Bone of Your Bone

Bone of your bone

Fire of your blood

Ash of your flesh

     Next week I will have a small ceremony at my house to scatter some of Mike's ashes in a new rose bed. This summer his daughter and I will hike the East Applegate Ridge Trail, which Mike and I helped build, to scatter more of his ashes there. And a friend I've been hiking with lately suggested that whenever I hike, I carry a small vial of ashes with me to scatter in a beautiful place.

          With that idea in mind, I did the twelve-mile hike to Azalea Lake yesterday, carrying a small vial of Mike's ashes with me. I was alone at the lake. The azaleas had already started to bloom. An occasional fish broke the surface of the water with a small plop. I took off my clothes and swam.

Bone of your bone

Fire of your blood

Ash of your flesh

          I swam to the middle of the lake, then stood upright, treading water, looking at the mountains around me, the burned-out forest with its lush undergrowth of greenery, in which shone hundreds of white plumes of bear grass. Suddenly, out of the anguish of missing Mike, I called for him—"Mi-i-i-ke!"—throwing my voice into the mountain, which tossed the name back to me. I spun slowly in the water, then shouted his name again, to the Red Buttes in the distance; then spun, then cried for him a third time, to the blue sky with its white clouds, and spun slowly again.

         I swam the rest of the way across the lake. On the way back, I dove underwater and shouted Mike's name, burbling it three times through the water: for the fish, for the newts, for the frogs.

          When I emerged, I bent close to the ground and whispered his name to the azaleas, to the bees, to the thin blue dragonflies.

Bone of your bone

Fire of your blood

Ash of your flesh

         A young osprey splashed into the lake for a fish and flew away, empty-fisted.

         I stood with the vial of ashes at the edge of the lake, my back to the water and to the wind, facing the mountain. On the first hike Mike and I made to Azalea Lake, I had felt the seed of love opening as I saw how easy it was to be with him, how much we had in common, how much I liked him. Now I would honor this place with his ashes. With a sweep of my arm I threw Mike's ashes into the air, where they dissolved on the wind. 

Bone of your bone

Fire of your blood

Ash of your flesh

Feeding the Soul with Flowers

Bear grass. (All photos
by Stacey Romney)

          With its foam-like spikes of tightly packed, tiny blossoms, bear grass is the whitest, fuzziest, most majestic flower in the wild kingdom, in my opinion.

         Bear grass grows throughout the Pacific Northwest, but the best display in the Applegate is on the Cameron Meadows-Frog Pond loop trail, which is steep (2165-foot elevation gain in two miles) but a great trail for wildflowers in general, to say nothing of its trunk-dominated forest with the vastness of spaces between. If you catch the wild rhododendrons at just the right moment, they'll be tumbling down the hillside with large, pink, bulging blossoms. If you're too late in the spring for the best rhododendron display, you might be just in time for the tiger

Cinquefoil

lilies, drooping their orange heads in modest acknowledgment of their superior beauty. Beyond the tiger lilies, in the next of the series of Cameron meadows, at the right time of year the masses of wildflowers make a painterly display of yellow cinquefoil, red columbine, yellow groundsel, white yarrow, purple Larkspur, and red Indian paintbrush, none of which filled that meadow yesterday, when my hiking partner, Stacey, and I climbed the Cameron Meadows trail. The rhododendrons were just beginning to bloom, but the grasses in the meadows were lush and thick, and the cinquefoil was in its prime.

Cameron Meadows pond

          That the meadows were green, the ponds full, the flowers beautiful, the birds vocal, and the weather neither too hot nor too chilly already set an atmosphere for a great hike, but it was the bear grass that turned yesterday's hike into a walk through Eden.

