Forest Heart Celebration

I've come to this obscure corner of
the heart

the center of a rich forest

there are no boundaries
to this forest land

any tree lover will know

when they've arrived there.

Big skies are behind me
the highway runs beneath walls of green
the road a shaved
strip through a carpet of forest.

Grand firs, lacy white pines, and
red cedar: their sweeping limbs call me
reaching outwards like gothic angels'
wings.

The hemlocks sneak in, a
dark, haunting element.

Amidst this forest,
bringing stories of the wild woods back

I am quick and eager.

Plopped between arid landscapes
this cloaked country
leads
above the river canyon.

Dark, feathery foliage dangles over a hazy
blue gap below.

Looking west, there is
unbroken sunshine
and piles of snow still cover the trail.

But the storms regather to create another wet
valley.
Beside a crystalline creek,
I am sitting in the emerging sunshine,
gazing at lower slopes.

Soon my trail enters the woods--
a new grove of trees below,
in the cedars.
Over a cold spring-fed creek,
the cedars are king.

In these woods,
western white pines once
dominated an endless grove of
tall straight trees.

I am giddy. The river glows golden
from yellow boulders.
Around the first bend, a cow elk stands on
the shore, head down eating streamside grasses.

I wander upstream,
and start uphill.

Up and up along a spine
ridge with views of the river below,
lost in reverie when
sunlight shines ahead of me
and nearby fir trees are
forming a clear-cut:

wild nature is behind,
left below in its canyon.