First Canoe Trip

Beaver dams and muskrat lodges
we paddled past. Relics of abandoned mines,
old logging chutes. Loon calls 
piercing the night. Subtle play
of northern lights across a star-shot sky.
A grouse rising from the brush
as we walked past. So many backcountry
wonders, moments to remember, later.

But what the trip taught us mattered too.
What we learned when the wilderness
stripped us down. Like how good 
even the simplest meal tastes
after a day’s canoeing. The way out here,
yesterday’s worries are rendered
as insubstantial as the smoke from the
evening fire. The way time becomes,
not an arbitrary ticking tyranny, but rather
the space between breakfast and lunch,
lunch and dinner, dinner and sleep time.
The way packing light helps us understand
all the things we can do without.

There is no weaseling out, in the wilderness. 
The distance of the portage 
must be negotiated, however laboriously.
It’s not a sprint or even a marathon.
It’s survival. Existence. Being, in this moment,
which gives us a roadmap for how to live,
truly live, in all the moments that remain.

Lisa Timpf is a retired HR and communications professional who lives in Simcoe, Ontario. Her poetry has appeared in Third Wednesday, New Myths, Star*Line, Triangulation: Habitats, and other venues. Her first poetry collection, a set of speculative haibun poetry titled In Days to Come, was released by Hiraeth Publishing in February 2022. When not writing, Lisa enjoys bird-watching and organic gardening. You can find out more about Lisa’s writing projects at http://lisatimpf.blogspot.com/.

Featured image by Derek Wright.

Earthwork

mid-April and a northwest wind
blows sunshine down Puget Sound

all the way from the Olympics’
jagged ramparts—the whole range

of thrusted peaks white-capped with new snow—
down to sloping hills that taper to blue sky

I know what beauty lies beyond them: 
rain forest moss, wide beaches tumbled with drift,
the forever ocean carving out tidepools—

but this bold palisade is what I love:
bright bulwark in midday light,

soundless dark ridge in blue-grey dusk,
last edge of the visible world.

(Looking at the Olympic peaks in Olympic National Park from Seattle)

Alicia Hokanson lives in Seattle and also spends time on Waldron Island, in the Salish Sea.  Her newest collection of poems, Perishable World, was published by Pleasure Boat Studio in the summer of 2021, and awarded the Eyelands Book Awards grand prize for poetry in December 2021.

Featured image courtesy the poet.

About the Rivers

Beside us 
rivers administer 
our sense of time 
                         through water’s rush 

like blood’s throb
through our internal channels
where currents surge 
faster when we’re children 

meander 
in our middle-ages 

      run steady
through spells of constancy 

swell after storms 

My sadness at last
went
when I tracked a stretch
of the Middle Fork    

            silver
  splashing

through duff and diorite
sun on its surface 

I go to rivers for their indifference 

Rivers to set my crafts afloat 
Rivers to carry me out and deep

Pamela Hobart Carter is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Her Imaginary Museum (Kelsay Books, 2020) and Held Together with Tape and Glue (Finishing Line Press, 2021). She loves how close the Cascades are to Seattle. Summers she hikes in them, winters she skis in them. She has always been interested in rocks and has two geology degrees, from Indiana University and Bryn Mawr College. www.playwrightpam.wordpress.com

Featured image by Ron Clausen CC/BY 4.0

Mud Season at Bong Recreation Area, Wisconsin

It’s one of those bleak midwestern days
some people would say builds character.
Biting wind blows through the prairie grass
and leafless trees.

Overcast, dreary,
a morass of mud and sludge
beside the highwater lake.

I’m uncomfortable, yes,
but also content.

It’s good to be outside the city’s
man-made dirt and chaos
surrounded by natural gloom,
out here where the edges are rough
and nothing is trimmed or tidy
or groomed.

I salute the chill and mud,
sit silent as geese honk incessantly,
close my eyes and face the wind.

Photo by Eileen Molony

Charles Rossiter, hosts the bi-weekly podcast at PoetrySpokenHere.com (since 2015). He’s authored several books and chapbooks of poetry. The most recent is Green Mountain Meditations, available from FoothillsPublishing.com. He’s performed his poetry widely at such venues as Nuyorican Poets Café, NYC; Green Mill, Chicago; and the Chicago Blues Festival. He lives and writes in Bennington, VT.

Featured image by Derek Wright.

