Canyon Moon Quotes

A doctor once told me I feel too much. I said, so does god. that’s why you can see the grand canyon from the moon.

Have you ever stood where a stream spills into a river? The two become one. They laugh over the stones together, twist through the sharp canyons together, plunge down the waterfalls together. It is the same when a man and woman love one another. It is not always a pleasant thing, but when it happens, a man has little to say about it. Women, like streams, can be smooth one minute and make a man feel like he’s swimming through white water the next.

In a society that is essentially designed to organize, direct, and gratify mass impulses, what is there to minister to the silent zones of man as an individual? Religion? Art? Nature? No, the church has turned religion into standardized public spectacle, and the museum has done the same for art. The Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls have been looked at so much that they've become effete, sucked empty by too many stupid eyes. What is there to minister to the silent zones of man as an individual? How about a cold chicken bone on a paper plate at midnight, how about a lurid lipstick lengthening or shortening at your command, how about a Styrofoam nest abandoned by a 'bird' you've never known, how about a pair of windshield wipers pursuing one another futilely while you drive home alone through a downpour, how about something beneath a seat touched by your shoe at the movies, how about worn pencils, cute forks, fat little radios, boxes of bow ties, and bubbles on the side of a bathtub? Yes, these are the things, these kite strings and olive oil cans and Valentine hearts stuffed with nougat, that form the bond between the autistic vision and the experiential world, it is to show these things in their true mysterious light that is the purpose of the moon.

The conspicuous fault of the Jeffersonian Party, like the personal fault of Senator Trowbridge, was that it represented integrity and reason, in a year when the electorate hungered for frisky emotions, for the peppery sensations associated, usually, not with monetary systems and taxation rates but with baptism by immersion in the creek, young love under the elms, straight whisky, angelic orchestras heard soaring down from the full moon, fear of death when an automobile teeters above a canyon, thirst in a desert and quenching it with spring water—all the primitive sensations which they thought they found in the screaming of Buzz Windrip.

The joy of small that makes life large. Hadn't I personally experienced it before too, that vantage point that gave a sense of smallness before grandeur? At the tip of the Grand Canyon, peering into the carved earth, the vastness of the hewn and many-hued chasm. A late June night peering into the expanse of heavens nailed up with the named and known stars. A moon field. I hardly dare brush the limitlessness with my vaporous humanity. But the irony: Don't I often desperately want to wriggle free of the confines of a small life? Yet when I stand before immensity that heightens my smallness - I have never felt sadness. Only burgeoning wonder.

when the streets are deserted and a cold rind of moon floats over the canyons of the city.

When the cities are gone, he thought, and all the ruckus has died away, when sunflowers push up through the concrete and asphalt of the forgotten interstate freeways, when the Kremlin and the Pentagon are turned into nursing homes for generals, presidents and other such shitheads, when the glass-aluminum skyscraper tombs of Phoenix Arizona barely show above the sand dunes, why then, why then, why then by God maybe free men and wild women on horses, free women and wild men, can roam the sagebrush canyonlands in freedom—goddammit!—herding the feral cattle into box canyons, and gorge on bloody meat and bleeding fucking internal organs, and dance all night to the music of fiddles! banjos! steel guitars! by the light of a reborn moon!—by God, yes! Until, he reflected soberly, and bitterly, and sadly, until the next age of ice and iron comes down, and the engineers and the farmers

Another To Echo” How beautiful you must be to have been able to lead me this far with only the sound of your going away heard once at a time and then remembered in silence when the time was gone you whom I have never seen o forever invisible one whom I have never mistaken for another voice nor hesitated to follow beyond precept and prudence over seas and deserts you incomparable one for whom the waters fall and the winds search and the words were made listening — W.S. Merwin, The Moon Before Morning (Copper Canyon Press, 2014)

A doctor once told me I feel too much. I said, “So does God. That’s why you can see the Grand Canyon from the moon.

I like to sell this stuff when the rest of the vendors have long since gone home, when the streets are deserted and a cold rind of moon floats over the canyons of the city.

— If love wants you; if you’ve been melted down to stars, you will love with lungs and gills, with warm blood and cold. With feathers and scales. Under the hot gloom of the forest canopy you’ll want to breathe with the spiral calls of birds, while your lashing tail still gropes for the waes. You’ll try to haul your weight from simple sea to gravity of land. Caught by the tide, in the snail-slip of your own path, for moments suffocating in both water and air. If love wants you, suddently your past is obsolete science. Old maps, disproved theories, a diorama. The moment our bodies are set to spring open. The immanence that reassembles matter passes through us then disperses into time and place: the spasm of fur stroked upright; shocked electrons. The mother who hears her child crying upstairs and suddenly feels her dress wet with milk. Among black branches, oyster-coloured fog tongues every corner of loneliness we never knew before we were loved there, the places left fallow when we’re born, waiting for experience to find its way into us. The night crossing, on deck in the dark car. On the beach wehre night reshaped your face. In the lava fields, carbon turned to carpet, moss like velvet spread over splintered forms. The instant spray freezes in air above the falls, a gasp of ice. We rise, hearing our names called home through salmon-blue dusk, the royal moon an escutcheon on the shield of sky. The current that passes through us, radio waves, electric lick. The billions of photons that pass through film emulsion every second, the single submicroscopic crystal struck that becomes the phograph. We look and suddenly the world looks back. A jagged tube of ions pins us to the sky. — But if, like starlings, we continue to navigate by the rear-view mirror of the moon; if we continue to reach both for salt and for the sweet white nibs of grass growing closest to earth; if, in the autumn bog red with sedge we’re also driving through the canyon at night, all around us the hidden glow of limestone erased by darkness; if still we sish we’d waited for morning, we will know ourselves nowhere. Not in the mirrors of waves or in the corrading stream, not in the wavering glass of an apartment building, not in the looming light of night lobbies or on the rainy deck. Not in the autumn kitchen or in the motel where we watched meteors from our bed while your slow film, the shutter open, turned stars to rain. We will become indigestible. Afraid of choking on fur and armour, animals will refuse the divided longings in our foreing blue flesh. — In your hands, all you’ve lost, all you’ve touched. In the angle of your head, every vow and broken vow. In your skin, every time you were disregarded, every time you were received. Sundered, drowsed. A seeded field, mossy cleft, tidal pool, milky stem. The branch that’s released when the bird lifts or lands. In a summer kitchen. On a white winter morning, sunlight across the bed.

Terraforming Mars is a primary goal for the twenty-second century. But scientists are looking beyond Mars as well. The most exciting prospects may be the moons of the gas giants, including Europa, a moon of Jupiter, and Titan, a moon of Saturn. The moons of gas giants were once thought to be barren hunks of rock that were all alike, but they are now seen as unique wonderlands, each with its own array of geysers, oceans, canyons, and atmospheric lights. These moons are now being eyed as future habitats for human life.

...I looked out the window at walls of moonlit cloud rising beside us as though we we were at the bottom of some, gray and ivory canyon, hung above the moon-smashed sea... But, with whatever hindsight, I suppose the reason that I want to close on a consideration of these words is that the moon-solid progress through high, drifting cumulus is — read them again — at the very opposite of what we perceive on a liquid's tilting and untilting top, and so becomes the other privileged pole among the images of this study, this essay, this memoir. Or perhaps, as it is only a clause whose syntactic place has been questioned by my own unscholarly researches, I merely want to fix it before it vanishes like water, like light, like the play between them we only suggest, but never master, with the word motion.

