WALKING THE WORLD: Above Timberline…a prose poem….

WALKING THE WORLD: Above Treeline...a prose poem... This is the movement of the alpine tundra, of presences which are only seemingly motionless. With the glaciers above and the forest below, I walk the pause between two great movements of earth. As vast sheets of ice pull back, the cone-shaped figures of dwarf, solitary trees venture out in advance of the rising forest below. This is one of the slowest movements of which we can be aware, one phase of a single cycle taking perhaps 10,000 years or more. Coming back, year after year, one can actually see signs of change, a direction in the movement: a pile of rocks left behind at the glacier's tongue, or new seedlings growing higher up than one noticed them before. Of course, from their point of view, this complementary expansion and contraction of forest and ice is but an in- and out-breathing of geological time. Coming as a temporary guest, the space in between these two immense waves is now filled with the alpine tundra. This is the treeless, open country of crisp air and sharp extremes. Here, the sky can be so clear that distant peaks seem only a few steps away. Plants forgo stems and vertical growth all together, retreating into isolated, dense green mats, which then suddenly leap into the brissance of cushion pink and gentian blue. Snow-free for only two or three months out of the year, in the alpine tundra, summer wakes with the intensely glowing eyes of a maiden lost to love, with but a moon or two before her beloved departs to the distant brightness of winter stars… IMAGE: The vanishing glaciers of the central ALPS, Switzerland