The jagged edges of me
Clash up against fluidity;
Unrelenting shattering.
Shards of ice caught
Between land and sea
Where lines blur to reveal
Snow blankets everything.
Only the tall stand above
The war of attrition
Between the changing tides
And the bedrock beneath.
Virgin snow collapses under a heavy foot
Like sand washed away from a steep embankment
By waves impatient of passing time.
Footprints dug deep below the surface
Only to be covered by the next snowfall;
Man lacks permanence in a place such as this.
Translucent diamonds fall from the soft blue sky
Sharp and glinting in sunlight
That offers no warmth or respite from biting winds.
Tree limbs grow heavy with new white robes
Bowing before the might of Winter
With sideways eyes on far away Spring.
He pulls his feet from the earth
Only to plunge them instantly back into the deep;
An endless repetition of slow but sure
Forward progress that breaks the line
Between man’s land and Nature’s untouched garden.
The trail he treads marks a boundary line
Many have approached, but few have overcome.
A chill runs down his spine leaving his hair
Standing at attention without reason;
Caught between Winter’s grip and something
More primal that calls to the heart
Dragging the modern into the primitive mind of fear.
How small we become when we realize
The world is not ours to inhabit –at least not ours alone.
The twig snaps like a leg caught in a hunter’s trap,
He halts and listens with attentive ears.
The sound of Winter’s silence echoes loudly
Even a breath would disturb the crisp air
Cracking it like thin ice with the slightest exhale –
Dead silence reigns here, disrupted
Only by the sound of softly falling snow.
He turns again to continue down the path he chose
Only to again feel the haunting of the unknown
Creeping up behind him, wearing the silence like a cloak
Shrouded in mystifying white and revealed only by instinct
Felt acutely by the hunted when they have been marked as prey.
He knows he is followed by the ghost of something
But cannot name the adversary walking in his shadow.
A flash of red jumps out of the colorless scenery
Existing only on the periphery of sight
As the blurry edged undefined and unrelenting embodiment
Of all that leaves man powerless and afraid.
A phantom dancing just beyond what the eye can see
But the mind remembers as a timeless enemy.
As the man turns once more to seek out the sound stalking him
He is faced with the nothingness of a barren landscape
And his own footprints marring the pristine face of the wilderness;
Except now the first evidence of pursuit is present:
Laid atop his tracks stood the careful footprints of another,
But no sign of the creature that left them behind.
Whirling around to face forward once more
Hoping to escape the encroaching presence
Only to be confronted with the intense yellow eyes of his pursuer.
Standing in the path before him, a red tailed fox –
Royal coat, piercing eyes, black tipped ears keenly listening
Blocked the man’s path with the towering presence
Of a primal Queen who’s dominion has been challenged.
Frozen in place by the sudden appearance of this image of majesty,
Man stands facing the wild
Not knowing whether to continue his journey or turn away.
The fox tilts its head from side to side with curiosity,
Listening to the sound of one who once belong here
But was lost to another world long ago.
Not knowing whether he be friend or foe
She takes a cautious step forward.
She walks atop the snow, gliding gracefully forward
Her movements sound like the swaying of the trees.
The man slowly reaches out his ungloved hand toward the red spirit
She hesitates, paw hanging midair, head tilting to listen
Hearing his heart as it beats thunderously in his chest.
So close, the man stretches farther locked in her lightning eyes
When just as suddenly as she appeared, into the periphery she vanishes.
Left with hand outstretched, slowly filling with snowflakes
Gently kissing his open palm regretfully
The man is left haunted by the red ghost that almost felt real
If only he could have touched it and held it close
For a moment longer than Eternity.
Instead, the silence of winter surrounds him once more
And the Elysium he glimpsed returns to the realm of myth.
Even though I have a home once more, I have found myself taking to the road. Not to get anywhere in particular, I have no grand destination at the end of a long road anymore, but I take to the road all the same. Somedays I drive just to feel normal again, the road has become my home in more than one way. But most days, I drive to watch the fall leaves twirl in the air of my car’s wake as I devour mile after mile of empty roadway. This is my now, after the colors turned, after the winter winds began, and after the leaves began to fall. But this isn’t where I want to begin, I want to go back when the trees were still green and the lake lay still. I want to tell you where I have been, how strange life has become, but in the best of ways.
3,354 miles and a little over two weeks on the road. The space between me and everything I once called home. Now it is over a month since I left the sunny west coast behind me and I have been living in the Northernmost tip of Michigan where the sky meets water and the land ends.
