Totem of Vanishing Souls

In silence, the animals clamber, leap
perch, teeter, and balance
one upon the other,
an act of grace.

Polar Bear on a thawing iceberg
comforts California Mountain Kingsnake
knotted in fear.
Furry paw brushes night wing of Spotted Owl
dreaming lichened mossy forests.

Wolverine weary of wandering rests
on the back of mother bear, his clawed toes
gentle on creamy fur. Joined by Lynx of golden eyes,
the two stare in twinned sorrow.

Chinook Salmon and Orca Whale
freeze in mid-leap on their way to becoming
two more stars in a constellation
of intertwining fates.

Spotted Frog places sticky toes
on Salmon, Orca, Checkerspot Butterfly,
and California Condor feathering great wings
for the last glide.

while Cascade Red Fox steadies on Condor’s back
as Rusty Patch Bumblebees hum
pollen lullabies.

Sage Grouse, umbrella bird of sagebrush sea
fans his fancy dance tail
Topped out without a lek
without a mate.

Ancient lineages convene
before wild eyes
close forever

Before the word kinship
comets away
tailing only darkness.

A Storied Wind Reveals the Way of Beauty

A sagebrush-scented wind whirls up from the mighty Snake River flowing free through Hells Canyon, deepest gorge in North America. Bighorn sheep rams poised on a dizzying bunchgrass slope raise their heads, alert to the breezed scents of animal and plant kin. Far below the bighorns, endangered Chinook salmon battle upriver to their home tributary—a journey from the ocean of more than 500 miles  and past eight dams. Some will spawn in the wilderness-fed waters of the forest-lined Imnaha River. Above the bighorns, a golden eagle spirals ever higher on rising columns of warm air. Two backpackers on the canyon rim hold hands in twinned wonder.

This is refugia. Home. Shelter. Headwaters. Places still big, wild, and connected for birds, animals, and native plants to cling to life and to move to cooler realms as our climate heats up. Places with dark skies and solitude. Places indigenous people have known since time immemorial — honoring the intricate web of life and the seasonal round in ways of reciprocity.

The wind ruffles over the rim, spills across wildflower meadows of paintbrush, lupine, and penstemon. Gusting into shadowy forests of grand fir, larch, and ponderosa pine, the gale softens to brush past a great gray owl—largest in North America. She is protecting her fluffy chicks within a stick nest on a sturdy branch of a wide fir snag—a dead tree enlivened by woodpeckers, chipmunks, and beetles. Eventually, the shelter snag will fall to nourish a new forest.

This, too, is refugia. Forests that may seem  messy, dense, and in need of tidying up. Yet, for the great-gray owl and all her companions, “mess” is bliss. Here, too, big trees capture and store far more carbon than smaller trees and for far longer. Wild forests are climate allies and biodiversity sanctuaries.

Slowed yet not stalled, the wind sighs through the cool, lichen-draped woods and flits across a warbler jazzy in yellow and black feathers—a tiny rambler freshly arrived from a winter in Mexico. Like clouds are to rain, bees are to pollen, and sun is to shadow, so Townsend’s Warblers are to lush and cool ancient forests. Their sweet high melodies give voice to the wind stirring the spring’s unfolding of bud, cone, and hatching insects.

Refugia lies, too, in the pockets, sleeves, buttons, scarves, socks, shoes, underlayers, and overlayers of wild trees and their interlacing roots. A long-toed salamander slips below the loose bark of a fallen fir by a tumbling creek. Mushrooms, moss, lichen, and orchids flourish in the gift of trees returning to earth with the help of beetles, ants, and an entire world in miniature. An American marten races her fallen tree runway and pauses as her nose wrinkles to discern every message in the frisky wind that soon will bluster away to rumple the riverine homes of beaver, river otter, Belted Kingfisher, cutthroat trout, and bumblebee on wildflower. Trace the origin of our precious freshwater to alpine springs below snowy peaks. Know the haven of pika, mountain goat, and the rare wolverine. 

Enter Refugia of the Blue Mountains with the wind always at your back.