HIKING YELLOWSTONE

Our guided group hiked a mountain wood

Some to learn

Some for solitude

We followed our guide

Up the continental divide

         Where east-flowing rivers went north

         And west-flowing rivers went south

And down

         Through competitive strata of spruce and lodgepole pines,

         Darwinian winners in the ecology of fire

We were told the hikes would be flat

We were not told, compared to climbing ladders

She shared her expertise

And ecological lore

About calderas, buffalo wallows

And aeries --

         Was that an osprey

         Or just another raven?

Heat stressed fish

And creel kill,

The sixth kingdom, archaea,

Pictographs and fire strikes,

Obsidian, travertine, rhyolite

         And sinter. 

Signs insisted:

         DO NOT ENTER

Fumaroles, geysers, pools and mud pots

         Steamed,

Warming and warning

Those who stopped

         STAY ON THE WALKWAY

From time to time a stray would forge ahead

Or lag behind

To admire a bed

Of Fringed Gentian

Then bend low

To photograph western mistletoe --

         Less intent on learning about mountains

         As from them

Our newly alerted imaginations

were stirred by nature’s wordless lessons

          Whispering creeks pointed uphill

           To unseen waterfalls

         Swaying pines, their coniferous boughs

         And sunlight in a whirl

         Spoke of this brave old world,

                  Whose ages of sharing

         Now prompt unsettled stirrings about caring

Mother Nature, author, teacher

Surrounded us with her wisdom

Here long before we came

And maybe long past when our children come

Dennis R. Keefe

October 6, 2004

May 30, 2016