This place is not unfamiliar to me though, it is not a strange, exotic and unknown location; this is my home away from home. However, I have never seen it quite like this before. The closest city to me is Houghton, a drawbridge city with cobblestone streets and old brick buildings lining the downtown stretch of road. But every morning this is the view I wake up to.
So many things are different now, things I have never seen before because I only ever visited in the summer time. I feel like my world has been turned topsy turvy, everything is so similar yet just different enough to disturb the normalcy of everything I had grown accustomed to since I was a very young child. Small things are off, like leaving a book on your desk and returning to find it on top of your bed with no one around to have moved it.
Small things like seeing acorns on the ground. The entire ground is littered with them but since I have only ever been here in summer I have never seen an acorn here. Or watching fog lift off of the lake in the early morning or funneling down the channel when I have only ever seen sun, rain, and lightning in the sky before now. Or realizing that the shadows fall differently because the sun is in an entirely different position. The sun sets so far south and instead of 11pm sunsets, the sky gets darker earlier and earlier every day. There are endless things that entirely transform this place I have visited almost every single year since I was born. I feel like I have found myself on the other end of the looking glass and everything is slightly distorted.
There are two not so subtle changes that have really transformed this once familiar place into a mysterious and new experience. The first of which is obvious, it is Fall. I have never seen the once verdant ubiquitous green burst apart into such an array of beautiful colors. It makes me look at everything with new awe struck eyes.
The land around me has become its own sea of colors. Amber, wine, violet, peach, rose, and so many other colors have transformed every tree into a color palette of startling fiery colors. Every day the world around me looks different. Every day it transforms a little more, becomes a little more beautiful, or looses a few more leaves. This ceaselessly protean landscape has dug its beautiful fingers into my imagination and lit my eyes aflame with the possibilities of fleeting life. There is such a desperate beauty in imminent perishing life.
The other difference is the life that already perished. The loss of my grandfather, one year after his passing, is thick in the air everywhere I turn up here. It is not necessarily a bad or sad feeling, just a very persistent one. Memories are the greatest ghosts we could ever conjure.
I dreamt for years about coming up to Northern Michigan to see the peak of fall colors, but I never dreamt that it would be without my grandfather. I always thought I would walk arm in arm with him through the forest of amber and wine colored trees. I thought we would sit in his favorite chairs by a fire, no words passing between us, just a mutual understanding that sometimes words aren’t necessary to know you are loved. Now I am finally here and on the one year anniversary of his passing. I wish he could be here with me and I cannot believe, even a year later that he is actually gone. I miss my grandpa but I see him and feel him in the flurry of falling leaves everywhere I go.
I am staying in his home without him and every time I hear this old house creak I always wonder if it is him. I feel like I cannot go anywhere without bumping into his ghost. But I know he would have wanted me here. I just wish he could have been here along side me.
I think one of the biggest things about being here by myself is how much older it makes me feel. I can physically see the changes, the way that time has transformed this place and myself. I have always known this place as one filled with love, family, laughter, adventure, mischief, and growth. But now I am here at the end of fall and the cusp of winter. It isn’t summer anymore. I have grown older, my grandfather and grandmother are both gone, my cousins aren’t here with me to enjoy each others company, and the leaves are falling one by one as the water slowly recedes from the shores.
It is a beautiful death here. A beautiful transitioning between the life of one year and the life of the next. This is where I find myself. Between the death of an old life and the beginning of a new one. The west of my past and the east of my future as Kerouac would say if his journey had been reversed. I am moving slowly towards something, but I know not what yet. For now I sit and watch the world around me changing, wondering what will come when the color is gone.
As many of you know last year I spent a week in Yellowstone following wolves and taking photos. I am blessed to yet again have this amazing opportunity to explore the harsh wild wilderness that is the Yellowstone tundra. The next week I will be in the Northern part of the park photographing animals and landscape.
I haven’t been posting as often this month because I have been so busy with preparations. After this is over I am going to go back to posting regularly. Hopefully each day I will have time to post some of my pictures from my adventures of that day. Last year I couldn’t because we were so busy, but hopefully this year I can. I can’t wait to return to Yellowstone. Hopefully this year I will get some really good wolf shots!
See you all in a week.
