Touching on the Wonders

What a Solstice weekend of bounty! I hiked with the Carolina Mountain Club to Twin Falls in the Pisgah National Forest, a beautiful half-day hike of 6 miles and about a thousand feet ascent.

The hike was the icing on the cake, after camping with my honey near Grandfather Mountain and lazing away a whole afternoon tubing down the New River with River Girl.

Here’s a poem that touches on the wonders:

Camping on Summer Solstice

In the morning,

sun glints gold on the lake bowl.

A great blue stretches her sinuous neck

from a black branch against white sky,

A beaver bends her head

to succulent grass

like a Zen nun.

In the afternoon,

the river

floats our bones and

rides us into timelessness.

A veery in the woods

spills its ethereal song

of wheeling descent.

In the evening,

where the soil at the shoreline

springs spongy,

sacred reishi mushrooms

offer their burnished plates

from the trunk of a dead hemlock.

And the frolicking campfire,

now satisfied embers,

settles

into sleep.