You came up this gut-wrenching road yesterday by yourself?" Cassie exclaimed. "You deserve a good cuffing just for driving this goat path on your own." "It's not so bad once you get used to dodging the ruts." "You've got some nerve calling these canyons ruts." "Cassandra Hudson, where is your sense of adventure?" "I dropped it off going over that last rut-crossing when only two wheels were on the ground." "Those ones are a bit exhilarating, aren't they?" Alexandra shot Cassie a quick look and wink.  "Keep your eyes on the road!" "What road?" "Exactly!

I REMEMBER the day the Aleut ship came to our island. At first it seemed like a small shell afloat on the sea. Then it grew larger and was a gull with folded wings. At last in the rising sun it became what it really was—a red ship with two red sails. My brother and I had gone to the head of a canyon that winds down to a little harbor which is called Coral Cove. We had gone to gather roots that grow there in the spring. My brother Ramo was only a little boy half my age, which was twelve. He was small for one who had lived so many suns and moons, but quick as a cricket. Also foolish as a cricket when he was excited. For this reason and because I wanted him to help me gather roots and not go running off, I said nothing about the shell I saw or the gull with folded wings. I went on digging in the brush with my pointed stick as though nothing at all were happening on the sea. Even when I knew for sure that the gull was a ship with two red sails. But Ramo’s eyes missed little in the world. They were black like a lizard’s and very large and, like the eyes of a lizard, could sometimes look sleepy. This was the time when they saw the most. This was the way they looked now. They were half-closed, like those of a lizard lying on a rock about to flick out its tongue to catch a fly. “The sea is smooth,” Ramo said. “It is a flat stone without any scratches.” My brother liked to pretend that one thing was another. “The sea is not a stone without scratches,” I said. “It is water and no waves.” “To me it is a blue stone,” he said. “And far away on the edge of it is a small cloud which sits on the stone.” “Clouds do not sit on stones. On blue ones or black ones or any kind of stones.” “This one does.” “Not on the sea,” I said. “Dolphins sit there, and gulls, and cormorants, and otter, and whales too, but not clouds.” “It is a whale, maybe.” Ramo was standing on one foot and then the other, watching the ship coming, which he did not know was a ship because he had never seen one. I had never seen one either, but I knew how they looked because I had been told. “While you gaze at the sea,” I said, “I dig roots. And it is I who will eat them and you who will not.” Ramo began to punch at the earth with his stick, but as the ship came closer, its sails showing red through the morning mist, he kept watching it, acting all the time as if he were not. “Have you ever seen a red whale?” he asked. “Yes,” I said, though I never had. “Those I have seen are gray.” “You are very young and have not seen everything that swims in the world.” Ramo picked up a root and was about to drop it into the basket. Suddenly his mouth opened wide and then closed again. “A canoe!” he cried. “A great one, bigger than all of our canoes together. And red!” A canoe or a ship, it did not matter to Ramo. In the very next breath he tossed the root in the air and was gone, crashing through the brush, shouting as he went. I kept on gathering roots, but my hands trembled as I dug in the earth, for I was more excited than my brother. I knew that it was a ship there on the

The creek at night under the moon was just enough like the creek in daylight to be reassuring. There was the deadfall spruce that sieved the current with skeleton branches, churning a line of pale foam. There was the long pool above, a dark mirror of tree shadows and beacon moon. There were the gravel bars, chalky, shaped to the banks and swept into low moraines that divided the water. There the sky, softened as if by a thin fog of moonlight, filling the canyon. For a moment I forgot my preoccupation with the dark and drove up the road with that awe I felt before certain paintings in certain museums, the awe in which I disappeared.

Late at night, when she and Ferro had waited on the ridge or had ridden on horseback into the steep canyons to wait for a drop, she had watched the meteor showers. They would begin shortly after midnight and continue until two A. M. On those nights it seemed as if the sky had overtaken the earth and was closing over it, so that the volcanic rocks and soil themselves reflected light like the surface of the moon. At those moments she could not think of any other place on the earth that she would rather be. She thought about the old ones and Yoeme and how they watched the sky relentlessly, translating sudden bursts of light into lengthy messages concerning the future and the past.

Then he said something about how L.A. is dust and exhaust and the hot, dry wind that sets your nerves on edge and pushes fire up the hillsides in ragged lines like tears in the paper that separates us from hell, and it’s towering clouds of smoke, and it’s sunshine that won’t let up and cool ocean fog that gets unrolled at night over the whole basin like a clean white hospital sheet and peeled back again in the morning. It’s a crescent moon in a sky bruised green after the sunset has beaten the shit out of it. It’s a lazy hammock moon rising over power lines, over the skeletal silhouettes of pylons, over shaggy cypress trees and the spiky black lionfish shapes of palm-tree crowns on too-skinny trunks. It’s the Big One that’s coming to turn the city to rubble and set the rubble on fire but not today, hopefully not today. It’s the obviousness of pointing out that the freeway looks like a ruby bracelet stretched alongside a diamond one, looks like a river of lava flowing counter to a river of champagne bubbles. People talk about the sprawl, and, yeah, the city is a drunk, laughing bitch sprawled across the flats in a spangled dress, legs kicked up the canyons, skirt spread over the hills, and she’s shimmering, vibrating, ticklish with light. Don’t buy a star map. Don’t go driving around gawking because you’re already there, man. You’re in it. It’s all one big map of the stars.

The True-Blue American" Jeremiah Dickson was a true-blue American, For he was a little boy who understood America, for he felt that he must Think about everything; because that’s all there is to think about, Knowing immediately the intimacy of truth and comedy, Knowing intuitively how a sense of humor was a necessity For one and for all who live in America. Thus, natively, and Naturally when on an April Sunday in an ice cream parlor Jeremiah Was requested to choose between a chocolate sundae and a banana split He answered unhesitatingly, having no need to think of it Being a true-blue American, determined to continue as he began: Rejecting the either-or of Kierkegaard, and many another European; Refusing to accept alternatives, refusing to believe the choice of between; Rejecting selection; denying dilemma; electing absolute affirmation: knowing in his breast The infinite and the gold Of the endless frontier, the deathless West. “Both: I will have them both!” declared this true-blue American In Cambridge, Massachusetts, on an April Sunday, instructed By the great department stores, by the Five-and-Ten, Taught by Christmas, by the circus, by the vulgarity and grandeur of Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, Tutored by the grandeur, vulgarity, and infinite appetite gratified and Shining in the darkness, of the light On Saturdays at the double bills of the moon pictures, The consummation of the advertisements of the imagination of the light Which is as it was—the infinite belief in infinite hope—of Columbus, Barnum, Edison, and Jeremiah Dickson.

Near the Mexican border, rocky canyons cleave the mountains, laying them aside like broken wedges of gray cheese furred with a dark mold of pinon and juniper that sheds hard shadows on moon glazed stone, etched lithographs in gray and black, taupe and silver. Beneath feathery chamisa a rattlesnake flicks his tongue, following a scent. Along a precarious rock ledge a ring-tailed cat strolls, nose snuffling the cracks. At the base of the stone a peccary trots along familiar foot trails, toward the toes of a higher cliff where a seeping spring gathers in a rocky goblet. In the desert, sounds are dry and rattling: pebbles toed into cracks, hoofs tac-tacking on stone, the serpent rattle warning the wild pig to veer away, which she does with a grunt to the tribe behind her. From the rocky scarp the ring-tailed cat hears the whole population of the desert pass about its business in the canyon below.

