by Cheryl Petty
Have you heard?
There is a Pure Land of the Jade Emperor—
To the east Girard Ridge,
To the west the Trinity Wilderness,
On the south the Great Valley,
On the north the Mountain Mother.
Within these boundaries the great Sacramento River
Is fed by all the creeks,
Bear and Soda and Castle and Slate,
Flume, Dog, Shotgun, Little Backbone, Salt, Indian,
Boulder, Mears and Sweetbriar.
They ripple and dance from
Horse Heaven Meadows, Chicken Hawk Hill,
Tombstone, Nawtawtaket, Nosoni and Bolibokka mountains,
And are joined by McCloud and Pit Rivers,
Embracing their numerous crystal clear creeks and eagle perch mountains.
Flowing from every point of the compass,
Waters rush towards the mighty Sacramento,
Swelling and racing down to the great Valley,
On to the sweet delta and on into the blue Pacific Ocean.
Rushing around the tight curves at Cantara
And at the old round house
And where the road narrows to one way and washes out in flood years,
Churning up gravel bars and grass tufted islets where back eddies boil.
At the ultimate source the mountain mother Mt Shasta,
Windy schisms of ice melt into cracks of granitic intrusions that bubble up.
At the edge of the treeline the white bark silver tip red fir leans polished and twisted.
Next down, Douglas Firs and Ponderosa Pines, Incense Cedar, Mountain Mahogany drink at subterranean streams.
Down to the river’s edge
Through mixed conifer and deciduous forests of
Black Oak, White Alder and Bigleaf Maple.
Rivulets, mossy banks, sprouting tiny jewel like flowers,
Wind through ancient glacier carved meadows.
At 6,000 feet, like a string of pearls,
They empty into pure alpine lakes that drain in turn into spongy meadows,
That joins into other lakes that feed into creeks of white baked boulders,
On down into the mighty Sacramento.
Here Brook, Rainbow and Brown Trout, Salmon ghosts and Riffle sculpin
Scavenge and scour for bits of nutrition,
Silver winking, leaping, splashing, egg laying.
In deep sloughs and slow moving eddies
Floats turtle, never seen, only remembered.
Black and slender Long Toes and Pacific Giant Salamanders
And Rough skinned Newt dive into crevices and cracks.
Tailed Western, Pacific Tree, Red and Yellow Legged Frogs chomp pollen
Crickets, diatoms, spiders and snails,
And ply the moist meander margin with Fence Lizard.
Dancing in dappled meadows and marshes
Are Dragon Flies Dancer and Meadowhawk,
Skimmers, Water Strider and Caddis Fly.
Clouds of Chi rise from rock crevices combine and change.
Red Horned dragons climb and circle
Moss drenched ancient conifers and mount ladders to the sky
Where Immortals dwell in the Pure Land.
Ovoline, one of earth’s first rocks,
Pale green and translucent, tumbles down the gorges,
Polished smooth and round by lapidary action of the ceaseless waters.
Deep veins of quartz intrusions crystallized with gold criss cross every side.
Vast deposits of heavy black chromite mingle with red cinnabar when burned makes poison silver molten mercury.
Brothers Osprey and Bald Eagle mark their territories in the canyon,
Perch their nests in the tallest tree tops.
Eagle skims the surface, sharp talons grasp fat trout.
Osprey drops from sky high plunging, seizing dozing rainbows.
Mallard mergus mergauser, dark green head and white breast,
Visits here in cold autumn,
While summer finds brown mottled young
Chasing mayflies in alpine lake shallows.
Only on occasion Blue Heron or Great Egret
Deign to intrude on Eagle brothers’ sanctuary.
Dipper sounds ‘zeet’ in clear streams and rapids.
Acorn woodpecker hides oak nuts.
Yellow and black goldfinch feasts on seeds and insects.
Great Horned Owl hunts by dark of night, coughing up bones of prey.
Song sparrow repeats four notes and a trill.
Dandy Coopers Hawk changes his mate.
Northern Harrier, Sharp Skinned, Red Tailed and Swanson’s Hawks,
Checkered Merlin and Peregrine Falcon
Wheel and dive amid heated and cooling drafts.
Big Brown, Big Eared and Pallid Bat,
Black Swift, Willow Flycatcher, Lark,
Sparrow Spotted and Streaked, Purple Martin with forked tail
Chase insects above smooth ripples.
Robin, Quail and Alexander Hummingbird,
And more kinds than can be counted,
Mate or raise families here.
Sedimentary volcanic strata on the one side,
Crushed and reformed into slickenside and serpentine,
Rose up on basaltic columns.
On the other side fossilized limestone from ancient reefs,
Subducted into gold quartz sulfur copper
That falls as nuggets into the mighty Chi River.
In sudden downpours huge particles roll in a slurry of turgid mud.
