I'm jealous of stereo, Technicolor reruns.
Recycling old memories isn't the same.
We hiked the mountains lurking around Los Angeles
For more than a decade above the purple Detroit haze
Climbing away from the crowded freeways—
the graffiti, road rage and drive-bys.
Meeting and greeting
Black bears, big horn sheep, rattle snakes, wasps.
We waited for the elusive cougar to take a bow on that stage
While swimming in water so cold we turned blue.
Winters, we climbed through knee-deep snow while
The angry, gray sky churned in an upside down Vita-Mix.
Spring, we gasped at the thin air above ten thousand feet
Eating tuna fish sandwiches, apples, and Cliff Bars
Drinking the mountain-peak army with our eyes.
Summer, we explored the Bridge to Nowhere
In Fall, we marveled at two thousand year old, twisted trees
That survived the worst mother nature sent.
We visited the Three Ts in a blizzard,
Timber Mountain,
Thunder Mountain,
Telegraph Peak,
A wilderness that swallows carless campers.
Where do those memories go
When we are gone?
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so long as we can live and relate those memories now,
and, my friend, you do it so well.
I like the phrase, the purple Detroit haze.
-gene.
Be always safe,
Karen
..."Drinking the mountain-peak army with our eyes" is, for me, the outstanding image in this fine memoir, days re-lived vividly, richly with a proper nostalgia for what was, not gushing but strongly embedded, and that great question at the end makes me sit up straight.
John