mission, her feet trailing.  Such scenes become deep excitement and serious part of my life and writing. 

Also, below where I camped, pronghorns in their herd stand silently eying me from a safe distance, their tiny female horns, nothing like the male.  They are near the Green River where plenty of forage feeds them.  

Dew on the grass

where pronghorn graze

and hot spring water 

raises morning clouds and

shrouds the grass in mist

Michael Angerman is making a map of nightly locations, as he has done for many of my trips.  Please see  Michael's Map