Enormous tree trunks float like titan’s toothpicks
And rest many miles downstream-- a precarious footbridge.
The mother mountain Shasta, head in lensticular hat,
Pulling warm air aloft to rain down in summer thundershowers, inhale,
Pulling cold air down to refresh us all at sundown, exhale,
Fluttering down the steep canyon-- a breath of fresh chi.
Mist dragons float up the canyon after hard rain,
Swirling around firs and pines.
Each crevice pours forth its dragon,
Joins up with others to form and dissolve
Into great herds just above the trees and disappear into chi mist.
Every seep and rivulet, spring and cataract,
Deeply loving and yearning, seeks its fate,
Turgid or clear,
Joining into streams and creeks,
Jumping between boulders, disappearing into culverts,
Emerging at the mighty Upper Sac
And whisked away, blended into cold swiftness.
From the Box Canyon Dam railroad bridges
Criss cross back and forth—
Cantara Loop and Green Trestle,
Big I-5 and Dunsmuir Avenue Bridges,
Shearer Avenue crossing, Financial Avenue,
Durigo, Castella and Sweetbriar.
Sims, Gibson, Lemoine,
Volmers, Delta, Dogcreek and Lakehead,
Pit River bridge 800-feet beneath
Humongous Shasta Lake Reservoir,
Source of water for millions in the south,
Earth and concrete vessel of sweet water.
Life force carried in slow languorous sinuous meandering miles
Of the Sacramento
Through the fertile valleys, past villages, towns, cities, farms.
Rice, alfalfa, vines, cotton, orchards
Siphoned into aqueducts and canals,
Around sinking Delta islands,
Out to the great sea under the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge.
Granite Castle Crags dome up thrust
Laced with waterfalls and creeks.
Gnarled oak and firs wrap roots within cracks and treasure caves.
Twisting and turning, the River and the Railroad and the Highway,
Like strands of silver, woven and hammered in an intricate design.
The fragrant musky scent of the river rises on the sparkling droplets—
A complex compound, pungent and sweet, of earth and decomposing leaves,
Every leaf breathing in carbon dioxide
And exhaling perfumed oxygen
That drifts up into the tangle
of balsam scented pine needles and vanilla barked trees.
Mimulus dripping with sparkling snowmelt
Filtered through basaltic veins
Straight from the Mountain Mother herself and ancient Mt Eddy.
Peltaphylum peltaum raspberry pink nude flowers and nodding umbrella leaves.
Spore making Horsetail, Pepperwort, Quillwort, Spike moss, Adder’s Tongue fern,
Grape fern, Giant chain fern, Lady, Holly, Sword, Shasta, Maiden Hair and Cliff Brake creep and droop, dripping mist.
Food in abundance for the natural palate—
Orange spotted and White lilies, Spotted fritillaries from ice rimmed Mountain Mother to the full stretch of the mighty Sacramento River.
Cammassia quamash, Queen of abundance,
Woven into designs on baskets the story of its mythical origin,
Mimicked by the Death Camas, identical and fatal powerful Skookum medicine.
Green hellebore and Devil’s Club, grasses beautiful and fantastic,
Making the best baskets tied up with nettle
For gathering and storing the fat black acorns.
Intoxicating Lupine root, delicious Miners Lettuce,
Giant Cow Parsnips and Yampah, Wokas yellow mountain Waterlily seeds,
Oregon Grape, Red Flowering Currant, astringent Heuchera.
Pemmicum of Chokecherry and Salmon belly.
Old ancestor Saskatoon, Tarweed and Balsam Root,
Every kind of berry: Thimble, Black, Dew, Salmon, Bunch and Straw.
Manzanita flower jelly, Milkweed, host to Monarch butterflies,
Monkey flowers and Paint brushes.
Orchids: like ivory pouches or striped coral,
Ghostly phantoms, miniature jewels on curving sticks,
Cobra heads, striped Rattlesnake and Calypso.
The sweetest air!
Clean of red dust and dirt kicked up by millions of feet
In their pursuit of happiness.
Not a particle to adhere to droplets of haze.
Nothing to ameliorate the direct rays of the sun.
The canopy of the wide universe containing all the bright bits and points of light from every distant galaxy.
Mirrored above, the road of heaven,
Mirrored below, the mighty silver river.
Close your eyes, can you hear?
The yellow cottonwood leaves rustle above the hissing noise of water gurgling in a cacophony of voices of the holes and hollows.
Ancient boughs of yellow pine and Douglas fir and Incense cedar sough in the mountain drafts.
Even screeching and wail of trains’ brakes and whistle
Echo music of pounding rails.
In the depths of winter in the first month
The sun retreats below the equator.
Days are short nights are long everything in alternation.
The sun returns the deep shadows retreat
The snow melts the flowers return.
Spinning around in space
Yang expansion Yin contraction
Held in balance with love and gravity.
