She relishes

the slow going

way up,

not a race,

but hopeful.

She wants to look,

but she is not lazy.

She sees water

dripping off the fern there,

The dense places cradle her

in their warm pockets of sun.

If she goes too fast she’ll miss it.

The summit almost always disappoints her.

It’s the flat open part, laying up there like a wound,

a mammilla exposed to the sun.

A place where people just want to get at, not to stay with.

It’s a quietly, lonely place that fills her with hunger.

Going down is a beautiful hurt.

She has bad knees, it goes fast.

She takes the same path down,

but that fallen tree looks different this time.

Mother Mountain, you’re impossible to forget.

She feels you in her joints and in her heart and in her breath.

Each journey to your alpine with be different for her,

But she will continue to visit you in your solitude.