Mary Kwart is presently the Prescribed Fire Specialist working for the National Park Service at Yosemite National Park. She lives in Wawona. Wawona is an adaptation of the Native American Miwok word for the sound of an owl.
Saturday and Sunday-the only days I don't work
Tourists jabbering around the visitor center
I hide in my office
The screen door slams in the bright afternoon sun
I've eaten lunch and I'll go running now. Goodbye.
Dodging opening car doors, hopping over small children and weaving
between Japanese tourists, up to the Yosemite Falls Trail
Fallen boulders-house-size
have created caves and climbers live there still.
I tip toe up at a running pace and smooth out the stones in the beaten
trail
I landed too quickly on a small boulder and almost twisted my ankle
Where the trail finally levels out-mist showers and rainbow disappears
as I look at the falls base
Tree frogs jump out of footfall-almost frozen.
After turning in innumerable switchbacks, past rock cliff gardens and
millions of cascades
I dash and dart away from the falls face and trot down, outrunning
hikers to the valley bottom.
Leidig meadow at last -my office and a two day old Twix bar, left behind
Stopped and had a snack.
I envision thousands of them-gone beyond
But, the dog soldiers rise up again and
their desk calculators and forest service green uniforms-
These surface bureaucrats finally showing their true colors:
naked and painted,
staked down,
tied by leather thongs,
behind enemy lines.
Unable to leave.
Dodging bloody knives, arrows, words
Until the last bubble of extremity pops
and their compadres sever the leather thongs/
freeing them.
In unconsciousness they collapse onto the ground.
Leave the meeting,
Go out to the forgotten backdrop to greed-
the now ragged forest-
And beat their breasts over and over in mea culpa
"Hell was full, so I came back"
--Freda the Truck
Barreling down night Highway 99 headed south
Barreling past the Selma Auto Mall,
Gas? Food? Lodging?-pull into the Slash X Ranch Café.
I remind myself, "You'll be blessed.", as the miles roll on
O.K.
But what about that upturned, empty turtle shell I found deep in the
Here I am,
Encapsulated in metal and propelled by rolling wheels
Through the old clerkless night thing.
You know-the land beyond coherent thoughts & radio stations.
Barreling past the Chester H. Warlow Safety Rest Area
(oranges-1 mile)
Barreling past an abandoned recliner, tilted open,
Waiting for desert ghosts.
And the radio screetchily answers, "Let's face the Music & Dance"
desert,
that said to me:
"One small misstep, you're on your back
And all that's left is a teaspoon of slime & a naked backbone."
Barreling down night Highway 99 south,
1000 miles just to slip this skin
Chasing those old frosty stars into the Mojave.
Standing at night in Eastside Sierra sagebrush
The full moon in between big pines
Great Silence-no, quiet, wider, emptier than that.
Spacious stillness
no, more
more
no
One big moon,
I want to release a torrent of ecstatic poetry
30 below.
As my hand rests lightly on the furrowed bark
I circle one big pine
and grieve for the loss of trees
hoping the words will beat on the drum of your ear.
You say to write about Yosemite-
What I remember are only pale memories of places like Yosemite Falls
I fell in love twice
Trying three times to make it all the way to Dewey Point on skis-great
When I returned from a job in Colorado I was sucked back into the
The broken trail to Sierra Point-could see 3-4 waterfalls from there.
The same day as cross country skiing up near Badger Pass, we sunbathed
Looked across at the Ledge Trail up to Glacier Point. Steep gulley that
Straight up to the rim of the Valley through Indian Canyon. Saw a
Many caves all over the Valley-little do tourists know. Boulder strewn
Hemingway said he'd write about Paris when he was back in Ohio
I can't write about Yosemite-
I never have moved away from there.
white foam and moonbow
Crashed down on tourists and
young maids from the Ahwahnee Hotel on acid out for a midnight stroll
Learning about the poetry of a hawk flying
Rock Dancing
Getting my pigtail caught in a climbing rope during a belay and having
to be lowered down the rock
wooden jobs
We crashed every 25 feet.
Saw Ned Gillette, head of the mountain school and ex-Olympic cross-
country skier, every Ahwahnee maid's dream, speed by on racing skis
saying howdy as I was trying to get up from the snow
I hiked to the top of El Capitan and met friends and climbers Chris,
Will and George
Chris (Crispy) Pforr didn't climb but was the company clown.
Bug eyed and falling in love with me.
Valley and was shocked by the pace of things, the parking lots and
paved paradise. But, Oh what a fine day it was-afternoon naps on the
warm sand next to Snow Creek, in a hidden spot above Mirror Lake.
Looking up at Kaweah Point next to Half Dome, knowing that George and
Will went up there to scout a climbing route up Half Dome and found the
last names in the registry were Royal and Yves.
The Park Service discouraged it, now-big landslides. But you could
still trace the route starting up the hill from the first spring on the
Vernal Falls trail.
above the Ahwahnee Hotel at Royal Arch Cascade-called "Devil's
Bathtub". I lost my first lover's letter from there in a gust of wind,
down through a granite crack to the ground-Oh, well, he was a climber
anyway.
lured people to their death-always a fatality in spring. The sound of
hovering rescue helicopters was common.
bear, escaping up this old Indian route to the valley rim. A tattered
pack still hanging from a tree there by Fred's old OB camp.
retreats with little shelves and places to hide guns.
All text and images in The Central California Poetry Journal are copyrighted. Copyright by © by Scott Galloway 2000. All rights are reserved. See main Journal page for
copyright information.
Authors and poets submitting original materials to this journal retain all rights to theiroriginal work, except those rights specifically assigned in writing to Solo Publications including the right to publish the submitted work in The Central California Poetry Journal. The poems on this page are copyrighted by the author. Copyright © Mary Kwart 2000.
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