Not the usual image you find on these pages, but I couldn't resist. It was just one of the special moments we enjoyed a couple days ago. In fact...

We had the most wonderful drive across US 50, dubbed "The Loneliest Road in America," and for good reason. Not many vehicles on the road (saw, we think, more cyclists on some kind of cross-Nevada rally) than cars/trucks/campers. No billboards. Well, one as you come into Ely, NV (McDonalds). Just a fabulous, well-paved road up and over 8 of the 12 summits (did 2 yesterday; 2 to come on Monday) of the state's basin-and-range land. Utterly exhilarating. We stopped in one of the very few towns for gas then a cup o' java to go with Roger's favorite treat: a cinnamon bun, this one 1.5 inches high and the size of a salad plate. It was so sticky I feed it to him (and had some nibbles myself) bite by bite. So, definitely heavenly. I got choked up three times by the landscape, open and wide across the alkali basins, and climbing into and coming down out of the mountains. Delicious driving. One of the best drives EVER!

And tomorrow, we complete the basin-and-range journey as we head into Great Basin National Park, one where neither of us has been. It's its own geological wonder, called a basin because there is no drainage from the park to the sea -- and we talking thousands of acres. The park, at elevations exceeding 10,000 feet above sea level, is home to bristlecone pine trees, the oldest living organisms on earth. I "met" some a few years ago at Cedar Breaks National Monument in Utah and when I did, I cried. They are the only trees that have ever made me weep. So to see them a second time will be a most joyous reunion.

After four days in Great Basin, we boogie into Utah to Capitol Reef National Park for more geological glory. This will be a third visit there. Hoping to see some bighorn sheep as we did last time...and perhaps receive the same kind of inspiration that led to my poem, "Under the Sleeping Rainbow," which I just learned has received an Honorable Mention Award from New Millennium Writings (issue due out in December).

And following Capitol Reef, on to Canyonlands National Park for a couple days of hiking on the Colorado Plateau.

Looking forward to being off the grid for nine days! No cell, no email, no computer (we won't even have electricity for our trailer). Yay!

May this blog find you all well, keeping cool, enjoying the warmth of summer.

Desert Days

Moonlit Feast at Chaco Canyon


Coyote leap—
Jackrabbit scream—
Bones snap as fur flies.


***

A month ago today, Roger and I pulled out of our driveway at home, so it's not all that hard to believe we've made it as far as Arizona with many memorable stops along the way.

The coyote in the photograph was trotting along the loop road at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in central New Mexico, a two-day visit that astounded us with its lush green oasis along the Rio Grande River. The scherzo (short poem of 13 syllables) reflects a moment in time at Chaco Canyon National Historic Park in northwest New Mexico where we spent three magical days exploring the ruins and petroglyphs of this erstwhile capital of the ancient Anasazi, a puebloan people whose descendants we know today as the Hopi, Zuni, Laguna and several other pueblo-dwelling tribes of the Four Corners region (NM, AZ, UT, CO).

The road to Chaco is 21 miles of dirt with several washboard sections. Not one to take our trailer down. So we tented in Chaco for the first time in many,many years. Days were boiling hot, the nights ch-ch-chilly (down to mid-40s), but one of the joys is that you can easily hear the night sounds. While no Anasazi ghosts haunted us, we did hear the sounds that gave rise to the scherzo. And when we stepped outside at 4 a.m., the stars were thick from horizon to horizon, the creamy rich band of the Milky Way vivid in the sky.

Since, we've had several days at Canyon de Chelly in Arizona to hike and commune with other Anasazi ancestors and watch the cottonwood trees along Chinle Wash blow their snow of seeds across the canyon floor.

We've also had some time in civilization with several days in Taos and several more in Santa Fe, where the big attraction was the new Georgia O'Keeffe exhibit at her museum there, a fabulous, inspiring selection of her abstract work. And we took a day trip from Santa Fe up to Abiquiu to take a tour of O'Keeffe's home there. Many moments of tears as I tried to grasp that I was in her kitchen, her garden and peering into the room where she slept and dreamed for so many years.

