Poetry: A Paradigm

Poetry, that deep and vast repository
Wherein all writers put,
Forthwith and forsooth,
All their ideas, good and bad;
Their philosophies, their ardors,
And even so (as always)
Find space for more expressions,
Bold or bland, to endure.

In poetry expressed, the author's words
Are set apart as ornaments
To meter, to form, and to scansion;
Wider here, narrower there,
With each semantic import
(Weighted heavily, of course)
Adapted to the moment,
Reflective of the mood.

Within these strictured lines, fenced and boxed,
Lies each bit which their English teachers
Once forbade, forevermore and always,
As sins too great for penance,
Piety notwithstanding;
And which, for lack of better spots
In fable and parable (parenthetically),
Went unused, excesses;
In poetry, as in no other civilized domain,
Rest the extraneous commas, colons, ellipses and semicolons
Once excised (with force, of course)
From the writer's better prose.

In honor of Robert Burns, I relate this story, passed down to me by me auld mither:

It was during some battle or other, the name of which eludes me at the moment, that a British commander sent a battalion of his men over the top of McPhee's Hill to slaughter the Scots. He expected the battle to be brief, yet as he stood gazing in anticipation of his men's return, he was disappointed. Not a single man came back from the foray.

Again he sent out his soldiers, two full battalions this time. Dust from the foray lifted above the green slopes of McPhee's Hill, but once again, the commander waited vainly. Not a single survivor returned.

Thinking that by now the Scots must have been exhausted with fighting, but still uncertain of victory, the commander again sent out men: five battalions! His reputation was at stake, and the Queen's honor and such.

Sounds of battle filled the air. The sky darkened with the dust of war. The commander waited...and waited...and at long last, one lone soldier crawled back into camp, bleeding and battered and near death. With his last breath as he lay at his commander's feet, he voiced these words: "There...there are...TWO of them!"

You have to laugh.

When I cancelled my dinosaurian dial-up service a month ago, I was just a couple of hours into the new billing cycle, so yesterday I got my final bill: $0.64. It took two sheets of paper to spell it all out, plus an envelope, plus the postage, just to bill me for $0.64. Strangely, this phenomenal sum was not automatically withdrawn from my bank account as my monthly bills had been, theoretically because it was not equal to the exact amount I had previously authorized.

So what's to do? Do I write them a check, stick it in an envelope, put a $0.44 cent stamp on it? No, I decided I'd call them in the hopes of either authorizing a draft from my bank account, or maybe...just maybe!...they'd write it off.

The gal on the other end had a good laugh and wrote it off without my suggesting it. We chuckled over the amount of paper and time involved, and then she said,

"You'll probably get another statement in February showing a zero balance."

OMG. What strange times these are!

Y'see, it wasn't so much that I wanted or needed a nap. It was that the Boy needed a cuddle, and his favorite position is curled up on my chest. Not in my lap like a normal cat, no...laying on my chest with one of my arms making a bend and my hand holding his rump and the other hand resting lightly on his shoulder. Obviously, this is not a position conducive to any other project like, say, reading a book or doing beadwork. There's just so much staying-awake you can do when both of your hands are occupied and something is radiating delta waves at you.

With the Big Kitty, it's different. She likes to sleep with her fanny in my lap and the rest of the cat spread out long with the head down at my knees as I rest my feet on the footstool. Because she is rather large and rather broad, this is similar to being under a 102° electric blanket. Once again, there is the issue of delta-wave radiation, and of course being under a warm, furry (albeit heavy) blanket doesn't contribute to a general state of wakefulness. The stormy season has its secret joys, and naps with friends are among them.

I have just come in from digging your classic American hole.

As we all know, the Crow cannot grow vegetables. The Crow flunked both zucchini and radishes. They are vegetables, therefore they will not grow in Crow's garden. Last year and the year before, I fooled some tomatoes into thinking they were flowers by virtue of sticking them in a giant flowerpot sunk to its waist in the flowerbed. Tomatoes never were too long on brains, so the ruse worked.

Vegetables are foodstuffs. On this matter, we must surely agree. One would not refer to a fir tree as a vegetable, nor to your grandmother's rhododendron in such a wise, and surely even nasturtiums (although edible) are never referred to as being of the vegetable persuasion. A gourd is not edible. No matter how long you cook them, gourds remain as inedible as the day you picked them off the vine.

