Category: Travel

I don’t get off the mountain much, but when I do, I tend to blog it.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

The Way to the Ocean

the way to the ocean
goes through New Jersey

named for an island
where a king once kept his head

on the other side of the Atlantic
an inch and a half farther away each year

which sounds like a tall tale
a sailor might tell

if boardwalk barkers didn’t already
cover the waterfront

on the way to the ocean
circling vultures turn into gulls

fish crows
quack like ducks

a mockingbird riffs from the roof
of a manufactured home

in a manufactured village
right off U.S. Route 322

which has somehow caught up with me
after we parted in the mountains

i walk its broad shoulder
past brown fields and brownfield sites

it’s early spring so most green things
are aliens: privet ivy multiflora rose

aside from a few
prickly natives:

American holly Atlantic whitecedar
and the pines the pines

their high pitch where forest fires licked
what the locals call sugar sand

ducking into the woods
i find an old homeless camp

collapsed tent frame
discarded high-visibility coveralls

on the way to the ocean
is no way to live

to settle like fallen leaves
wherever the wind takes us

living on the road means
a groundhog oblivious to traffic

burrow hidden in a tangle
of Oriental bittersweet

or a burger place across the road
from a billboard for addiction recovery

a farmer on a backhoe
leading a small herd of goats

pray, hope & don’t worry
says a sign by someone’s mailbox

beyond which I find a faded
bouquet of artificial roses

hanging upright where i imagine
it had been flung from a car window

the right of the people to keep and bear arms
shall not be infringed says a billboard

