Some summers I make it under my own steam above tree line to the land of light. Other years I depend on poets like Claire Cella to take me there. Here’s an excerpt from her poem “Delicate Tundra,” from the 2024 issue of Deep Wild Journal:
I woke each morning with the same prayer: remember.
I was afraid I would forget how it felt to ask a question of moss,
palms pressed to the heart of it: what comes after a glacier? Soft.
***
How quiet quiet was.
Do you ever take stock of what you’ve found? The courage to cross
chalky, churning rivers. Bear tracks in velvet sand. Glacial lakes
scarfed in grey. Lady beetle. White feather. Those petite pink flowers
and, delicate tundra, somehow the feeling of a whale. Delicate tundra,
I was in the middle of you, where the walking was good and Alaska
underneath me, the path a prayer, and you, smaller than your shadow.
Deep Wild Journal 