Imagine standing on the very edge of the Grand Canyon. The bloodred gorge stretches as far as you can see in every direction. The canyon floor drops precipitously below your feet. You feel dizzy and step back from the edge. Hawks circle through rock crevasses so barren and stripped of vegetation you could as well be on the moon. You are amazed. You are humbled. You feel elevated. This is awe. According to psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, awe is the sense of wonder and amazement that occurs when someone is inspired by great knowledge, beauty, sublimity, or might. It’s the experience of confronting something greater than yourself. Awe expands one’s frame of reference and drives self-transcendence. It encompasses admiration and inspiration and can be evoked by everything from great works of art or music to religious transformations, from breathtaking natural landscapes to human feats of daring and discovery.

I like rainbows. We came back down to the meadow near the steaming terrace and sat in the river, just where one of the bigger hot streams poured into the cold water of the Ferris Fork. It is illegal – not to say suicidal – to bathe in any of the thermal features of the park. But when those features empty into the river, at what is called a hot pot, swimming and soaking are perfectly acceptable. So we were soaking off our long walk, talking about our favorite waterfalls, and discussing rainbows when it occurred to us that the moon was full. There wasn’t a hint of foul weather. And if you had a clear sky and a waterfall facing in just the right direction… Over the course of a couple of days we hked back down the canyon to the Boundary Creek Trail and followed it to Dunanda Falls, which is only about eight miles from the ranger station at the entrance to the park. Dunanda is a 150-foot-high plunge facing generally south, so that in the afternoons reliable rainbows dance over the rocks at its base. It is the archetype of all western waterfalls. Dunenda is an Indian name; in Shoshone it means “straight down,” which is a pretty good description of the plunge. ... …We had to walk three miles back toward the ranger station and our assigned campsite. We planned to set up our tents, eat, hang our food, and walk back to Dunanda Falls in the dark, using headlamps. We could be there by ten or eleven. At that time the full moon would clear the east ridge of the downriver canyon and would be shining directly on the fall. Walking at night is never a happy proposition, and this particular evening stroll involved five stream crossings, mostly on old logs, and took a lot longer than we’d anticipated. Still, we beat the moon to the fall. Most of us took up residence in one or another of the hot pots. Presently the moon, like a floodlight, rose over the canyon rim. The falling water took on a silver tinge, and the rock wall, which had looked gold under the sun, was now a slick black so the contrast of water and rock was incomparably stark. The pools below the lip of the fall were glowing, as from within, with a pale blue light. And then it started at the base of the fall: just a diagonal line in the spray that ran from the lower east to the upper west side of the wall. “It’s going to happen,” I told Kara, who was sitting beside me in one of the hot pots. Where falling water hit the rock at the base of the fall and exploded upward in vapor, the light was very bright. It concentrated itself in a shining ball. The diagonal line was above and slowly began to bend until, in the fullness of time (ten minutes, maybe), it formed a perfectly symmetrical bow, shining silver blue under the moon. The color was vaguely electrical. Kara said she could see colors in the moonbow, and when I looked very hard, I thought I could make out a faint line of reddish orange above, and some deep violet at the bottom. Both colors were very pale, flickering, like bad florescent light. In any case, it was exhilarating, the experience of a lifetime: an entirely perfect moonbow, silver and iridescent, all shining and spectral there at the base of Dunanda Falls. The hot pot itself was a luxury, and I considered myself a pretty swell fellow, doing all this for the sanity of city dwellers, who need such things more than anyone else. I even thought of naming the moonbow: Cahill’s Luminescence. Something like that. Otherwise, someone else might take credit for it.

To Anita Pollitzer Canyon, Texas 11 September 1916 Tonight I walked into the sunset — to mail some letters — the whole sky — and there is so much of it out here — was just blazing — and grey blue clouds were rioting all through the hotness of it — and the ugly little buildings and windmills looked great against it. But some way or other I didn't seem to like the redness much so after I mailed the letters I walked home — and kept on walking — The Eastern sky was all grey blue — bunches of clouds — different kinds of clouds — sticking around everywhere and the whole thing — lit up — first in one place — then in another with flashes of lightning — sometimes just sheet lightning — and sometimes sheet lightning with a sharp bright zigzag flashing across it —. I walked out past the last house — past the last locust tree — and sat on the fence for a long time — looking — just looking at the lightning — you see there was nothing but sky and flat prairie land — land that seems more like the ocean than anything else I know — There was a wonderful moon — Well I just sat there and had a great time all by myself — Not even many night noises — just the wind — I wondered what you are doing — It is absurd the way I love this country — Then when I came back — it was funny — roads just shoot across blocks anywhere — all the houses looked alike — and I almost got lost — I had to laugh at myself — I couldnt tell which house was home — I am loving the plains more than ever it seems — and the SKY — Anita you have never seen SKY — it is wonderful — Pat.

Toward an Organic Philosophy SPRING, COAST RANGE The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless, The circle of white ash widens around it. I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller. Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw; The moon has come before them, the light Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees. It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish, Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons; The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall. There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now. There were sheep here after the farm, and fire Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch, The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat And plate the surface like scales. Twenty years ago the spreading gully Toppled the big oak over onto the house. Now there is nothing left but the foundations Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge, Six lonely, ominous fenceposts; The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge Over the deep waterless creek bed; The hills are covered with wild oats Dry and white by midsummer. I walk in the random survivals of the orchard. In a patch of moonlight a mole Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein; Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean; Leo crouches under the zenith. There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees. The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible. As the wind dies down their fragrance Clusters around them like thick smoke. All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight They are silent and immaculate. SPRING, SIERRA NEVADA Once more golden Scorpio glows over the col Above Deadman Canyon, orderly and brilliant, Like an inspiration in the brain of Archimedes. I have seen its light over the warm sea, Over the coconut beaches, phosphorescent and pulsing; And the living light in the water Shivering away from the swimming hand, Creeping against the lips, filling the floating hair. Here where the glaciers have been and the snow stays late, The stone is clean as light, the light steady as stone. The relationship of stone, ice and stars is systematic and enduring: Novelty emerges after centuries, a rock spalls from the cliffs, The glacier contracts and turns grayer, The stream cuts new sinuosities in the meadow, The sun moves through space and the earth with it, The stars change places. The snow has lasted longer this year, Than anyone can remember. The lowest meadow is a lake, The next two are snowfields, the pass is covered with snow, Only the steepest rocks are bare. Between the pass And the last meadow the snowfield gapes for a hundred feet, In a narrow blue chasm through which a waterfall drops, Spangled with sunset at the top, black and muscular Where it disappears again in the snow. The world is filled with hidden running water That pounds in the ears like ether; The granite needles rise from the snow, pale as steel; Above the copper mine the cliff is blood red, The white snow breaks at the edge of it; The sky comes close to my eyes like the blue eyes Of someone kissed in sleep. I descend to camp, To the young, sticky, wrinkled aspen leaves, To the first violets and wild cyclamen, And cook supper in the blue twilight. All night deer pass over the snow on sharp hooves, In the darkness their cold muzzles find the new grass At the edge of the snow.