Tomorrow it's into Utah for a return visit (third time!) to Zion National Park for more canyon bliss, this time along the Virgin River beneath the towering redrock walls.

All is well in the West for the two of us.

Wishing you all visions of hope.

On a Sunnier Note

Even while the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico plays itself out, I remain a happy wife and poet.

The picture here was taken from the lanai of the condo that Roger and I bought this month where we'll be living during the winter beginning this December. It's about seven water miles upstream from the Gulf on the north banks of the Caloosahatchee River. A quiet place and one we're looking forward to furnishing and settling into: our snowbird abode. It is a dream come true we didn't know he had until a few months ago. And now it has happened: we have a Florida home in North Fort Myers.

We've also had good fortune with Roger's health. His hormone therapy continues to work and his new PSA results reached an all-time low-low of 0.05 this month. The cancer is under control for a while longer and he's doing quite well with it. A bit chubby now around the middle and subject to -- ohmigosh -- hot flashes, but all in all quite well.

We have an energetic summer ahead. On Monday next we depart for the Wild West into the desert southwest and then onto the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Be prepared for images and poems from across the country in the three months ahead of travel for us with trusty Alis Elizabeth Trailer behind the van and the two of us singing along (if you can call it that) to "Here Comes the Sun."

On the literary front, I am pleased to report that Salmon Poetry has taken my full-length book, Athabaskan Fractal and Other Poems of the Far North for publication in mid-2012. I'm on Cloud 999. It's quite a breakthrough for me and I'm pleased that the collection has a home...only 10+ years in the making...and another two before it's born. Lots of time to enjoy anticipating.

For more about Salmon Poetry, go to http://www.salmonpoetry.com/

Spring has been not only the most pleasant one I can remember -- came early, came warm -- it's been otherwise fertile for my poetry. I've seen many poems appear on the Web and in print journals, among which is River Poets Journal where I'll be featured poet this spring (coming soon to http://www.riverpoetsjournal.com/RiverPoetsJournal-Links.html).

Here are a few more links you can check out now if you're curious:

http://wildgoosepoetryreview.wordpress.com/ (two poems)

http://www.deadmule.com/poetry/2010/04/karla-linn-merrifield-%E2%80%93-four-poems/ (four poems)

http://wildamorris.blogspot.com/ (poem + analysis)

http://home.earthlink.net/~tinyviolet/thecentrifugaleyepoetryjournal/id1.html (two poems and my latest regular book review column)

I hope you enjoy. Remember: Poetry heals. And celebrates. And furthers the sacred.

Love,

Karla

Kiss of Death

I pause this morning to try to grasp the magnitude of the Gulf oil spill. As far as I know the fish in this photograph, taken on a Florida Gulf beach last winter, probably a victim of the frost kill, died of natural causes. It's one of the lucky ones. I just can't comprehend how many fellow fish and countless sea turtles and cormorants and pelicans are going to die a slimy, suffocating death because of the arrogance and greed of the robber baron BP. Never before in human history -- a short one in the scheme of things -- have we seen such devastation, and it's only just begun.

I hate to put a damper on your day. But it's good, I think, to pause before this holiday weekend and honor the newly dead and dying. And to have faith in our president who's got a mighty grasp on the situation and is doing right by us. Barack Obama has the wisdom to do the right things. And he is. The job is Herculean but this is one man who's up to it. We must do our part and stand by him even as we grieve.

Blessings to Earth this Memorial Day Weekend,

Karla

Spring Is Sprung

Forsythia and Bradford pears, daffodils and wood violets -- all abloom as we make our way north from the Okefenokee Swamp where we spent a weekend, the warmest in many southern weeks. Now in North Carolina for a few days with our family, we look back on that idyllic weekend in the great wetlands of Georgia, remembering our kayak outing on Billy's Lake (lower photo) and walks on the boardwalk through the swamp where I took the upper photo of Red Blanket Lichen (an endemic species) and Old Man's Beard (an epiphyte aka "air plant") growing on a smooth-barked Dahoon Holly Tree.