I have tried to grow gourds before, but they had apparently been keeping company with some vegetables and had heard rumors about Crow's garden. Rather than go against the trend, they simply did in Rome as Romans do and refused...flatly...to grow.

Given this history, you would wonder why the Crow would spend $1.49 on a package of mixed gourd seeds. It's because of global warming.

You see, I have the idea that I might be able to convince these rather decorative plants ("plants," mind you...not vegetables) that they have sufficient warmth and nutrients to be quite comfortable until maturity with their feet in the hole with which I began this tale. Yes, I will have to add more dirt to the hole because at present, it qualifies more as a pit than a plot of land, but the mole has been rather busy of late and I have no dearth of dirt. I just wish the little bugger would sift the rocks out, but never mind. He's doing the best he can with limited equipment.

Thus, the next phase is to build a gourd tower. I wish to provide well for my tenants. But that's a project for another day. Presently, I am content to admire in all its hopeful promise the hole where once stood a ragamuffin, wretchedly unlovely rose.

It had been too long, and evidence of that was all too apparent when I took the ancient Sherpa snowshoes down from their hook and the bindings shattered into one-inch long segments. I sighed heavily. At least I hadn't dressed for the occasion yet, but my good intentions were perforce shelved at that singular moment of product mortality. Realistically, I suppose thirty years was a reasonable life expectancy, especially considering the abuses they'd endured in my years as a ranger. Nevertheless, my old friends had untimely given up the ghost and now what was I to do?

Despite my unenviable status as a senior citizen, having a piece of outdoor equipment out of commission was more than I could bear. A quick check of my favorite outfitters and a careful analysis of the product reviews inclined me toward Cabela's, but budget was also to be considered. Was I really prepared to shell out a substantial sum on something I might use no more than three or four times a season over a limited number of years? I needed some factor to tip the scale. The solution was simple: with a new Cabela's retail store a mere hour and a half from home, I'd let late-season availability determine my course of action. I called. They had three pair of 21" Alaskan Outfitters in stock.

The Alaskan Outfitter is based on the original Sherpa design with an aluminum frame and neoprene deck. Not much new in the technology there, but bindings were another story. The Sherpas laced by means of a single continuous webbing strap which went from hook to hook, around the ankle once and through a toothed gripper. Given the action of walking, it was not uncommon for them to require frequent retightening and often, the boots would slide at an angle on the decking so that the shoes were no longer parallel to one another, resulting in a bird-walking step of toes pointing together. The cross-straps on the Alaskan Outfitters, however, are a heavy, wide, hard plastic which fastens down with ratchet action along teeth, similar to those ridged white plastic ties which can only be removed by cutting. The ratchet buckles are a positive-action snap-tight manufacture which distributes the load evenly across the boot at toe and instep. There is no danger of overtightening as there was with the webbing because the buckle will not fully close if you've tried to cinch it down too snugly. The buckles also have a quick release: snap up the tab, and the strap slips readily free of the ratchet.

Now all this technical stuff is well and good in its place on the market shelf, but what the shoes needed was a field trial. Possibly half my snowshoeing has been in the line of work and therefore subject to memories of heavy packs, inclement weather, and the necessity to arrive at my duty station in a timely manner. Going out for the day with only the winter survival essentials in a rucksack seemed almost frivolous, as well it should. I woke to four inches of new powder in the yard and a forecast only vaguely threatening, optimum conditions for evaluation. Time to have some fun!

The Westside Road of Mt. Rainier National Park has long been a favorite with cross-country skiers and snowshoers, albeit frequently at odds with one another over who is destroying the other's track. Gated near the Park's Nisqually entrance, it affords a wide path for almost four miles until it reaches Fish Creek. There, conditions may limit further travel for the average hiker who does not care to risk crossing an icy stream on a footlog or tenuous snowbridge. In summer months, the gate is open, but vehicular access terminates at Dry Creek, a quarter mile short of the Fish Creek footbridge, and here Mt. Wow rises immediately to the west beside the road as an impressive jumble of boulders and outcrops, a stunning massif. Looking east, one sees the meadows of Mt. Ararat (named for a pile of timbers early explorers claimed were the remains of Noah's ark) sloping down to Tahoma Creek. This small valley has suffered a series of floods and mudflows in recent years, the potential for a major lahar justifying Park Service's decision to close the road at this point.