Do You Remember

Photo by Janna Knittel 

Sleeping in the truck
on long drives home from camping,
how rumble and rock swayed you
into dreams, how adult voices
murmuring from front seats
were both blanket and pillow,
how light-dark-light fluttered
just outside consciousness
once you arrived in town,
how you woke to crunch
of gravel driveway not knowing
what time was and staggered
upstairs to bed? Your skin
holds memories of sun,
coldness of lake water. You still
hear the rubber rowboat squeak,
rasp of sand on bare feet, chipmunks
inviting themselves to meals.
Each year you relearn
how mountain nights deliver
chill along with stars,
campfire smoke soaks your clothes,
how you never would grow up
to be someone who did not remember.

Janna Knittel lives in Minnesota but still calls the Pacific Northwest “home.” Janna is the author of Real Work (forthcoming from Nodin Press, 2022) and Fish & Wild Life (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and has published in the journals Between These Shores Literary and Arts Annual, Blueline, Constellations, Cottonwood, North Dakota Quarterly, and The Wild Word as well as the anthologies The Experiment Will Not Be Bound (forthcoming from Unbound Editions, 2022) and Waters Deep: A Great Lakes Anthology (Split Rock Review, 2018). Recognition includes grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts.

Featured image courtesy the poet.

Silent Beauty

I put down the canoe paddle, scoop water
with my hands, and it tastes like warm tea. 
The Okefenokee, blackwater swamp,
dark as prehistoric arctic forests,
varied ecosystems at every bend,
rusted remains on the shores
from century-old dredging attempts.

Late autumn brings an end to lush green,
light filters through hanging moss
and trees at a different angle.
The water, dark from peat tannins,
reflects narrow cypress trunks.
Their needles fall all around me,
faint ripples the only sound, even egrets
and kingfishers subdued, the alligators
sluggish in low water levels and scant sunlight.

Stealthy engineers of the wetlands,
the alligators surface and submerge,
sometimes only their eyes visible,
so close I could touch them.
My solitary canoe moves
through the landscape of myth.

Meg Freer grew up in Montana, studied in Minnesota and New Jersey, and now lives in Ontario, where she teaches piano and writes. Her prose pieces and poems have won awards and have been published in journals such as Ruminate, Eastern Iowa Review, Parks and Points, Wanderlust Journal and Rat’s Ass Review. She is co-author of a poetry chapbook, Serve the Sorrowing World with Joy (Woodpecker Lane Press, 2020). She enjoys taking photos and being active outdoors year-round.

Featured image courtesy the poet.

Loon

The sun broke through
after three days of rain,
giving us the chance
to sit in our favorite chairs
next to the cove,
as far as we could get
from the polluting jet-skis.

The heron was expected,
returning to its nest
after a long day of fishing
on our pond and the next.
The turtles also are regulars,
often just noses poking out of the water;
today two sunning on a rock.

We would have been satisfied
with those. The loon was a bonus.
Its visits are occasional–
perhaps exploratory scouting
for safe places on this small lake,
or on the prowl for tender ducklings
(which we hope she won't find).

The lack of islands on this pond
makes loons nervous,
or so we assume, 
never having seen more than this one.
We welcome her in silence,
watch her dive, make guesses
as to where she will resurface.

(Scoby Pond, NH)

C. T. Holte grew up in Minnesota without color TV; played along creeks and in cornfields; went to lots of school; and has had gigs as teacher, editor, and less wordy things. He and his beautiful partner divide their time between Albuquerque and a tee-tiny New Hampshire cabin on a pretty tiny pond. His poetry has been published in Words, California Quarterly, Months to Years, Pensive, Mediterranean Poetry, and elsewhere, and has been hung from trees to celebrate the Rio Grande Bosque.

Featured image courtesy the poet.

Family Hike with Teenage Son and Cooper Hawk

In a line my family marches up Russian Ridge, 
the trail too narrow for a mother’s shoulder
to brush up against her son’s. 
Ahead my husband and daughter stop, 
scrunch their faces up at the sky, 
blue and bare save for a cooper hawk
flying in widening circles.
He has the sky to himself, I turn 

to tell my son, but eyes straight ahead,
he walks by me without a word. 
My own eyes sting then,
and I pretend it’s the bay leaves
underfoot, their smell bright as flowers.
Only the tall grass talks, whispering 
as we follow the curve of the hill
up and around until at last

the path flattens onto a low ridge. 
Mountains roll out below us,
the horizon musical with their curves,
the cooper hawk now at eye level, 
still tracing circles, still finding its flight pattern.
My son watches, his hands the hands 
of a man, deep in his pockets, and I steal
a picture of him, trying to capture 
the moment before the bird flies away.