Thrasher" They were hiding behind hay bales, They were planting in the full moon They had given all they had for something new But the light of day was on them, They could see the thrashers coming And the water shone like diamonds in the dew. And I was just getting up, hit the road before it's light Trying to catch an hour on the sun When I saw those thrashers rolling by, Looking more than two lanes wide I was feelin' like my day had just begun. Where the eagle glides ascending There's an ancient river bending Down the timeless gorge of changes Where sleeplessness awaits I searched out my companions, Who were lost in crystal canyons When the aimless blade of science Slashed the pearly gates. It was then I knew I'd had enough, Burned my credit card for fuel Headed out to where the pavement turns to sand With a one-way ticket to the land of truth And my suitcase in my hand How I lost my friends I still don't understand. They had the best selection, They were poisoned with protection There was nothing that they needed, Nothing left to find They were lost in rock formations Or became park bench mutations On the sidewalks and in the stations They were waiting, waiting. So I got bored and left them there, They were just deadweight to me Better down the road without that load Brings back the time when I was eight or nine I was watchin' my mama's T.V., It was that great Grand Canyon rescue episode. Where the vulture glides descending On an asphalt highway bending Thru libraries and museums, galaxies and stars Down the windy halls of friendship To the rose clipped by the bullwhip The motel of lost companions Waits with heated pool and bar. But me I'm not stopping there, Got my own row left to hoe Just another line in the field of time When the thrasher comes, I'll be stuck in the sun Like the dinosaurs in shrines But I'll know the time has come To give what's mine. Neil Young, Rust Never Sleeps (1979)

FALL, SIERRA NEVADA This morning the hermit thrush was absent at breakfast, His place was taken by a family of chickadees; At noon a flock of humming birds passed south, Whirling in the wind up over the saddle between Ritter and Banner, following the migration lane Of the Sierra crest southward to Guatemala. All day cloud shadows have moved over the face of the mountain, The shadow of a golden eagle weaving between them Over the face of the glacier. At sunset the half-moon rides on the bent back of the Scorpion, The Great Bear kneels on the mountain. Ten degrees below the moon Venus sets in the haze arising from the Great Valley. Jupiter, in opposition to the sun, rises in the alpenglow Between the burnt peaks. The ventriloquial belling Of an owl mingles with the bells of the waterfall. Now there is distant thunder on the east wind. The east face of the mountain above me Is lit with far off lightnings and the sky Above the pass blazes momentarily like an aurora. It is storming in the White Mountains, On the arid fourteen-thousand-foot peaks; Rain is falling on the narrow gray ranges And dark sedge meadows and white salt flats of Nevada. Just before moonset a small dense cumulus cloud, Gleaming like a grape cluster of metal, Moves over the Sierra crest and grows down the westward slope. Frost, the color and quality of the cloud, Lies over all the marsh below my campsite. The wiry clumps of dwarfed whitebark pines Are smoky and indistinct in the moonlight, Only their shadows are really visible. The lake is immobile and holds the stars And the peaks deep in itself without a quiver. In the shallows the geometrical tendrils of ice Spread their wonderful mathematics in silence. All night the eyes of deer shine for an instant As they cross the radius of my firelight. In the morning the trail will look like a sheep driveway, All the tracks will point down to the lower canyon. “Thus,” says Tyndall, “the concerns of this little place Are changed and fashioned by the obliquity of the earth’s axis, The chain of dependence which runs through creation, And links the roll of a planet alike with the interests Of marmots and of men.

The buffalo will return," Kicking Wolf said. "They have only gone to the north for a while. The buffalo have always returned." "You are a fool," Buffalo Hump said. "The buffalo won't return, because they are dead. The whites have killed them. When you go north you will only find their bones." "The whites have killed many, but not all," Kicking Wolf insisted. "They have only gone to the Missouri River to live. When beaten the whites back we have they will return." But, as he was speaking, Kicking Wolf suddenly lost heart. He realized that Buffalo Hump was right, and that the words he had just spoken were the words of a fool. The Comanches were not beating the whites, and they were not going to beat them. Only their own band and three or four others were still free Comanches. The bands that were free were the bands that could survive on the least, those who would eat small animals and dig roots from the earth. Already the bluecoat soldiers had come back to Texas and begun to fill up the old forts, places they had abandoned while they fought one another. Even if all the free tribes banded together there would not be enough warriors to defeat the bluecoat soldiers. With the buffalo gone so far north, the white soldiers had only to drive them farther and farther into the llano, until they starved or gave up. "The whites are not foolish," Buffalo Hump said. "They know that it is easier to kill a buffalo than it is to kill one of us. They know that if they kill all the buffalo we will starve – then they won't have to fight us. Those who don't want to starve will have to go where the whites want to put them." The two men sat in silence for a while. Some young men were racing their horses a little farther down the canyon. Kicking Wolf usually took a keen interest in such contests. He wanted to know which horses were fastest. But today he didn't care. He felt too sad. "The medicine men are deceiving the young warriors when they tell them the buffalo will return," Buffalo Hump said. "If any buffalo come back they will only be ghost buffalo. Their ghosts might return because they remember these lands. But that will not help us. We cannot eat their ghosts.

Long Afternoon Light" Small roads written in sleep in the foothills how long ago and I believed you were lost with the bronze then deepening in the light and the shy moss turning to itself holding its own brightness above the badger’s path while a single crow sailed west without a sound we trust without giving it a thoughtmeredith rose that we will always see it as we see it once and that what we know is only a moment of what is ours and will stay we believe it as the moment slips away as lengthening shadows merge in the valley and a window kindles there like a first star what we see again comes to us in secret — W.S. Merwin, The Moon Before Morning (Copper Canyon Press, 2014)

Name’s Clay Tahoma, originally from Flagstaff and the Navajo Nation. Lately from L.A. I’m up here to work with an old friend, Nathaniel Jensen.” Jack’s face took light at that. “Nate’s a friend of mine, too! Pleasure to meet you.” Jack introduced Clay to some other men who were standing around—a guy named John, who they called Preacher; Paul, who owned the flatbed and forklift; Dan Brady, who was Paul’s foreman; and Noah, the minister whose truck slipped off the road. Noah smiled sheepishly as he shook Clay’s hand. No one seemed to react to the sight of a Native American with a ponytail that reached past his waist and an eagle feather in his hat. And right at that moment