across the highway from a weeping cherry
in full glorious bloom

i turn onto a smaller road
past a resort campground

lakes are easy to make here
where the Atlantic once beached

circling one of them on foot
i am accosted twice

by people wondering whether i’m lost
or am looking for someone

and neither is a question i quite
know how to answer

a woman embracing a bear of a man
rumbles past on a Harley

and off under the pines
all around a derelict trailer

i spot the bright green flags
of skunk cabbages

the way to the ocean
doesn’t wait for continental drift

though perhaps it could i think
standing on the beach at Ocean City

gazing out at the immensity
for a heartbeat or two

then down to my feet
at scallop shells

reminding me that any road
can become a route for pilgrimage

you can walk the boardwalk
out past the end of capitalism

lie down in the sand
and rust

because the true way to the ocean
must begin at the ocean

students running with a kite
a man watching a fishing line

a child who digs shallow holes
and lets them fill with sky

with gratitude to my cousin Heidi Myers Suydam for all her hospitality

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Our Lady of the Alleghenies

so often the sky looks more
maternal than the earth

i am listening to the traffic
of wind through bare trees

snow on the cliffs growing
roots of ice

from the drained lake
a mechanical thumping

I recall a feeder stream
in lurid unrhyming orange

what’s behind the allegheny front
but played-out coal

the late afternoon light
gains a hint of sunset

warm air dancing with cold air
the clouds turn voluptuous

and the distance even bluer
my own mountain included

on the way home
the apparition of an old man

bent nearly double beside the road
dragging a full bin of trash

the next day snow falls
soft and heavy even in the valleys

with winds off the front
molehills become mountains again

trees are striped white
on the weather side

down in the hollow i spot
the first winter wren in weeks

bobbing with excitement
at the end of a snowy limb

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Les fleurs de l’hiver

in a brown study of a winter
anything bright draws the eye

one snowflake
wandering through the forest

the scarlet crest
of a pileated woodpecker

her knocks inaudible
above the ridgetop wind

working her snag all the while
i sip my afternoon tea

under a table mountain pine
whose sighs are endless

the sun almost comes out
but then it doesn’t

graupel ticking in the leaves
leads me to witch’s butter

a yellow rose turned
to enchanted flesh

feeding on the fungi they say
that feed on the dead

orange ellipses
on black birch

when bees are imaginary
any brightness can bloom

even green rocks held aloft
by upturned roots

or corrugated steel
chthonic with rust

below the ruin of a pine
sky filling the round holes

where limbs once stretched
toward the sun

Posted on by Dave Bonta

January Thaw Walk

Bell Gap again

raindrops land with a random
industrial rhythm

on the metal roof of a trail shelter
wrapped in fog

a flash of white from a woodpecker’s wings
as i set out again

feeling parenthetical
under a black umbrella

at the two mile marker
a greenbriar vine’s final leaf

fog retreating up the mountain
doesn’t use the trail

the wet cliffs seem to glow
i page through shelves of blue shale

looking for fossils i find
hibernating lady beetles

and snow hiding below the rocks
protected by rhododendron leaves

that must’ve been stripped off
by high winds

in the place of white birches
i remember my former life

in a distant city
my own tongue gone strange

i walk through a river of cold air
flowing down the gorge

at the by-gone railroad’s
horseshoe bend up the mountain

entering the cloud
i pull on my poncho

to the accelerating pulse
of a ruffed grouse drumming

i’m agog at the beadwork
of rain on every twig

ridge lines begin to emerge
above the clouds

an erasure as selective as
a song dynasty landscape

hiding a highway
and half the sounds of traffic

four chickadees forage
in the trailside sumacs

a white birch appears
through a hole in the clouds

on the side of the next mountain
but i’m turning back

on the slope below me
stark naked branches

where a porcupine has been
exercising his teeth

feeling peckish myself
i pick up a bunch of wild grapes

that old taste of wine
left out too long

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Rock Creek Park

a forest winds through the heart
of the empire’s capital

where i was born more than half
a century ago

great white mother oaks
hegemonic in their own way

keep the soil just right
for oaks and hickories
tulip trees and American beeches

though English ivy is still a menace
with its hooks and ropes

and where a pair of oaks have died
invasive wineberry creeps in

as do i through a corner park
watched by security cameras

a yellow-bellied sapsucker
sounds his vuvuzela

joyful shrieks of children
from the tower block housing
echo through the ravine

the Rockefellers have added razorwire
to their perimeter fence

beyond which the trail
gains signage and blazing

in the soft light
of an overcast winter day

beeches and people seem cut
from the same gray felt

dead leaves still cling
like worn-out slogans

some twigs brandish antiflowers
of sooty mold fungus

where aphids must’ve insinuated themselves
between bark and bite

chunks of a broken jack o’lantern
decorate the hillside

the creek below making
an understated thunder

through its namesake rocks
blowing bubbles

a song as slow and deep
and bone-weary

as one might expect
from the ancient core

of mountains that had to die
for the Appalachians to rise

now the park service builds ladders
for the fish

a beech tree growing where
a flood took out the bank

perches on a skeletal mound
of thin-skinned roots

nearby a gray squirrel
with black fur noses about

watched by a figure
in a black hood and cape

who half-turns at the sound
of my camera’s shudder

and i begin to feel the cold
through my thin-soled boots

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Frankstown Path

to someone from the hills
how much seems to hide

in a river valley
where everything’s in the open

members only
says the dick pic

on the remains of a bridge
for a vanished road

you don’t belong
say the name plates

turned blank again by years
of riverside mildew

here’s the poured concrete
shell of a house

almost everything organic
has rotted out

if you put your ear up to it
you can hear the sky

over there a dry canal bed
with thirsty sycamores

and a pyramid built
to kiln quarried lime

strata standing on end
like books on a shelf

paged through
by omnivorous roots

every floodplain is built
on wreckage and erasure

this is an indian path
on the oldest maps

people wandering upstream
deep into the hills

but not like shad
returning to spawn

more like shadbush
marooned on mountainsides

condemned to bloom only
when no one’s looking

while the flood sows
its own seeds

pods and baubles
evolved to float

horsetails bamboozling the ground
into turning vertical

but it’s privet that crowds
so many others out

running rampant after its escape
from the hedge clippers

clinging to its leaves as if this
were still the old country

passers-by direct me
to a midwestern native

american wahoo with
its pink capsules blown

revealing the fleshy red arils
so like its cousin bittersweet

glowing in the low
december sun

a hillside boulder chooses
this moment to depart

ending its journey
a foot from the trail

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Allegheny Portage Railroad

climbing this cold mountain
half your face in shadow

moon which daytime cloud
have you made your nest in

immense turbine blades
are rising and falling

above the trees
above the roar of traffic

where a cold hiker
can feel drawn

to a dark twist of roots
suspended above a ravine

or a cliff shaggy
with hipster icicles

along a trail designed
by the national park service

to showcase ‘a gateway
to western settlement’

i keep mistaking the sound of the turbines
for my own pulse

a runner in ultralight shoes
shadowed by clouds of breath

keeps his eyes on the ground
a steady incline

built to haul canal boats
over the allegheny front

while below the trail
in a 200-year-old culvert

for a creek that’s wandered
off into another bed

i gape at stalactites of ice
dripping into a pool

bright with late afternoon sun
the whole glowing summit

captured there
under an arch of mortared stone

the red west of sunset
here and now

no need to ride
off into it

***

For more, see the NPS website.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Frankstown Branch