          At the top of the trail, in the woods around the meadows, the bear grass began appearing with stunning strength. Around the trunks of the big firs and cedars, tall stems of bear grass, with their thickly clustered, plump balls or oblongs of tiny white flowers, each with its nipple of buds, rose up through the greenery. As we descended from Frog Pond, we became enveloped in bear grass on both sides of the trail, streaming up the mountain on one side and down it

on the other as far as we could see. For more than a mile we walked through this magic. The soft white flowers were so abundant their usually indistinguishable fragrance sweetened the air.

          To see a bear ambling through the big trees, or as I saw once on this same trail, climbing backwards down a madrone tree after a meal of berries, or to catch sight of a bobcat scooting across the trail, a fawn lying in a thicket, a herd of elk thundering past, or, my most exciting wildlife sighting on a hike, a wolverine nosing through a meadow is to feel privileged at witnessing the natural world in its ecological totality: wildlife in its habitat, just doing what it's doing, going about life, oblivious of human beings. It provides a thrill of gratitude to have been included, for a rare and fleeting moment, in that animal's existence. That's the way it was with the bear grass yesterday. To witness this mega bloom, this beauty, this rarity of abundance was as unique and soul-fulfilling as religious ecstasy.

What Kind of Place Is the United States Today?

          I have a friend, a New Zealander, who said to me in an email a few days ago, "What a horrible place the States are."

          "Oh, no, no!" I wanted to cry, thinking of all the beautiful places I know, all the good people, and all the wonderful things about the country I live in. But I wondered uneasily if he were right, if my country is a horrible place these days. 

         I can't bear the thought.

         But if one's country is in the leadership hands of an incompetent, ego-maniacal, misogynistic, racist, calculating, environment-destroying, and power-thirsty madman, will it turn into a horrible place? Will bad people be emboldened to overcome the good? If good people peacefully protest evil deeds, as is their right, only to be overwhelmed by thugs and people with hate in their hearts intent only on destruction, is it a good place to live? Was it ever a good place to live for many of those peaceful protestors? Is it a good place to live where hatred of a person for being dark-skinned or otherwise different (but each of us is different in one way or another!) instigates murder? Is it a good place to live where racism is systemic (how I hate to face up to that truth, since all around me I see acceptance of all differences)? 

          The United States was once a beautiful place, for me and for many of us. When it becomes that again, I hope it is for all its people. I have faith that it will be, in spite of the evidence of this past week. But today, the violence in our cities, the large numbers of COVID-19 deaths, the cruel murder of George Floyd, and the continuing idiocy and worse coming from the White House overwhelm me. I am saddened and appalled by the death and destruction in my country, the horrible place it seems to have become. 

          To change it, vote. To change it, make sure everyone you know votes because I have faith that more people would like to see this kind of change than want to keep things as they are.

Death, Thou Art Proud, These Days

by Diana Coogle

These days Death is laughing in the face of old John Donne,

strutting down the street with his best buddies,

Violence, hanging on one arm, and Pestilence, on the other.

All three drunkenly reel with the success of their fun:

home runs in every city, tens off the diving board,

touchdowns on every field (but the crowds are not cheering).

Hatred, that snarling hound, nips at the heels of Violence

and chases every squirrel and timid chipmunk he can find.

Swaggering in hard iron boots, stringy Pestilence,

who, unlike buff-built Violence, is all skin and bones,

strikes lightning-scary sparks off the pavement stones.

Sporadically he throws in the air, like confetti,

the worms that do his work, letting them fall where they will.

Death watches with greedy, beady eyes, eager to go in for the kill.

The three of them strut through America's streets,

Tin Pan Alley, Main Street, Fifth Avenue, the Lower 9th Ward,

a despicable trio of misery and destruction.

Death is laughing the longest and the loudest,

for he knows he dies only in John Donne's imagination.

It's not Death but his buddies we should be going after.

Get the worms! Without the worms, Pestilence

shrinks into a harmless wandering ghost.

Destroy the dog! Or, better, tame it into a loving clone.

Without Hatred at his heels, Violence would slink away. 

Without Pestilence and Violence, Death would mind

his own business-as-usual, sometimes bitter, sometimes kind.