Rolling through this thick
Walking bridges over streams clean, thinning air as we climb
Switchbacks of granite and soft earth
Whistling on the dark trails of sleeping pines
Some lay to the ground under thick, others watching time as it waits
Time is always waiting in the mountains
As we idiot away in awe, ambling
Snaking through and along the thin, winding stretches
Divides opening to the fall, butter yellow in the Western Larch
Needles ready to fall
Dotting grey mountain reaching fingers of rock
Pulling me up to my spirits animal
Through tiny groves, marshy and green, mustard and dust
And the clicking hooves of the mountain goat is calling
Pheasant flutters in the trees warbling as it climbs in startle
Eagle Cap is beyond and the air is thin
Blue, soft, with jagged crevasse
I am weary good in this climb
My heart is full with hoof and my beloved Oregon
Patches of snow waiting for me
Peace is this wood, this land, this rock, this stream
And I remember my heaven is not beyond
it is here in Oregon
my home.
