The Free Radical

(Frozen Over by Captain Beyond from their 1972 self-titled debut album)

So cold… and so effing beautiful!

The river flows with ice like a slushy machine in need of repairs.

Downstream it chokes itself in some parody of auto-erotic experimentation… until fully sublimated.

Meanwhile, a clear blue sky vomits endless glitter for a private sparkle party…

…as individual hoodoos try to sneak away into the silence of the backcountry.

Can you imagine if it was left to our mainstream media to report on the goings on in the forest? They’d have us convinced that it’s all a nightmare of struggle and mortal combat in an unforgiving desolation… when the truth speaks of the unmeasurable depth of peace, tranquility and inner reflection.

Sure, violence happens; it underlies the food chain. But it is only the tiniest fraction of the forest’s countenance– a tiny wrinkle in an otherwise peaceful, smiling face.

Lhasa found a fresh rabbit’s foot… and Sitka quickly took it over; Lhasa didn’t mind– she don’t eat that shit!

Then Raven came to visit, swooping and circling just above our heads. He was there to remind us to see with our hearts, not through the lenses of our conditioned fears. He flew so deliberately for us, as though he wished to scoop us all up in order to see what he sees: snapshots of Life still loving itself, enraptured in its own icicle arms, embracing itself in fractal hugs.

“Do you ever grow tired of the view?” he asks nearly every day.

“No,” I answer. “Growth’s movement is never toward boredom or exhaustion.” Growth is a renewal, even in twenty below.

A newcomer circled a moment high above, reticent and shy. The markings under her wings and the band across her tail left us with a delicious mystery. “Who are you?”

I drank from the river as the dogs scooped mouthfuls of snow. We were on our way home… in all directions, always.