Stars, Sam. We mucked it. I mean, I mucked it. And not just for us. Yet I recall pure joy: your bike hot between my legs, your arms locked ’round my waist. I recall poor Second’s chiding before I blinked it off. I recall laughter and all of those soldiers from someone else’s war standing on that terrace singing yet another Terran victory rag. You told me later that you didn’t know I’d make a run at the canyon wall ’til I torqued it, thumbing your bike’s twin throttles hard enough to singe our legs as the acceleration turned into an increasing roar. By the time we hit fifty, I couldn’t even hear you yelling at me to stop over the wind. I didn’t think you were serious. We’d climbed that mesa in daylight when we were younger, smaller, bendier. We’d done it with safety rails and belts, with hoverbikes that floated back down like carnival balloons when we failed; we’d done it with our parents cheering and a Grass Priest standing watch in case we needed healing. That run should’ve been a lark, Sam. But the night was dark as space, and our planet has no moon. You grabbed hard as I pulled the yoke. The engines screamed. I meant to pull up, climb that mesa vertically—see if we could rocket to the top before I gunned again like we’d done a hundred times as kids. But I timed it too late. I saw the mesa wall in our headlamps, and then everything went black. The next thing I recall is waking up on the Unity ship Ascendant with Ken’ri Mureen of Glos smiling down at me. Those big round eyes in her lovely, lying face. I thought I’d surely killed you, Sam, but Mureen swore you were fine. Mureen swore removing my Second was only temporary—swore surgery would fix the soup the crash had made of my brain. She made me sign forms, and then Ma came in with pastries. I still didn’t believe you’d made it out, but Ma swore it too. You know the gist after that—mostly—but there’s a lot I never told—

Brit: OH MY GOD. Tyler. It’s a woman, isn’t it? You’re dating someone! Who is she? What’s her name? When do we get to meet her? Are you bringing her home for Christmas? Is she a bunny, or is she someone else? Wait! Wait! Are you dating one of your teammates’ sisters? OH MY GOD. You’re dating the coach’s daughter and you’re trying to make a good impression, aren’t you? Tyler: *picture of a skinny white guy with big glasses* Haha! Psych. I stole this phone. This is me. I’m Bernard. You guys sound like fun. Will you adopt me? I’ll send you my real number. Dad: That’s a funny Grand Canyon of a vagina, Tyler, my favorite son, god of the sun and moon, he who bangs best. Dad: Grand Canyon of a vagina. Dad: WHO CHANGED MY PHONE TO INSULT YOUR YO-YO MA’S SEX TAPE? Dad: BEEEEEEEEEEEP. Keely: OMG, I’m wheezing. Allie: My favorite part of this is that Tyler’s going to get blamed for changing the autocorrect setting in Dad’s phone. Again. Brit: I can’t believe no one changed “joke” in his phone before now. Dad: I CAN STILL SEE YOUR MESSAGES.

A Martian Midsummer Night's Dream by Stewart Stafford On Mars's pristine ruddy hue, we tread, Above, stars as adamantine algae spread. Phobos and Deimos, twin moons fair, Primeval river beds form a spidery lair. Dust storms tower above dried-up seas, A vast red alien desert, shorn of trees. Oberon and Titania's gamesmanship spite, Quarrel deep in the Martian summer night. Puckish antics stir starry lovers' hearts true, As spells and dreams on tangled paths pursue. On Olympus Mons, Vulcan gods watch and scheme, Echoes of old wars fuelling plans extreme; A Wellsian tome of the tripod Martian foe, Of invasive seeds, spread to Earth to sow. In Valles Marineris, where canyons stretch away, Dead of night gives birth to coppery day. A frontier vision, both opaque and diamond clear, Magical flights of fancy on an untamed sphere. © 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.

The Prophecy From the place where the sun rises, there will come to the People a great warrior who will stand tall above his brothers and see far into the great beyond with eyes like the midnight sky. This Comanche shall carry the sign of the wolf upon his shield, yet none shall call him chief. To his people shall come much sadness, and the rivers will run red with the blood of his nation. Mountains of white bones will mark where the mighty buffalo once grazed. In the sky, black smoke will carry away the death cries of helpless women and children. He will make big talk against the White-Eyes and fierce war, but the battles shall stretch before him with no horizon. When his hatred for the White-Eyes is hot like the summer sun and cold like the winter snow, there will come to him a gentle maiden from tosi tivo land. Though her voice will have been silenced by great sorrow, her eyes shall speak into his of a morning with new beginnings. She will be golden like the new day, with skin as white as the night moon, hair like rippling honey, and eyes like the summer sky. The People will call her the Little Wise One. The Comanche will raise his blade to slay her, but honor will stay his hand. She will divide his Comanche heart, so his hate that burns hot like the sun will make war with his hate that is cold like the winter snow, and the hate shall melt and flow out of him to some faraway place he cannot find. Just as the dawn streaks the night sky, he will chase the shadows form her heart and return her voice to her. When this is done, the warrior and his maiden shall walk together to a high place on the night of the Comanche moon. He will stand on the land of the Comanche, she on the land of the tosi tivo. Between them will be a great canyon that runs high with blood. The warrior will reach across the canyon to his maiden, and she will take his hand. Together they will travel a great distance into the west lands, where they will give birth to a new tomorrow and a new nation where the Comanche and the tosi tivo will live as one forever.

And to say that the citizens of those rival domains did not always see eye to eye was a bit of an understatement, because each represented the antithesis of the other’s deepest values. To the engineers and the technicians who belonged to the world of the dam, Glen was no dead monolith but, rather, a living and breathing thing, a creature that pulsed with energy and dynamism. Perhaps even more important, the dam was also a triumphant capstone of human ingenuity, the culmination of a civil-engineering lineage that had seen its first florescence in the irrigation canals of ancient Mesopotamia and China, then shot like a bold arrow through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Industrial Revolution to reach its zenith here in the sun-scorched wastelands of the American Southwest. Glen embodied the glittering inspiration and the tenacious drive of the American century—a spirit that in other contexts had been responsible for harnessing the atom and putting men on the moon. As impressive as those other accomplishments may have been, nothing excelled the nobility of transforming one of the harshest deserts on earth into a vibrant garden. In the minds of its engineers and its managers, Glen affirmed everything that was right about America. To Kenton Grua and the river folk who inhabited the world of the canyon, however, the dam was an offense against nature. Thanks to Glen and a host of similar Reclamation projects along the Colorado, one of the greatest rivers in the West, had been reduced to little more than a giant plumbing system, a network of pipes and faucets and catchment tubs whose chief purpose lay in the dubious goal of bringing golf courses to Phoenix, swimming pools to Tucson, and air-conditioned shopping malls to Vegas. A magnificent waterway had been sacrificed on the altar of a technology that enabled people to prosper without limits, without balance, without any connection to the environment in which they lived—and in the process, fostered the delusion that the desert had been conquered. But in the eyes of the river folk, even that wasn’t the real cost. To

It is good I came, my father. You have the gift. Already my heart is lighter.” Many Horses ran his tongue over his own jagged teeth, nodding thoughtfully. “I am proud of all my children,” he said huskily. “Of you, most of all. It is a strange thing, my son, but when a man takes a babe into his arms and claims him as son, it becomes a truth within his heart. The blood in his veins is as nothing. The color of his eyes is as nothing. When you took your first step, it was toward my outstretched hand. That was everything. White Eyes or Comanche, you were my son. I would have killed any man who said you weren’t.” Tears burned behind Hunter’s eyes. “What are you saying, my father?” “I am saying that you must walk the path of your own heart. You came here angry because your yellow-hair is angry, yes? If you love her, it will be the same when she is sad, when she is happy. Have you ever stood where a stream spills into a river? The two become one. They laugh over the stones together, twist through the sharp canyons together, plunge down the waterfalls together. It is the same when a man and woman love one another. It is not always a pleasant thing, but when it happens, a man has little to say about it. Women, like streams, can be smooth one minute and make a man feel like he’s swimming through white water the next.” Hunter leaned forward over his knees, brandishing the poker under his father’s blackened nose. “I don’t understand her. I treat her kindly, yet she still shakes with fear at the thought of being one with me. I try to make her happy and make her angry instead.” Many Horses lifted an eyebrow. “Fear is not like a layer of dust on a tree leaf that washes away in a gentle rain. Give her time. Be her good friend, first--then become her lover. As for making a woman happy, you succeed sometimes, you fail sometimes. That is the way of it.