Originally from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Hilary King is a Pushcart-nominated and Best of the Web-nominated poet now living in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies.

Featured image courtesy the poet.

By the River

The cliffs hold me upright.
Like crutches,
I hold them back.

They support my weight,
my wait…
as I fumble for solid footing.

I’m learning how to walk again,
through
this
new
wilderness.

Where my words, my thoughts,
are as settled as the leaves in the summer wind.

Sails.

Green and tethered,
Riding that last warm breeze
Until the fall.

Ren Demeis-Ortiz’s writing explores the intertwined nature of the natural world and the human experience. Informed by their background in leadership development, coaching, and tech as well as their experience as trans and non-binary person, Ren aims to bring about a kinder, more resilient world through their craft. Away from the page, you can find them facilitating, coding, climbing, and training Krav Maga. Their Instagram handle is @rendortiz

Featured image courtesy the poet.

New Year at North Chagrin

Somewhere on the Sylvan Loop,
between Squire’s Castle and Buttermilk Falls,
the trail crunches cold under our feet
in the winter sun.

I feel like we’re going backwards,
but that makes sense.

It’s a diversion.

We’re talking about where we are now,
not quite wanting to be out of the woods yet.

The Snowbelt sky is a rare and accidental visitor.

At the Overlook, black-capped chickadees hop close,
expecting to be fed, wings fluttering
a soft echo of brittle beech leaves.

I hadn’t planned on this
flighty eagerness for risk,
daren’t hold out an empty hand. 

Stephanie Sesic teaches writing at Cuyahoga Community College and is happiest when hiking in the Cuyahoga Valley. Her work is forthcoming at Coastal Shelf and Sunlight Press and has appeared recently in Claw & Blossom and Rascal. Her chapbook, The Intimate Verge, was published by Pudding House Publications in 2008. 

Featured image courtesy the poet.

Sonnet: A Wilderness, a Maze

I can imagine these brief woods are a wilderness, 
a maze—though there are too many signs along the way
and no minotaur to threaten slaughter should I slow, 
only a rooster who cries all day as if morning meant nothing at all. 

The path I am walking barely bends, but I have been lost 
enough to know when to ignore what I hear 
and that a wilderness can be made by merely closing my eyes 
for as long as it takes to catch my breath. 

Here now is the forest’s edge and nothing to do but return. 
A promise: when I arrive at the trail’s only fork, I will take 
the wrong turn, wander longer and later than either of us hope, 

and meet you again right where we agreed—safe from every myth. 
Please, do not worry over when. Can’t you hear the rooster’s crow? 
It will be easy to believe we are just getting started.

Weymouth Woods Sandhills Nature Preserve, North Carolina

Benjamin Cutler is an award-winning poet and author of the full-length book of poetry, The Geese Who Might be Gods (Main Street Rag, 2019). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times and has appeared in Zone 3, Tar River Poetry, and EcoTheo Review, among many others. In addition, Benjamin is a high-school English and creative writing teacher in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina where he lives with his family and frequents the local rivers and trails.

Featured image “Pine Forest Weymouth Woods” by bobistraveling BY CC 2.0

Like Smoke at the Beginning of the World

an unkindness of raven kraas in the canopy as I stumble along 
a root-filled trail through an ancient stand of cedars
leading to a cliff overlooking the ocean
where the Pacific Ocean battles
the Strait of Juan DeFuca
Cape Flattery a sacred site the Makah call
the beginning of the world   
the earth undulating with shadows created by the sunlight filtering
and dancing through the branches and leaves
Komorebi in Japanese
emerging on a tracing at the edge of a cliff
vibrating from the force of waves 
hurling massive logs against rock               
embracing the fragile box of my father’s ashes
I sing the dirge I wrote in the hospital where
my father struggled for breath
slowly dying from the cigarettes he smoked to mask 
the smell of whale blubber being turned into oil 
at the rendering factory where he worked as a child
two shadows approach the cliff through the swirl
whale and calf pause fifty feet below me
mother rolls to gaze at me with one eye 
then a sound…a song
a cetacean melody I should not be able to hear…but I do 
sung as my father’s ashes scatter to the sea and the sky
welcoming the boy who smoked cigarettes because of whales
Mother and calf slip off into the silence of the sea 
at the edge of the forest I look back and see my father’s ashes 
swirling like smoke in the wind here 
at the beginning of the world

Michael Coolen is a pianist, composer, actor, performance artist, and writer living in Oregon. In addition to three Fulbright Fellowships and four National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, he has won awards from the Oregon Poetry Association and the Oregon Writers Colony. His essay “Let Me Tell You How My Father Died” was awarded first prize in the 2017 national “Ageless Authors” competition. He’s been published in dozens of journals and online publications.

