dusty-memento

[dusty-memento]

The Hook

There is a mountain in Colorado; the locals call it The Hook. It’s not the most high, or the most striking, or the most remote.

But it is a mountain.

On a mountain, there is an altitude at which no trees grow. The forest uniformly retreats and grass, lichen and moss stretch up the slope until they too can no longer grow. The wind, snow, sun, and rain bare the naked gray stone.

If you climb The Hook, you will pass through groves of silver aspen, then woods of thin, young pines, then woods of gnarled old pines. They refuse to let life leave their limbs.

You will see sandy anthills, waist-high and covered in their miniscule inhabitants, you will see sandy anthills, caved in and abandoned. They are crumbled ruins of past civilizations.

You will carelessly crush the bright heads of delicate, harmless flowers. You will step around hard rocks, broken stumps, fallen sticks jutting up from the needled floor. 

Before you reach the the timberline, you will walk into a wide hollow. Dark, damp earth lies shaded by tall, dark, evergreens. You might notice an infrequent trunk scored by the scars of bear claws.

After a steep incline, you will walk out of the trees, who wave you on, onto the sloped plain of grass, lichen, and moss covered stones. 

And flowers, every flower you will see on your ascent, will decorate the pale green incline.

The flowers end. You will step onto the naked stone.. The wind and sun will scour your skin, as they have scoured the colorless granite. Rocks will slip as you scramble up the skree, tumbling down, down, down.

Not far from the ridged peak, there is a long length of limb, a wooden staff thrust between the cracked fingers of mountain stone.

It stands upright in wind,

Upright in  snow,

buried it may be,

It does not bow.

Upright in sun,

Upright in rain,

I Placed it there.

it still remains.