As I said, it had been too long, and I wondered if a trek up the Westside Road might be more than I could handle. The morning was crisp and what few weekend tracks there were had pretty much filled in with the night's snowfall. Occasionally beneath an overhanging branch the surface was glazed with hard ice, but for the most part, walking was casual, almost as if I was in boots on a dirt trail. A bit short of halfway, I was checked up short by a massive bull elk who eyed me for what I was, an intruder in his domain. There was no question of who owned the right-of-way; I spoke gently and continuously to him to let him know that I was no threat and after a period of minutes, he turned and bounded up the road, leaving great deep hoofprints. Finally, he turned and went down the embankment into forest, passing almost silently out of sight among the trees.

The night's snowfall was dry and fluffy. I scuffed along through it with clouds of spindrift rising at my toes and came to a subtle personal landmark rather sooner than I'd expected. How far was it to the nurse stump marking the trailless approach to Lake Allen? I questioned my memory, because it seemed I had arrived at it in near-record time. Here I made the first observation regarding the new snowshoes: they were easier to walk in than the old Sherpas, perhaps due to a one-inch difference in the width of the deck. This might not be critical to a six-foot man, but I am a full twelve inches shorter. The turnup at the toe is also more pronounced, so there was less "shovelling" with the tips and no significant accumulation of snow on the deck.

Now while I had been holding conversation with the elk, the two gentlemen who were allowing me to break trail for them had caught up and taken the lead when we started out again, laughingly saying it was their turn. I've done most of my snowshoeing alone and having a freshly trodden path was utterly delightful. Again, I came to the next landmark surprisingly soon, and not far behind my companions who had just settled in for a break at Dry Creek. After a snack and a photography session, the three of us set out again. When we reached Fish Creek a quarter mile further on, we all agreed that it was too dangerous to attempt to cross on the footlog since it had no handrail and was piled deep with snow which might conceal a layer of ice.

In the relative warmth of afternoon (still somewhat shy of 32°), snow tumbled from branches as I made my way back to the car, thoroughly pleased with the performance of the new snowshoes. Ten days later, I was out again, this time for a hike (as opposed to a walk on a snow-covered road). The second field trial was as successful as the first, but that's another story.

Evil thing that I am, I take great glee in what's happening out there right now. Typical of Memorial Day weekend in the Pacific Northwe't, it's raining. All those tourists are waking up in their tents to the sound of pitter-patter, pitter-patter on ripstop nylon, getting just a wee small taste of what Life In The Great Outdoors is *really* all about.

When I was working for the Park, one Memorial Day saw Ipsut Campground packed to overflowing despite a forecast for bad weather. There were tents pitched in the picnic area (not allowed), maniacs with axes hacking branches off living trees to build their fires (also not allowed), people camped illegally in the backcountry zones (obviously in contravention of the rules), and a handful of resigned rangers going dutifully about their business of smiling at all of them and trying to make the best of a Bad Thing.

Before Sunday was over, I'd been hailed on by end-of-thumb sized hailstones, drenched to the hide even through my Goretex (working hard and sweating underneath it in the Carbon River rainforest). I'd routed dogs off the trail, assigned illegal campers to more eco-friendly backcountry overflow sites, been menaced by a couple of drunks who didn't like me telling them they couldn't cut down trees.

And then the windstorm came on Monday and dropped a huge cedar across the dead-end road, penning all the campers on the wrong side of it.

I remember so clearly running past the gathering line of cars, sprinting up to Ipsut to retrieve the three-foot chainsaw which was stored in the shed behind the ranger cabin, three miles from the fallen tree. I remember even more clearly running back down the road at the best lope I could manage, carting the beast which was almost as big as I was. As I began the last mile, a visitor in a very small car shouted out his window at me to say that he'd give me a ride as far as his little vehicle could travel beside the rest of the hordes stuck behind the tree, and we made about half a mile before coming to a tight place that he couldn't pass. I sprinted the remainder, handed the chainsaw off to trail crew, and in another hour or so, they'd managed to section the tree and haul away the parts so that even the grotesque Winnebagos could pass through.

I went back to housing, took a long, hot shower and my supervisor told me I could take the rest of the day off. Instead, I sat around the office writing reports (one of my favorite things to do).

Gosh, that was a fun Memorial Day! And some poor ranger bugger up there this morning is going through much the same thing: gathering a memory that will become fonder and fonder the farther away he gets from the time of the actual event.