Trekking Big Mountain
Size of a small garage
a patch of Wild Bergamot
blooms every spring
on the path to the rockface
surrounding Big Mountain.
It’s like taking a bath
in peppermint tea. Rare
bees buzz here – Lemon Cuckoo
Bumble Bee, Parallel-Strip
Sweat Bee, Rusty Patched
Bumble Bee but don’t the forget
moths, skippers & flies.
Out of a sturdy metal pipe
a natural spring trickles
next to the bulldozed
path cut during a wildfire.
A cairn of stacked rocks sits.
This is a place to pray.
I look back at the trail.
My husband spent the first
three months on the new property
carving a natural stairway
into the side of the hill.
He cut logs of charred deadfall
to construct risers, step by step.
Everything changes when
I walk up the stairs – light,
temperature, air, sounds,
sense of time. I start to think
in terms of centuries & millennia
like star clusters,
ancient mountains
& old growth trees.
ancient mountains
& old growth trees.
