(For Curly Chittenden and all those valiant for the earth.)
They gutted the gorge and valley
decades back.
Villages and homes are now gone,
decaying, down, done.
Dams 3 levels high climb,
like giant cement ladders, up
up the Skagit Valley, pump energy to
Seattle. Seattle City Lights smiles
with pleasure, pleased. Ravenous
suburbs are well fed.
They turned north in the 1960s
to add a 4th level, a higher dam,
a reservoir for more energy.
They turned to the True North,
north near Hope.
Our forests, trails, streams, soil
were to be sunk, buried alive
under a graveyard of water.
All would be ruined and rot,
decay, dissolve, disappear.
Hearth and home, kith and kin
saw writing on wall, read script
well. The stored energy would,
predictably so, go south to the,
as the Sto:lo say, hungry people.
A small band of alert, attentive,
in tune, in touch ones, felt the
groan, grief and anger of stone
slab and soil, trunk and stream,
limb and leaf, root and rock rim.
The small tribe gathered north of
the 49th, fought many a battle, won
in the political trenches a hard
victory, restored hope to beating,
living things.
We, this long summer solstice day,
turn south from Hope, drive down
dust thick Flood Hope Road in Skagit
Valley. We hike through dense forest
east of Ross Lake to time tried rocks
by water’s edge, near razor sharp and
much fabled Hozomeen
We down good Okanagan wine, feed
on fresh baked bread, re-member under
blue canopy such silence and quies has
an exacting price. Day star now bends
low in the west this fading, fleeting day.
We will soon enjoy the gift and greeting
of the dusk, alpine glow now strong on
glacier white peaks above. Sizzling white
embers will soon be our warmth, pine
boughs our rough hewn mattress. The eyes
of the night are ever thickening. They tell
an ancient and much longed for tale.
Then, we will awake and return, this night
of a Hunter’s moon behind us.