Like the Everglades, the Okefenokee is to me a sacred place, and both are mercifully preserved thanks to the National Park Service in the case of the 'Glades and the National Wildlife Refuge System in the case of the Oke'. Both places have been muses to me over the years.

So as we turn our eyes toward the warming sun and bask in its rays, enjoying the blossoming of trees and flowers, I'll leave you with this poem about the Okefenokee, written several years ago and still applicable.

Happy spring...and see you from the home front where we are due to arrive on April 3.


***


The Epiphyte on Plato’s Trees

by Karla Linn Merrifield


What it is to capture
the imagination
of a poet to go with her
into longleaf pine flatwoods
or follow her into the heart
of the Okefenokee Swamp
to be in southern Georgia
beneath its maritime
or its vast half-land inland
island canopy to be held
in its sway:

chiggers snagged in a swag
of Spanish moss itself
caught in the snarl
of live oak on twisted limb

saw palmettos netted
in thorny catbriers climbing

partly on terra firma
partly in tannic water
a black gum, a tupolo
in a coppice
in the understory
in the hardened grasp of
a strangling vine

it is a great entanglement
this forest of words
that has arisen with
some million gripping tendrils
a composition in green
profligate enchantment
where you are meant to be
one standing still

Winter Reflection

I'll say one thing about this winter: The cold -- yes, even in Florida -- has given me much time to reflect. What with three frosts (to date!) and a hailstorm earlier this week, it hasn't been kayaking weather. And the cold has taken a toll on this plein air poet who's so fond of sitting in the great outdoors to pen her verse. Still, hiking and thinking go together nicely and, with added layers to keep the brain warm, I've enjoyed letting both poetic and prosaic ideas float into my head and away with no intentions other than to listen to the ideas and let them evaporate on another gust of north wind.

One thought that did take root is that beauty survives regardless of the weather forecast. Sounds rather mundane doesn't it?! But true. So, on a chill morning along the Ochlockonee River on the Forgotten Coast of Florida's eastern panhandle, I watched the sun rise in puissant splendor, warming the North American continent toward spring, if not firing up the day much above 50 degrees.

A poet friend of mine, Tom Holmes, always urges readers at the end of his e-mails to "Find beauty." To which I will add: Let beauty find you.

Here's to the coming of spring but with joy in the grip of winter.

Island New Year's Greetings

New Year's Is for the (Tropical) Birds

Frigatebirds wheel fractals
in infinite turquoise skies.

***



Roger and I spent New Year's Day on Garden Key in Dry Tortugas National Park, a constellation of small tropical isles 70 miles west of Key West and actually closer to Cuba than the Keys!

After a tour of Fort Jefferson (once a prison for Confederacy soldiers during the Civil War) and some snorkeling (notherin to write home about, alas, but the water was soothingly warm), I stretched out on my back on a beach blanket under the warm subtropical blue skies and watched some 50 magnificent frigatebirds wheel effortlessly across the blue. It was a half-hour of pure bliss.

We also had a close encounter with a burrowing owl who was not burrowing but rather perched in a niche in the brick walls of the ammunition repository at the fort. Who, who, who knows what he was doing 70 miles at sea on a small Gulf island!

Tomorrow we'll be back in the Everglades for a week of hiking and kayaking in my favorite place on Earth! And, as 2009 National Park Artist-in-Residence, I'll have a return engagement with a poetry reading on the 9th at the Coe Visitors Center.

From there we'll be settling down in the Western Everglades' Ten Thousand Island area for a month on Chokoloskee Island. More to come from the Gulf Coast!

Happy New Year to All!