Slow as a Glacier

On the shore of McDonald Lake, a lodge has stood since 1895.  When the area became a national park in 1910, the lodge kept right on operating, and has ever since.  It closes for the season on the first of October, turning away plenty of people who love this time of year.  But profits are lower, so why bother.  Let them come in the summer when demand doubles the price.  Of course, pressure on the environment is greater then, but taxes pay for that. 

Here by the quiet lake, it’s hard to imagine a glacier two thousand feet thick, melting ten thousand years ago, and leaving moraines that dammed McDonald Creek, making a lake 470 feet deep.

From here, I headed into the woods, and though the forest is dense, occasionally I could look down on McDonald Lake.  From where I took these pictures, we are still below the top of that great Pleistocene  glacier.

Now we are far above the lake.  Ttrees are thinning and becoming smaller, but the yellow aspens of fall don’t seem to get elevation sickness.

Moss hangs from the trees like it does in Georgia, but it’s a different kind of moss.  Interesting that the idea of moss survives in such diverse places, like laws of nature do.

Turning ahead now and looking up canyon, away from McDonald Lake, the climb steepens, and walls press in on both sides, and still the aspens carry on.

Nothing disturbs the silence here when wind is calm and the birds are relaxing, except perhaps Kathaabela flying to Chicago.  There’s a poem in that rumble overhead, I sense it. 

The conifers are lean and strong up here; they know how to live where snow comes deep and wind strong.

Another glacier-formed lake, much higher than McDonald Lake and formed by a smaller glacier, which might have been a branch of the same glacier, back when ice covered most of these mountains.  Snyder Lake lies today in still air, cloistered in a cirque against a high ridge.

                                                                       My Enabler

                                                                             (haibun by Sharon Hawley)

I remember the survivor’s expression on your face.  Gallon canteen strapped over your shoulder, as you followed me up the trail. You had brought a wild girl into the world, and you would raise her.  This, your way of training, socializing without punishment.

You were hurt by those times I went alone into the mountains without telling anyone, even stayed overnight.  I worried you and probably caused your early heart attack. 

Your determined jaw as you trudged up the trail.  I think how it must have been during the Depression on the American River.  You left home and panned gold, sent enough money back to save your family.  Now your determination is saving me so I can hike again.

I was hiking alone in bear country again today, obsessed with seeing as much of Glacier Park as I can before winter.  You gave me the means to enjoy the therapy and authority of hiking alone where instructions say never hike alone.  You see, Daddy, nobody really recovers from anything; we learn to live with it.  You were my enabler. 

Memories condense like sedimentary layers in my brain.  Having you along now is as much a part of the journey as the shuffle of my boots along the trail and the hard blue sky when the sun comes out.

                                                                            when passion goes awry

                                                                            sometimes

                                                                            one understands