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Tuesday 15 December 2009

Old Mine Road (Caribou)


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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Bear_Mirror.JPG

Bear Lake (Colorado): photo by Trojan, 2004




Just below timberline

life bursts in

where water was
it's mostly mossy

with willows
and dark spaces

and wild daisies
and mazes of glades

and pools




http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Lilly_Lake.JPG

Lilly Lake (Colorado): photo by Trojan, 2004

8 comments:

Bob Arnold / Longhouse said...

Tom,

When ye come to build your next boat in the Longhouse boatyard please be sure to include this mostly mossy one because I got goose bumps still running up my hammers in the hands arms.

B.

Zephirine said...

Ah... pools...

TC said...

Many thanks Bob and Zeph,

Ah yes, the sublimity of the pools.

What else are poems for but to cause goosebumps? (And Bob, those must be the largest arms any poem of mine has ever tickled.)

A bit of local backdrop. In the late 1970s we spent the better part of a year in the vicinity of a rough and ready Front Range town called Nederland, situated up near the Continental Divide. The town had been founded as a milling site for the silver mines of Caribou, a once-upon-a-time boom town five miles upslope, long since become a ghost town by the time we were there. Abandoned mineshafts dotted the backwoods behind our place, it was said alien craft used them as bases. Strange sylphlike creatures were thought to slip through the woods. A friend in a nearby settlement, Eldora, related that when Wiliam Burroughs had been staying at his cabin, space creatures had nipped in to steal limes from his kitchen (Burroughs diagnosed this as evidence of a vitamin D deficiency on their planet, causing rickets). This sort of thing was surprisingly easy to give credence to. A very spooky zone of the planet. The heavy snows and attendant eerie silences and auras lasted till June, then started up again in September. Kubrick filmed the Shining around that time not far off at Estes Park

But the few warm months were heavenly, with wildflowers, ponds and pools all about. Nymph Lake, Dream Lake... they lived up to their names. Out back of us was Mud Lake, where it was interesting to snoop about among the mineshafts (though weekend sharpshooters, target-practice-firing at old refrigerators, wrecked cars and other junk, made it necessary to look before one snooped).

Here is a fairly ordinary sunset at Lilly Lake, and here is a mid-September snowfall at Bear Lake, up by the trailhead.

By mid January, with the snow six feet deep and the temp. down to minus-forty F., we were goners.

human being said...

beauuuuutiful!

what and ending!
how i loved to be there...

u.v.ray. said...

"Wiliam Burroughs had been staying at his cabin, space creatures had nipped in to steal limes from his kitchen (Burroughs diagnosed this as evidence of a vitamin D deficiency on their planet, causing rickets)"

You could always rely on WB for a clear cut diagnosis of reality.

TC said...

Doctor Benway, Emeritus Head, Medical Faculty, University of Tibet.

. said...

Really enjoyed this Tom! I've visited the US only twice,both times to Colorado. Estes Park still has my breath.

aditya said...

mazes of glades is one fine expression.

By Daisies, I remember, back then Jim Carroll was called a daisy in his childhood.

Eerie backdrop .. Must have been fun!
-40 F you say ?!!! Whoaaa ..