Revolving around to the east we greet the great sun with Suryanamaska
In pearl grey morning light, stabbing golden through black conifers
To gild the tops of trees on the west side of the canyon.
Rolling around the stripe of sunlight burns its way down the side of Mt Bradley until the sleeping fishes in the depths of Tauhindauli
Wake to golden glints on the watery vaulted ceiling.
Sweet cool airs linger and evaporate on edges of the shadows
Until left and right east and west are bathed in life giving sunlight
And living creatures creep into violet recesses hiding from her brilliance.
Never stopping eternally turning
Now away from the sun yearning for rest and night,
The Pleiades roll into view.
The whole panoply of stars and planets and moon
Appears to march from east to west following the mighty Sun.
Crossing the River of Heaven above, the Sacramento River below
That runs from cold north mystic void Mother Mount Shasta
Down and around to the warm south,
Home of Orion and Los Angeles City of Red Dust.
Here is where the eternal glaciers Hotlum and Bolum,
Konwakiton, Wintun and Whitney
Freeze and thaw, shrink and grow, creep and gush,
And Black Bear suckles her bruins,
Plunges after Chinook salmon, feasts on Thimble and Black berries.
Ground squirrel in the high dry lands and
Gray squirrel with the big fluffy tail
In the oak forests animate the tree covered slopes.
Big cats Cougar or Puma Mountain Lion and Sacred Panther
Roam with Coyote ‘Coyetl’
Hunting for the smaller species who hunt after smaller ones
The carnivore after the vegetarian, balanced by the fecundity of abundance.
Shy and antisocial Mountain Beaver
Meets nocturnal Opossum, traveling undetected in the dark of night.
Skunk, exceedingly fat and slow in fall, surprises Raccoon,
Feasting in the low grape arbor, hiding behind huge yellow leaves.
Protected from detection by blackness of night, River Otter emerges
From his subterranean home beneath the waters hunting for crustaceans.
Above all this a Pure Land realm
Perches in the basin behind Mt Bradley and the Crags.
There jeweled conifers sway above golden lotus pools
And birds whistle sacred mantras
Where it is higher than mortals can see
Within sight of the Great Mother Mt Shasta.
In these auspicious lands
Rugged, hardy and spiritual people—
Artists and families
Sages and hermits
Teachers builders and writers—
Have formed towns and cities,
Charming hamlets clinging to the volcanic crevices like lichen,
Homes and businesses in a community of Free Thinkers.
Visitors who once drunk the waters and viewed the awesome Mountain
Are seized with a Compulsion
To leave the comfortable riches of the city and take up the Simple Mountain Life.
Here are great estates Wintun and Berry
With green grass parks and beside river rushing Victorian splendor.
Tauhindauli and Masson first and second settlers
Followed by others who brought apple and pear
Walnut fig grape peach plum and apricot.
Here wild strawberries as big as teacups,
They carved out orchards behind the woodsman as the big old trees fell.
Below mixed deciduous and coniferous above mixed Pine and Fir,
Shelter for the myriad beings residing in this watershed of the Mighty Sacramento.
The wind whistles past rock crevices and holes and openings in trunks and limbs
Blowing a natural symphony.
Sweet or howling sounds echo in the canyon
Of train engine whistles, scraping metal and the thrum of rubber wheels on paved roads, noisy exhaust and brakes.
Fortunate is the Visitor—the Accidental Tourist—
Who stops on their pell mell race from point A to point B,
Pulls over and spends one night or two in quaint comfortable inns
Run by city refugees who made the break.
What seemed like Bad Luck that brought the broken automobile to this place
Now is revealed as Karma’s gift.
The beleaguered Amtrak, stopping in Dunsmuir during the day and
Releasing wondering passengers who have found their exit.
Winter season—time to rest—
Solitude, renewal, replenishment.
The spring of our creativity refills the depleted well with cold effervescent, slightly bitter, thirst quenching water.
The mammals, large and small, begin to hibernate,
And tiny wasps and bees and spiders.
Juncoes from Gumboot Lake winter over in the low towns.
Persistent hummingbirds visit on warm days.
It is a time for shoveling snow, baking bread, downhill and cross country skiing.
The rains in spring ruin the camellias and tulips,
The rain drops have hearts of ice.
Yet somehow fruit trees are pollinated and oak trees in the fresh bright breezes.
And the heart yearns for the sight of a flower or tender green leaf.
Somehow without knowing when
The rain stops and the race to make a seed or fruit and
Presents all life in forms varied and wonderful.
The time for toil is now for soon we shall revolve away from the warm sun again And return to quietude.
The hard shield of toughness, savvy and disdain, falls away,
Revealing the person within—
Vulnerable and shining bright,
Renewed and eager for tasting the true life free of wanting,
Tasting the bland flavor of naturalness,
Smelling the first fragrances,
Embodying the opposites, and transcending duality.