Slides of Rock and Ice

Gros Ventre Slide of 1925
looking south across Gros Ventre River

I visited a curious part in Wyoming yesterday, so unlike the rugged Wind River and Teton Ranges, yet near them—east of the Tetons and north of the Winds.  The area was known for centuries as having minor earth tremors and small landslides, and was considered by some to be spooky.  

Slide of 1925, 95 years after,
huge rocks still showing

But in 1925 it drew national attention for a massive landslide along the Gros Ventre River, pronounced "grow-vont." Within fifteen minutes, a mass of rocks, soil and trees slid from the south canyon wall, rumbled across the river and didn’t stop before going three hundred feet up the other side.  The slide was a mile long, half a mile wide, and left a dam across the river 225 feet high.  Geologists think that a shale layer became slippery and allowed everything above it to slide. 

Tensleep Sandstone in the rubble

Tensleep Sandstone in the rubble

In my rummaging through the rubble, I found pieces of the hard gray Tensleep Sandstone which lay above the shale.  But I did not find the Amsden Shale, which they say became like grease and caused the problem.  Records show that the sedimentary layers dip down to the north at about fifteen degrees, and that two very wet years preceded the slide.  And those earth tremors certainly did not help to prevent it from happening. 

End of the rubble 300 feet up the far bank

A slide of this magnitude did not occur in previous millennia, probably because the Gros Ventre River had not cut through the Amsden Shale, removing the one holding force against a slide.  

Slide Lake, looking upstream

Slide Lake, looking downstream,
Slide scarp in background

The lake created upstream by the slide, Slide Lake, is still here and is still held in place by material from the 1925 slide.  But it was not always so.  Two years after the slide, part of the dam was over-topped sending a tremendous flood rushing three miles down the canyon, wiping out the small town of Kelly, killing six people.  But in the past ninety-three years the dam has held. 

On another day, I stood at the foot of another kind of slide.  I imagined a gigantic wall of ice that was the leading edge of a glacier.  Perhaps it  moved to where I stood sometime in a past ice age, then hesitated and retreated, only to move downward again as climate changed.  In one of its retreats it delivered this boulder, as part of its accumulated baggage, brought from far upstream, as if delivering it to me for my perusal and pleasure.  The glacier might have slid forward and melted backward several times before finally depositing this particular boulder, but eventually its retreat became a final motion, and the glacier was finished.  The rock slide remains.  

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

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  

My Own Tabernacle

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Driving to the Trailhead

my little white world

inside a swan

sailing upon a greater world

four-wheel-drive engaged

leaving Pinedale on the rising tide

like a bird floating lightly

almost flying

on exhilaration and faith

   

soon I’ll make landfall

in the larger, lovelier, statelier

and steadier world

of Bridger Wilderness

and New Fork River   

in misty distance

a tabernacle promised

built with limestone and granite

chipmunks and squirrels

according to scripture

a river runs through it

and maybe a bear

it flows by the throne of God   

wide is the road

that leads to destruction

narrow the way to truth

and few there be who find it  

New Fork Fire of 2008

a virus in 1918 killed the old

in WWII, the young

our turn now

the rise of the young

and the trail goes on

and the trail goes on  

once as I was passing a field

a white-bark aspen

trembled its leaves

and became a white-skin girl of ten

hiking in Eaton Canyon

her feet shuffle and jump

planning three or four leaps ahead

but she plopped in the creek

without a scratch  

a bouquet for you

as you enter the tabernacle

and another blood red

the place is adorned with flowers

to aid in worship

that nobody understands

and everybody loves  

flowers are for lovers

and every lover needs a flower

slow and careful he should be

no hummingbird for me

he stays around

for the photo shoot   

These mountains were here millions of years ago, but not the beholders, the humans who see beyond food and safety.  Once we met, hearts grew wings, and perhaps the mountains knew they were loved, even needed.  We want requited love, but settle for the beauty of One who does not need us.  

The tabernacle’s based on granite, which rose from the dead long ago when buried under earthly rock like the limestone you see here.  Most of those old rocks are washed away now, but this outcrop remains to show us what we lost and what we gained when the much harder and stronger granite came to form a tabernacle for our pleasure and inspiration. 

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