You came here angry because your yellow-hair is angry, yes? If you love her, it will be the same when she is sad, when she is happy. Have you ever stood where a stream spills into a river? The two become one. They laugh over the stones together, twist through the sharp canyons together, plunge down the waterfalls together. It is the same when a man and woman love one another. It is not always a pleasant thing, but when it happens, a man has little to say about it. Women, like streams, can be smooth one minute and make a man feel like he’s swimming through white water the next.

In a husky whisper he recited the prophecy to her. When he finished she stirred in the crook of his arm. “That is your song?” “Huh, yes.” “But, it’s beautiful!” With a start, Hunter realized he thought so, too. “Since my boyhood, I had much hate for the words.” He twined a length of her hair around his finger, smiling. “And great hate for the honey-haired woman who would one day steal my heart. I wished to kill you, yes?” “But I’m not the woman in your song.” “Ah, yes, you are the woman.” “The song says the People will call me the Little Wise One. They don’t! And they never will. I’m far from wise.” “It will come to pass,” he assured her. “It must. All of the words must.” She saw shadows creep into his eyes. “What is it? Why are you so sad?” The muscles along his throat knotted. “My song says I will one day leave my people. I am Comanche. Without them, I will be as nothing, Blue Eyes.” Loretta stared sightlessly into the shifting shadows, watching the play of firelight. “It’s only a legend, Hunter. A silly legend. Hatred going away on the wind? High places and great canyons of blood! New tomorrows and new nations?” She turned her face toward him. “Look into my eyes. Do you see a new morning with new beginnings?” He searched her gaze, and then, in a husky voice that reached way down inside her, he whispered, “Yes.” He drew out the word until it seemed to echo and reecho in her mind.

I had thought once past there my reward will begin, but now everything seems kind of empty and I find I already have my reward—in the doing of the thing. The stars and cliffs and canyons, the roar of the rapids, the moon, the uncertainty, worry, the relief when thru each one, the campfires at night, the real respect and friendship of the rivermen I met.

As she left the wagons far behind, she felt more alone than she ever had in her life. Moonlight bathed the flats. Loretta turned in a slow circle but saw no one. If Hunter was out here, why didn’t he show himself? The call of the coyote trailed skyward again. Loretta whirled toward the sound and ran toward the rise. As she crested the slope, Hunter loomed up out of the shadows, tall and dark, his hair drifting in the wind. His upper chest and shoulder were crisscrossed with torn strips of cloth. Calico and muslin. Slowing her footsteps, she walked toward him a ways, then stopped. Did he even want her as his woman now? So much had happened since they last saw each other. So much pain and grief. His face was in shadow, so she could read nothing in his expression. When Loretta drew to a halt several feet away from him, Hunter’s heart skipped a beat, then started racing. Peering at her through the silvery darkness, he saw a tosi woman in tosi clothing, her pale skin and golden hair illuminated by the light of the Comanche moon. Just as the prophecy had foretold, they stood on a high place, she on the land of the tosi tivo, while he, Comanche to his bones, stood on the land of the People. A great distance divided them, a distance much harder to bridge than the few feet between them. Hunter ached with things he longed to say, but none of them seemed enough. He realized then that the great canyon filled with blood wasn’t a chasm in the earth but one in their hearts. There was an ache in Loretta’s eyes that cut clear through him. He knew the same ache was in his own. His father, Maiden of the Tall Grass, her parents. So many were lost to them. “Are you all right?” she asked. Hunter was weak from loss of blood. His shoulder felt as if it had a red-hot coal buried in it. “I am well. You came, yes? There is much we must talk about.

He gazed into the darkness at the flickering shadows. Above the tops of the trees on the opposite side of the river, he could see endless stretches of starlit sky. He longed for home where the plains stretched forever, where the wind sighed through the river canyons, sweet with the smell of grass and mesquite. If only his friends hadn’t come across a mute yellow-hair and ridden to tell him.

When they reached the river, he turned left. “Tohobt Pah-e-hona, Blue Water River. You call it the Brazos, eh?” He pointed ahead of them. “Pah-gat-su, upstream.” Jabbing a thumb over his shoulder, he said, “Te-naw, downstream. You will listen good, Blue Eyes, and learn. Tosi tivo talk is dirt in my mouth.” His tone set Loretta off balance. Dirt in his mouth? If he hated the whites so much, why on earth had he taken her? Upstream, downstream, she couldn’t remember the words. She didn’t want to. The language of murderers. All she wanted was to be free of the whole filthy lot of them. Another rock jabbed her insole, and she winced, missing a step. He released her elbow and swept her off her feet into his arms. He took her so much by surprise that if she could have screamed, she would have. Their eyes locked, his mocking, hers wide. Though he now bore Loretta’s weight, her position was such that her back was in danger of breaking if she didn’t loop an arm around his neck. He stood there, looking down at her and waiting. Her mouth went dry. She wished he would just toss her over his shoulder again and be done with it. Being carried like a sack of grain wasn’t very dignified, but at least that way she didn’t have to cling to him. That determined glint she was coming to know too well crept into his eyes. He gave her a little toss, not enough to drop her, but enough to give her a start. Instinctively she hooked an arm around his neck. His lips slanted into a satisfied grin, a grin that said as clearly as if he had spoken that he would have the last word, always. He started walking again. The firm cords of muscle that ran down from his neck undulated beneath her fingers, his warm skin as smooth as fine-grained leather. His hair, silken and heavy, brushed against her knuckles. Beneath her wrist she could feel the crusty cut on his shoulder from Aunt Rachel’s bullet. Remembering the wound he had inflicted on his arm last night, she wondered just how many scars he had. Strangely, the longer she was around him, the less she noticed the slash on his cheek. His was the kind of face that suffered imperfections well, features chiseled, skin weathered to a tough, burnished brown, as rugged as the sharp-cut canyons and endless plains from whence he’d sprung.

My song says I will one day leave my people. I am Comanche. Without them, I will be as nothing, Blue Eyes.” Loretta stared sightlessly into the shifting shadows, watching the play of firelight. “It’s only a legend, Hunter. A silly legend. Hatred going away on the wind? High places and great canyons of blood! New tomorrows and new nations?” She turned her face toward him. “Look into my eyes. Do you see a new morning with new beginnings?” He searched her gaze, and then, in a husky voice that reached way down inside her, he whispered, “Yes.” He drew out the word until it seemed to echo and reecho in her mind.