a river flows through the heart
of a nearby mountain

banks lined with sycamores
limbs luminous as moonlight

and the ghost of a canal
there just long enough

for Charles Dickens
to patronise it

now it’s a rail-trail
looked after by local farmers

and in the late autumn light
it can still transport

i watch a large black ball
float sedately downstream

mergansers flushed by a jogger
fly low over the water

under the outstretched
sycamore limbs

with their summer hunger for sun
to make more baubles

i pass an Amish man
dressed in blaze orange

taking his rifle
out for a stroll

among crumbling walls
the exuviae of bygone quarries

doorways open into
what’s left of the earth

soot-darkened soil
where Dickens saw

light gleaming off
from every thing

when he took a brisk walk
upon the towing-path

and after nightfall frowning hills
sullen with dark trees

which were sometimes angry
in one red burning spot high up

colliers turning those dark trees
into mounds of charcoal

to feed the iron furnace
its stone stack roaring

enough like a volcano
they named it Mt. Etna

so much radiance squandered
on an industrial revolution

one remnant section of canal
forms a backwater

floating leaves
still in their autumn red

suspended like memories
among reflections

i pass the former iron master’s mansion
just off the trail

its gorgeous stone work
its collapsed porch

behind me in the distance
a rifle speaks

the river runs slow
and green

***

Quotes are from Dickens’ American Notes

Posted on by Dave Bonta

On the Far Side

getting unlost again
i leave the car at the overlook

follow the trail down
the far side of the mountain

where a flash flood preceded me
in the wee hours

scouring the steep parts
mounding up leaves on every flat

it’s the day after thanksgiving
and the day before deer season

a half-mile from the highway
i find a pair of black trousers

sprawled beside the trail
i fold them and put them back

the trail meets another trail
on boardwalks over a spring

passes three camp sites
on the shore of a long-gone pond

goes up over the front
porch of a cabin

and back into the forest
where oak and hemlock shadows

darken and fade as the sun
goes in and out of hiding

i leave the trail
bushwhack through mountain laurel

gape at a massive rock oak’s
full-throated silence

black birches perch
on exposed skeletons of roots

i follow forest roads
the second one gated

past what must be
a research plot

a large fenced enclosure
full of small flags

and much to my surprise find
the unblazed trail i’m looking for

back up the ridge
the forest on my right

facing off against pole
timber on my left

to the windy crest
its rocks and vertigo

gaps in the trees revealing
gaps in the clouds

patches of sun that cross
the next valley and vanish

while off to the south all
the mountains shine

here in the gloom pileated woodpeckers
are stripping bark off a tree

i pass three hikers discussing
the perils ahead

the clouds thin out
and the rocks begin to glow

sunset colors in mid afternoon
at a place called david’s vista

a young man appears
and climbs a ridgetop pine

in the bitter wind
makes himself comfortable

another david perhaps
hoping to be found

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Tussey Mountain: a walking poem

day breaks
into increments of gold

a falling leaf flits back and forth
like a doomed moth

acorns gestate
in the throat pouch of a jay

the breeze is spicy with rot
i take deep lungfuls

nuclear armageddon
is trending on twitter

the bluestone road
seduces me again

*

each of my feet aches
in its own way

the left to take wing
the right to take root

they take me where hemlocks
pry open the rocks

and vultures drift past
without flapping

a section of trail famous
for being hard on boots

it is difficult says the guidebook
to get any rhythm going

as you step from rock
to rock

but this is the music
i grew up with

a grouse cups his wings and drums
on the skin of the air

*

distant booms
a shooting range perhaps

the sun goes in but
the yellow keeps glowing

chickadees announce my presence
in unflattering terms

to a mixed flock feeding
on mountain ash berries

a rock shifts under me
i shift with it

at a trail intersection someone
has dug a hole in the rocks

revealing the water table
its serving of birch leaves

farther along the hemlock
burnt from below

by an untended camp fire
that turned roots to charcoal

two years later it’s dead
but for one last limb

stripped down to the skeleton
for a sky burial

*

descending the flank of the ridge
i find a proper spring

yellow coral mushrooms
extend crossed fingers

the mountain can punish
moments of inattention

but i am a bad student
i walk in two places at once

a place of wings
and a place of roots

that night the moon flies
through prismatic clouds

at its brightest
and most manic

stained by the dark
beds of seas