He’s a published composer, with works performed around the world, including at Carnegie Hall, New England Conservatory of Music, Museum of Modern Art, and the Christie Gallery.  

Featured image “The End” by John Fowler BY CC 2.0

Discovering Anza-Borrego

Rusty red metal sculptures
Silhouette horses rearing
Desert creatures come alive
Casting shadows across the barren land
Insect skirmish realized
130 grand scale art creations
Sprinkled
Passing over the roadside
40 foot serpent
Emerges from the silt
Like a desert safari
In an unknown land

Wildflower carpet in the
Largest California state park
Ocotillo bloom with crimson tips
Like Mother Earth’s sculpture
Contrast the arid setting
Utter silence
But the crunch of sneakers
Scrambling over boulders
Don’t poke me, cactus

Driving on mile of white glowing sand
Climb down into canyon wash
Smooth like waves or
Dripping petrified sandcastle 
But we are the crabs scurrying 
Squeezing in and out
Sucking it in as the
Light cascades down
Stay strong earth, don’t fall in now
Alien rock vista panorama home
With Martian window eyes
Slot canyon
Feels like free Disneyland

Bighorn sheep
Come down at sunrise and dusk
To drink or to admire statue
Soothing river, trickling waterfall
Hike into the wild
Palm canyon oases
Poking palms blackened
But green wigs return with sprouted new hair
On this Palm Canyon trail
Nature nurture

Jacuzzi under blaring stars 
Chilly eve, hot bodies
No light pollution
First international dark sky community
California beauty

Sunrise colors swirl into our glass box
Post and beam hotel
Palms at Indian Head
Secret bar tucked under Olympic sized pool
Bungalows remain
Hollywood escape in the 50s
70 years ago
Did Marilyn, Clark, and Will Rodgers feel the same
Under this wondrous skyscape
Where the universe expands

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California

Melissa Curtin writes about travel and food for numerous publications both online and in print. Traveling around the world at age 20 on Semester at Sea fueled her desire to globetrot and learn about new cultures. Living in California has excited and delighted her with unlimited adventures. She splits her time between Malibu and Palm Springs. Find her stories on Lonely Planet, Zagat Stories, Roadtrippers, AAA World, SoCal Life Magazine, and more.

Balancing Act

The day’s outside emptiness
moves inside, scratches 
my skin. I sleep—mute. 
At the window, sticks 
moan and sway. 

Gravel kicks up, splatters
rotting clapboard.  
I refuse to rise. The sky settles 
grey, not even daybreak 
halts the enveloping chill. 

Somedays sadness is upon me, 
an ancient, frayed quilt, spitting 
plumes, the weight of it 
wrapped heavy 
around my shoulders. 

Other days joy, light 
as a pine needle, floats
upon a downy,  
crystalline sea. 
Blue overcomes haze, 

mornings boast shadows 
and white birch––
I admire the shape 
of leafless trees, silhouettes 
cast on melting snow, 

syrup slogging 
through untangled tubes, 
while I balance 
precariously between 
slick, muddy ruts.

A hollow beside the Green Mountain National Forests, Vermont. 

“Balancing Act” was previously published in Wilderness House Literary Review, April 1, 2022

A lifelong New Englander, Laurie Rosen’s poetry has appeared in The Muddy River Poetry Review; Parks & Points; Soul-Lit; The Poetry of Nature, Vita Brevis Press Volume 111; Better Than Starbucks; Gyroscope Review and elsewhere. 

Postcard from Crater Lake

Crystal dance of sunlight, cerulean trance, depths beyond
our vision, boat cruise in morning mist. We envision the
eruption of ancient Mount Mazama, collapsed into
caldera. We walk the rim among windswept whitebark
pines, pumice landscape splashed with wildcolor—
paintbrush, penstemon, lupine. In lawn chairs on the
ledge, we watch everything fall into night, black sky &
Milky Way, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, we float in vastness. 

Crater Lake National Park, Oregon

Francis Opila is a rain-struck, sun-loving poet who lives in the Pacific Northwest. His work, recreation, and spirit have taken him into the woods, wetlands, rivers, mountains, and deserts. His poems have appeared in Clackamas Literary Review, Soul-Lit, Willawaw Journal, Wayfinding, Windfall, in addition to other journals. He enjoys performing poetry, combining recitation and playing North American wooden flutes.

