More Stones & Melting Snow

Stones emerging from snow cover
Sometimes highlights a feature
Such as a stone in a row of other stones
Placed so that it recalls a Spirit whose name I don't really know

Perhaps there's one that resembles a profile

Of a turtle looking out sideways at me

One long foreleg extended rearward

One eye open, looking right at me...

Another hand-sized stone 

Perhaps another profile

Along the same segment of stones

Placed just so, eye and snout and mouth...

The next row toward the west,

Large stone standing beside it

Something about it reminding me

Of other things than field clearing

Why not connect the "stonewall"

To that Glacial Erratic?

Or is there something else going on,

Like Ezra Stiles' "God Stones?"

Walking along the row of stones

It's not too far until I see a stone

Shaped like a bird perhaps by Nature

Placed by a human hand so it's perched like a bird...

(Can you see it, that rather plump bird?)

The snow was still pretty thick that day,

So it was a little further on along that row

That another familiar testudinate variation in stones

Was revealed by the melting snow...

(Carapace, headstone, and two almost identical legs?)

Another small segment,

Where a branch has fallen

On the western side of the row of stones

Shows under the crusty snow...

I've heard the human eye searches

To find things like faces

In clouds, or in the polished grain of wood,

And many times in stone

I've seen many Quartz Crystal Eyes

And think of it as a repeated pattern

Dimples in stones again like eyes,

Resting on a stone with dimple too

And looking closer, I wonder,

Would a clam shell rest easy here?

Has someone ever done that,

A place to burn some tobacco,

Offer up a Prayer?

Larger cobbles and smaller,

Purposeful Placement?  

Looking closely

And more closely still

And there's another repeat

Of that artistic pattern...

And stepping back, well there's one more

Of a different sort I've seen before...

Walking back, I see a different view

And capture that one too.

I wonder if they might be tools,

Especially that foot that resembles a hammer stone...

I can't help but think

This was carefully and purposely done,

But the "Why?" of it eludes me,

The human choice to place these just so...

Some I think I know,

Say, "Turtle" out loud...

Some I don't know,

But might utter, "Oh wow!"

And there they sit side by side

As they have for a long long time

Smaller...

Larger...

...maybe life-sized,

Delusion, maybe illusion,

Maybe artwork, maybe Ceremony

Along a State Highway roadside

Two rows of stones,

With a trail in-between

Where I think the best things

Are seen when you get "Off the Path,"

As a "real poet" named Gary Snyder once wrote:

A path is something that can be followed, it takes you somewhere. "Linear."
What would a path stand against?
"No path."
Off the path, off the trail.
So what's off the path?
In a sense everything else is off the path.
The relentless complexity of the world is off to the side of the trail.
For hunters and herders trails weren't always so useful.
For a foager, the path is not where you walk for long.
Wild herbs, camas bulbs, quail, dye plants, are away from the path.
The whole range of items that fulfill our needs is out there.

We must wander through it to learn and memorize the field

--rolling, crinkled, eroded, gullied, ridged (wrinkled like the brain) -- holding the map in mind.
This is the economic-visualization-meditation exercise of the Inupiaq and Athapaskans of Alaska of this very day.


http://www.albany.edu/~litmag/archives/vol213/map.html