My song says I will one day leave my people. I am Comanche. Without them, I will be as nothing, Blue Eyes.” Loretta stared sightlessly into the shifting shadows, watching the play of firelight. “It’s only a legend, Hunter. A silly legend. Hatred going away on the wind? High places and great canyons of blood! New tomorrows and new nations?” She turned her face toward him. “Look into my eyes. Do you see a new morning with new beginnings?” He searched her gaze, and then, in a husky voice that reached way down inside her, he whispered, “Yes.” He drew out the word until it seemed to echo and reecho in her mind. It was then that Loretta knew. He had fallen in love with her. She stared up at his dark face, so close to her own that they breathed the same air, and her heart broke a little, for him, and for herself. She would never love him in return. A canyon of hatred and bitterness separated them. In that, at least, the prophecy was correct. “Oh, Hunter, don’t look at me like that.” In one liquid movement he rose on an elbow above her, his broad chest a canopy of bronze, his shoulders eclipsing the light so only her face was illuminated. “You have stolen my heart.” “No,” she whispered rawly. “Don’t say that, don’t even think it. Can’t you understand? I’ll never love you back, Hunter.” Her pulse started to slam. “I’m terrified of--” He crossed her lips with a gentle finger, his eyes clouding with warmth. “Of lying with me? I am not blind, Blue Eyes. Your heart is laid upon the ground with memories. That will pass. You will come to me. You will want my hand upon you. It will be so. The Great Ones have spoken it.

Look into my eyes. Do you see a new morning with new beginnings?” He searched her gaze, and then, in a husky voice that reached way down inside her, he whispered, “Yes.” He drew out the word until it seemed to echo and reecho in her mind. It was then that Loretta knew. He had fallen in love with her. She stared up at his dark face, so close to her own that they breathed the same air, and her heart broke a little, for him, and for herself. She would never love him in return. A canyon of hatred and bitterness separated them. In that, at least, the prophecy was correct. “Oh, Hunter, don’t look at me like that.” In one liquid movement he rose on an elbow above her, his broad chest a canopy of bronze, his shoulders eclipsing the light so only her face was illuminated. “You have stolen my heart.

Your own name isn’t half-bad. Bet you don’t know what Loretta means.” Rachel folded the dough over, then glanced up with a teasing grin. “Your momma and me picked it, mainly for the meaning.” “It’s a variation of Laura, isn’t it? Laurel wreath or something?” “That’s the common meaning. But in your ma’s name book, there was another.” “Well? Give over.” Loretta waited, watching her aunt. “What’s it mean? Flat-chested and scrawny?” Rachel threw back her head and chuckled. “Flat-chested and scrawny? Loretta Jane, I swear, no one can say you have too high an opinion of yourself. It means little wise one.” The color washed from Loretta’s face, and she planted her feet on the floor to stop the chair from rocking. “It means what?” “Little wise one.” Rachel’s smile faded. “You feelin’ peaked? What’s wrong?” Loretta set her sewing aside and pushed to her feet. “Nothing, Aunt Rachel. N-nothing.” Glancing dazedly around the room, Loretta pressed the back of her wrist to her temple, a feeling of unreality surrounding her. “I, um, think I’ll get a breath of air.” After hurrying from the house, Loretta struck off across the yard to lean on the fence, her favorite spot because it afforded her a view of the rise. Little wise one. Still numb with shock, she stared off into the distance, remembering the night Hunter had recited his song to her. The People will call her the Little Wise One… She studied the rise, truly believing, for the first time, that she and Hunter were destined to be together. She tried to remember all the words to his song. They came to her in snatches. Between them will be a great canyon that runs high with blood. A silly legend, she had once called it. Now she knew better. Too much of it had already come to pass for her to scoff. A canyon of blood. Loretta curled her hands into fists. Hunter would return to her. She didn’t know when, or how, but suddenly she felt certain the song, once the bane of her existence, had become her greatest hope.

Little wise one. Still numb with shock, she stared off into the distance, remembering the night Hunter had recited his song to her. The People will call her the Little Wise One… She studied the rise, truly believing, for the first time, that she and Hunter were destined to be together. She tried to remember all the words to his song. They came to her in snatches. Between them will be a great canyon that runs high with blood. A silly legend, she had once called it. Now she knew better. Too much of it had already come to pass for her to scoff. A canyon of blood. Loretta curled her hands into fists. Hunter would return to her. She didn’t know when, or how, but suddenly she felt certain the song, once the bane of her existence, had become her greatest hope.

I have great love for you, tah-mah. If you leave me, my heart will be laid upon the ground. But it is time that you fulfill the last part of the prophecy.” Hunter’s mouth went dry. He fixed his attention on the stars. “Someone must preserve the ways of the People,” Warrior rasped, “someone who will sing our songs and teach our ways. Unless you do that, all that we are will be lost. You must go get your woman and take her far away into the west lands where this war does not reach.” Warrior’s voice shook with emotion. “To a new place, Hunter. You know the words of the song.” “Warrior, you make it sound so simple. You saw what happened near her home today. She will spit upon me when she sees me.” Hunter angled an arm over his eyes. “I left her and rode into battle against her people. How many have we killed since the attack on our village?” “She won’t turn from you.” “How can you know? You say I should fulfill the last part of the song? How? Where is the high place the Great Ones spoke of? Where is the canyon filled with blood? And how will I ever reach across so great a distance to take Loh-rhett-ah’s hand?” “You must have faith. The high place will be there, as will the great canyon.” Leaning forward, Warrior clasped his brother’s shoulder. “Courage, tah-mah. Have courage.” Hunter clenched his teeth. “I feel so alone. I can’t see into myself and find my face, Warrior. I lifted my ax to kill that man today, and I couldn’t do it. Our father lies dead. Your woman lies dead. Where is my hatred? When I search for it, it isn’t there. Just emptiness and sorrow that runs so deep it aches in my bones.” Warrior’s grip on Hunter’s shoulder tightened until the bite of his fingers was almost painful. “The hate has gone from you to a faraway place you cannot find, as it was spoken in the prophecy. That’s why it is time for you to walk your own way. You must fight the last great fight for the People, yes? And you must fight it alone. I have to stay here. For our mother, my children. You’re our hope, our only hope.

Someone must preserve the ways of the People,” Warrior rasped, “someone who will sing our songs and teach our ways. Unless you do that, all that we are will be lost. You must go get your woman and take her far away into the west lands where this war does not reach.” Warrior’s voice shook with emotion. “To a new place, Hunter. You know the words of the song.” “Warrior, you make it sound so simple. You saw what happened near her home today. She will spit upon me when she sees me.” Hunter angled an arm over his eyes. “I left her and rode into battle against her people. How many have we killed since the attack on our village?” “She won’t turn from you.” “How can you know? You say I should fulfill the last part of the song? How? Where is the high place the Great Ones spoke of? Where is the canyon filled with blood? And how will I ever reach across so great a distance to take Loh-rhett-ah’s hand?” “You must have faith. The high place will be there, as will the great canyon.” Leaning forward, Warrior clasped his brother’s shoulder. “Courage, tah-mah. Have courage.

Where is the high place the Great Ones spoke of? Where is the canyon filled with blood? And how will I ever reach across so great a distance to take Loh-rhett-ah’s hand?” “You must have faith. The high place will be there, as will the great canyon.” Leaning forward, Warrior clasped his brother’s shoulder. “Courage, tah-mah. Have courage.