A snowy egret flies
On paper thin wings
Like a paper airplane
Gliding through the air
Keeping airborne
For as long as it can
Until its fragile wings
Bow under the weight
Of heavy air
Into the ground
Where no paper airplanes soar
Here the snow
Belongs to the land
Not the bird in the sky
No longer fragile and beautiful
But the paper-thin feel
Of cold seeping
Into your hollow bones
The delicate dance
Of frostbite on the fingertips
Of ballerina dancers
The slow decay of the biting snow
And the old heaviness weighing down
The lightest breeze
The wings of an egret
Laden with the burden
Of the world without sky
Chained to the ground
Waist deep in snow
Where a creature with wings
Does not belong
Yet cannot escape from
The paper wings beat
To leave behind this place
Heavy
With the absence of all
Freedom lies in the air
Where the snow belongs
To a graceful bird
Not the world lying below
Where frostbite is left behind
In the warm sun’s glow
I am tired now let me sleep
The little girl says in a voice scarred
By winters claws in her throat
Not yet, not quite yet
Our feet drag in the snow
Her little hand held loosely in my own
If I can not feel my own hand
How am I supposed to keep track of hers
I feel her hands slipping frequently
From within my grasp
To hang limp by her sides
They drag her down
She is so little
So fragile I have to take care of her
But even as I think this
I feel my eyelids dragging too
We are dying
And I know this
I wonder if she knows too
We keep moving
One foot in front of the other
Trudging through this desolations
To a destination unknown
I have no answers for her
Just empty reassurance
That soon the answer will come
Who knows maybe a flaming chariot
Will come from the sky
In a flourish of warmth
That will thaw our tired bones
Or not.
Nevertheless we keep moving
She falls to her knees beside me
I barely notice in my own fogginess
I am going to take a nap
She says in a voice now more than a whisper
That echoes in my ears like a scream
No.
I say forcing my way through the snow
To reach down and rouse her
She has curled up in the snow
Like a kitten next to a warm fire
There seems no difference
She looks so peaceful as she closes her eyes
I shake her, yell at her
Tell her she can’t die
I have to protect her
Keep her safe and alive
But she is gone now
Curl up in Winter’s embrace
Leaving me in this winter wasteland
Alone.
So devastatingly alone
I kneel in the snow
Unable to move
Not willing to die
But not strong enough to live
Where does that leave me
I pet her soft hair
And say goodbye
I have to continue on
Alone if must be
So I left her behind
She belonged to the winter
Not mine any more
I screamed in silence
Because there was no one left to hear
This desolation this utter fear
It was the first time I had felt anything
Since this terrible winter of silence began
And it was the last feeling I ever had
As Winter pulled me in
And left me hollow and cold inside
I died with her
Long ago in the snow
Yet here I am still moving
But who am I now?
Winter is waiting
Like an old hospital room
White and clean
Yet so foreboding
They will wash the walls
Of my presence
Scrub away
Until there is nothing left of me
Strip down my pictures
Replace them with plaster
A life cast of me
Molded too tight
Until I cannot breathe
Suffocating and gasping for air
Inside a white washed room
Sterilized of life
Where dolls sit
With clairvoyant glassy eyes
Of Ovid’s butterfly
Fluttering helplessly
Settling down
In a flourish of color
Only to die slowly
Caught in the grip
Of Winter’s cold fist
Such an absence
Such a silence
It deafens me
Echoing off white walls
The screams of the plastered casts
Of those who came before me
Faces protruding like the gates of hell
Leaving me too blind to see
Staring blankly
At the horror before me
I wonder why I am here
Why I wound up
In this white washed room
Suffocating in a prison
With no windows
No sound
Except the noise of madness
And the sound
Of a rotting brain
As the butterfly takes its last gasps
You left me here
To slowly decay
I watch the butterfly
Curl, wither, and deform
From the beauty it had been
Watching my fate
Unfurl before me
With a merciless slowness
I am waiting now
For the white to capture me
To whisk me away
Into some fairytale dream
A reprieve of this white washed room
But the butterfly’s ashes
Lay around me
Staining my palms
It will never leave me
Winter is here
With its worn cold hands
I refuse to go with you
But I cannot stay
Take me with you butterfly
For where I am going
I hoped I would never be
See you on the other side
Of this damned eternity
For now I will hope for a better destiny
And try to avoid the inevitable
By hiding behind the mask
Of a butterfly’s face
In plain sight
A flourish of color in a white room
Waiting for fate to find me
Welcome to a place
where desolation meets
silent tranquility
here is my isolation
amidst the winter’s snow
there is no place
to bury the dead
no time or will
to dig deep
beneath the barren forsaken land
the dead lay as they fall
no ceremony as the wind
claws at your face
when you scream
no one is there to listen
in a place
riddle with unmarked graves
you walk amongst the dead
but do not know it
kill or be killed
at the Gate’s of Desolation
