Danger on Peaks Read Online Free Page B

tiles
    neatly piled on unfinished gables,
    turn onto Twin Cities Road, then Franklin Road
    pull in by the sweet little almost-wild Cosumnes River
    right where the Mokulumne meets it,
    (
umne
a Miwok suffix meaning river)
    walking out on a levee trail through cattail, tule, button-brush,
    small valley oaks, algae on the streams. Hardly any birds.
    Lost Slough, across the road, out on the boardwalk
    â€” can’t see much, the tules all too tall. The freeway roar,
    four sandhill cranes feeding, necks down, pacing slow.
    Then west on Twin Cities Road til we hit the river.
    Into Locke, park, walk the crowded Second Street
    all the tippy buildings’ second stories leaning out,
    gleaming bikes — huge BMW with exotic control panel
    eat at the Locke Gardens Chinese place, Ko Un’s choice,
    endless tape loop some dumb music, at the next table one white couple,
    a guy with a beard; at another a single black woman
    with two little round headed clearly super-sharp boys.
    Out and down to Walnut Grove til we find road J-11 going east
    over a slough or two then south on Staten Island Road. It’s straight,
    the fields all flat and lots of signs that say
    no trespassing, no camping, no hunting, stay off the levee.
    Driving along, don’t see much, I had hoped, but about to give up.
    Make a turn around and stand on the shoulder, glass the field:
    flat farmland — fallow — flooded with water —
    full of birds. Scanning the farther sections
    hundreds of sandhill cranes are pacing — then,
    those gurgling sandhill crane calls are coming out of the sky
    in threes, twos, fives, from all directions,
    circling, counter-spinning, higher and lower,
    big silver bodies, long necks, dab of red on the head,
    chaotic, leaderless, harmonic, playful — what are they doing?
    Splendidly nowhere thousands

    And back to Davis, forty miles, forty minutes
    shivering to remember            what’s going on
    just a few miles west of the 5:
    in the wetlands, in the ongoing elder          what you might call,
    really
the real,     world.

    (October 2001, Cosumnes and Staten Island)

A NKLE-DEEP IN A SHES

    Ankle-deep gray muddy ash         sticky after rain
    walking wet burnt forest floor
    (one-armed mechanic working on a trailer-mounted generator
    a little barbecue by a parked trailer,
    grilling steak after ten hours checking out the diesels)
    â€” we’re clumping through slippery ashes to a sugar pine
    â€” a planner from a private timber company
    a fire expert from the State, a woman County Supervisor
    a former Forest Service line officer, the regional District Ranger,
    a businessman-scientist who managed early retirement and does good
    deeds,
    the superintendent of the county schools,
    & the supervisor of one of the most productive public forests in the
    country —
    pretty high back in the mountains
    after a long hot summer wildfire and a week of rain.
    Drove here through miles of standing dead trees
    gazed across the mountain valley,
    the sweep of black snags with no needles,
    stands of snags with burnt needles dangling,
    patches of green trees that still look live.
    They say the duff layers glowed for weeks as the fire sank down.
    This noble sugar pine we came to see is green
    seven feet dbh, “diameter at breast height”
    first limb a hundred feet above.
    The District Ranger chips four little notches
    round the trunkbase, just above the ashy dust:
    cambium layer dry and brown
    cooked by the slow duff burn.
    He says, “Likely die in three more years
    but we will let it stand.”
    I circumambulate it and invoke, “Good luck — long life —
    Sarvamangalam
— I hope you prove him wrong”
    pacing charred twigs crisscrossed on the ground.

    (Field trip to the aftermath of the Star Fire, 5 November 2001)

W INTER A LMOND

    Tree over and down
    its root-rot clear to the