The moon has risen. She sits now, at the same spot where she saw the eagle, waiting, waiting for something to come and take her. Have you ever waited for IT? Wondering whether it will come from outside or inside? Finally past the futile guesses at what might happen...now and then re-erasing brain to keep it clean for the Visit...yes wasn't it close to here? remember didn't you sneak away from camp to have a moment alone with What you felt stirring across the land...it was the equinox...green spring equal nights...canyons are opening up, at the bottoms are steaming fumaroles, steaming the tropical life there like greens in a pot, rank, dope-perfume, a hood of smell...human consciousness, that poor cripple, that deformed and doomed thing, is about to be born. This is the World just before men. Too violently pitched alive in constant flow ever to be seen by men directly. They are meant only to look at it dead, in still strata, transputrefied to oil or coal. Alive, it was a threat: it was Titans, was an overpeaking of life so clangorous and mad, such a green corona about Earth's body that some spoiler HAD to be brought in before it blew the Creation apart. So we, the crippled keepers, were sent out to multiply, to have dominion. God's spoilers. Us. Counter-revolutionaries. IT IS OUR MISSION TO PROMOTE DEATH. The way we kill, the way we die, being unique among the Creatures. It was something we had to work on, historically and personally. To build from scratch up to its present status as reaction, nearly as strong as life, holding down the green uprising. But only nearly as strong.

You have to feel it to experience it. It’s not just what you see, it’s not just where you go and it’s not about the depth or the incredible scenery of the vast underwater canyon; it’s all of it rolled into one. You’re naked, exposed to the vastness of the ocean, steering your way through it, flying like a pilot with all his plans, instruments and experience. You’re travelling through space and walking on the moon.

I ride the Hog up winding roads into the hinterlands of Benedict Canyon to a Gothic-style mansion right out of a thirties Universal horror movie. Dr. Frankenstein’s summer home, or where a friendly neighbor chains up Lyle Talbot during the full moon. Even the name Lisa Thivierge is living under—Janet Lawton—is a gag: the name of the ingenue in the old Ed Wood movie Bride of the Monster. I like Thivierge already.

Our trip down into the canyon took nearly the whole day, so we spent the night at a charming inn at the bottom and the next morning those of us who wanted to rented burros for an expedited ascent. I chose to ride, but picked an animal which stopped walking whenever I stopped kicking, so I got as much exercise as if I had been afoot. I also had plenty of time to contemplate the rapid pace at which I was speeding toward the moon. From supersonic jets at Edwards I had progressed all the way to kicking a burro up out of the Grand Canyon.

I believe God, but I don’t believe in him. When this doesn’t make sense, I tell people I believe 3/7 days a week—almost, sometimes, losingly. But that there is a battle at all is due to the following reason: when I see new things, I can’t believe they exist! Switzerland. The Grand Canyon. The skin color of aquarium fish. Dinosaur fossils. A moon. What idiot am I to deny that there can exist any amazing thing ranging from a 30-eyed eagle to a God? Spiders have eight eyes. And there was once a man who walked on water.

In my youth I believed in somewhere else I put faith in travel now I am becoming my own tree — W.S. Merwin, from “Wild Oats,” The Moon Before Morning (Copper Canyon Press, 2014)

The altiplano stretches every part of you to breaking point. Past it. The vast snow-capped bulk of Illimani, the highest mountain in the Cordillera Real, loomed over the Choqueyapu Canyon below like the walls of some mighty ice fortress. It felt like standing on the moon.

I know what she sees—the boy on the screen with the Society’s list scrolling up next to him. Not the one who stood with her on the Hill or the one who held her in the dark of the canyon with the moon above.

The Blue One will live to see the Caterpillar rut everything they walk on—seacliff buckwheat cleared, relentless ice plant to replace it, the wild fields bisected by the scenic highway, canyons covered with cul-de-sacs, gas stations, comfortable homes, the whole habitat along this coastal stretch endangered, everything, everyone, everywhere in it danger as well— but now they're logging the one stilling hawk Smith sights, the conspiring grasses' shh shhhh ssh, the coreopsis Mattoni's boot barely spares, and, netted, a solitary blue butterfly. Smith ahead of him chasing the stream, Mattoni wonders if he plans to swim again. Just like that the spell breaks. It's years later, Mattoni lecturing on his struggling butterfly. How fragile. • If his daughter spooled out the fabric she's chosen for her wedding gown, raw taffeta, burled, a bright hued tan, perhaps Mattoni would remember how those dunes looked from a distance, the fabric, balanced between her arms, making valleys in the valley, the fan above her mimicking the breeze. He and his friend loved everything softly undulating under the coyest wind, and the rough truth as they walked through the land's scratch and scrabble and no one was there, then, besides Mattoni and his friend, walking along Dolan's Creek, in that part of California they hated to share. The ocean, a mile or so off, anything but passive so that even there, in the canyon, they sometimes heard it smack and pull well-braced rocks. The breeze, basic: salty, bitter, sour, sweet. Smith trying to identify the scent, tearing leaves of manzanita, yelling: "This is it. Here! This is it!" his hand to his nose, his eyes, having finally seen the source of his pleasure, alive. • In the lab, after the accident, he remembered it, the butterfly. How good a swimmer Smith had been, how rough the currents there at Half Moon Bay, his friend alone with reel and rod—Mattoni back at school early that year, his summer finished too soon— then all of them together in the sneaker wave, and before that the ridge, congregations of pinking blossoms, and one of them bowing, scaring up the living, the frail and flighty beast too beautiful to never be pinned, those nights Mattoni worked without his friend, he remembered too. He called the butterfly Smith's Blue

The death of a close loved one can often change the landscape of everything else in your life.

Sitting at Night on the Front Porch" I’m here, on the dark porch, restyled in my mother’s chair. 10:45 and no moon. Below the house, car lights Swing down, on the canyon floor, to the sea. In this they resemble us, Dropping like match flames through the great void Under our feet. In this they resemble her, burning and disappearing. Everyone’s gone And I’m here, sizing the dark, saving my mother’s seat.

He meant the Grand Canyon was only a mood of nature, a bold promise, a beautiful record. He meant that mountains had sifted away in its dust, yet the canyon was young. Man was nothing, so let him be humble. This cataclysm of the earth, this playground of a river was not inscrutable; it was only inevitable—as inevitable as nature herself. Millions of years in the bygone ages it had lain serene under a half moon; it would bask silent under a rayless sun, in the onward edge of time. It taught simplicity, serenity, peace. The eye that saw only the strife, the war, the decay, the ruin, or only the glory and the tragedy, saw not all the truth. It spoke simply, though its words were grand: "My spirit is the Spirit of Time, of Eternity, of God. Man is little, vain, vaunting. Listen. To-morrow he shall be gone. Peace! Peace!

Magellan’s sudden identification of millions of land forms fomented a crisis in nomenclature. The International Astronomical Union responded with an all-female naming scheme that evoked a goddess or giantess from every heritage and era, along with heroines real or invented. Thus the Venusian highlands, the counterparts to Earth’s continents, took the names of love goddesses — Aphrodite Terra, Ishtar Terra, Lada Terra, with hundreds of their hills and dales christened for fertility goddesses and sea goddesses. Large craters commemorate notable women (including American astronomer Maria Mitchell, who photographed the 1882 transit of Venus from the Vassar College Observatory), while small craters bear common first names for girls. Venus’s scarps hail seven goddesses of the hearth, small hills the goddesses of the sea, ridges the goddesses of the sky, and so on across low plains named from myth and legend for the likes of Helen and Guinevere, down canyons called after Moon goddesses and huntresses.