Forest Solo

A fish of a leaf
turns 
its bright scale’s
cymbal 
  sheen
as it 
         falls
while some
twist 
          in its shape
makes it wobble
and drift
                sideways
down
like a jazz solo
stretched 
away
from the melody
so its fin-
    like stem
      flicks and
flits
        until
it pools
on the ground 
of scaly
  leaves
with the barest
snare brush
                cush

Grey Whale Ranch, California

Photo by Shelby Graham.

Santa Cruz poet laureate David Allen Sullivan’s books include: Strong-Armed Angels, Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a book of co-translation with Abbas Kadhim from the Arabic of Iraqi Adnan Al-Sayegh, Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet, and Black Ice. Most recently, he won the Mary Ballard Chapbook poetry prize for Take Wing, and published Black Butterflies Over Baghdad with Word Works Books. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, lives in Santa Cruz with his family, and his website is:https://dasulliv1.wixsite.com/website-1. He is an avid hiker, and has discovered a whole new set of trails during Covid.

Featured image courtesy the poet.

Tower Arch Trail

No car but ours, a sliver of road that shimmers, crunches, tosses
dust plumes, a smoke screen behind us. We disappear
into the plateau’s horizon, the high desert plain.

Views of the La Sal Range slathered in snow, pale green
pinyon, stunted juniper soften the view of red cliffs ahead.
My husband and I, lovers of open spaces are we.

“Tower Arch Trail,” the ranger had advised, scrutinizing
our well-worn Tilly hats and seventy-two-year-old faces.
“Few tourists make the drive, take the climb.”

We hoist packs to our backs, adjust poles and hats, the trailhead
empty of cars, Utah’s morning a threat to pale complexions.
Hiking in isolation makes me shiver.

Gentle switchbacks, easy at first, then sheer rocks ahead.
One toehold then another, not within reach. He disappears
from view, me waiting on the ledge.

With no pack, no poles he’s back, pledging to pull us both up, over
the ridge. Strong, gnarly fingers grip mine, sweat trickles, poles
dangle, clanging into rocks.

Standing atop, shaky and parched I look down, down, down.

So high, we meander, smooth rock underfoot, a shelf in the sky. Sandstone
fins, giant soldiers marching across sliprock, arches weathered and worn.
Cacti’s fuchsia and yellow blossoms bloom in the dunes, the air, alive.

Finally, the prize: Tower Arch, 100 million years in the making
spanning ninety feet, a palace entrance, a proscenium
for dinosaurs, a cinnamon-colored work of art.

We linger in a patch of shade,
gifted with intimacy on the trail.
We don’t speak of it.
There is no need.

Janet Banks is a Boston-based writer whose personal essays and poems have been published by Bluestem Magazine, Cognoscenti, Poetry and Places, The Rumpus, Entropy Magazine, Silver Birch Press, Persimmon Tree, Poetry and Covid, a project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council as well as other online sites. Shortly after retiring from a corporate career, she was published in The Harvard Business Review. The essay was reprinted in HBR’s Summer 2020 Special Issue: “How to Lead in a Time of Crisis.” She is currently developing a collection of poems about aging, the concept of time and the need to create a future when you are old. 

Walking West

Eyes pinched tight, we span the narrow neck
A strand of sandstone stretched across the sky
Bighorn Mesa spreads out to the west
Beyond the reeling cliffs that fall away.

The dust of half a desert on the air
Turns noon to blurred pastel. The wind is raw
It bites through sweaters, follows us around
The corner of the alcove, meets us at the draw.

We walk on rims above the canyon trails
Where rock folds on itself and swallows dive
Searching secrets out of every twist,
In half a day we walk a half a mile.

Scarlet paintbrush bursts from scoured stone
A tadpole grows old in a perched pool
What fills us while the wind sings like a coyote:
Red rocks, blue sky, Green River.

Island in the Sky, Canyonlands National Park

Susan Marsh lives in Jackson, Wyoming. She has combined her interests in writing and natural history in a body of work that explores the relationship of humans to the wild. Her poems have appeared in Clerestory, Manzanita Review, Dark Matter, Silver Birch and other journals and anthologies. Her poetry chapbook This Earth Has Been Too Generous is forthcoming in fall 2022 from Finishing Line Press.

Featured image courtesy the poet.