tom killion.

Range after range of mountains
Year after year after year
I am still in love.

On Climbing the Sierra Matterhown Again After Thirty-one Years

Gary Snyder

October 4, 1986

-----

The random postcard I get occassionally a few times a year from the artist Tom Killion came the other day.

"Mt. Whitney from Little Claire Lake" (12" x 9")

Over the years I've amassed a little collection of these cards, which I absolutely treasure.

This one in particular is my favourite.

"Isosceles Peak & Palisades from Dusy Basin" (18.5" x 13.5")

I don't remember now how I first came across his work. Maybe just random, poking through the little cool, eclectic bookstore-slash-coffee shop in downtown Bishop, California, finding there in the heaps a copy of a book of poetry by Gary Snyder and Killion's woodcut prints called The High Sierra Of California.

Of all art (music aside of course), photography I love the most (umm, duh… ). Second though, are woodcuts.

I wish I could afford handmade art that - well - wasn't my own photography. Maybe I should offer a trade to a woodcut artist… Last fall my friend Matt and I wandered through town during one of the Santa Cruz open studios tour weekends. One woman's studio we toured was a woodcut artist. I was impressed; I wanted to buy something. Combining a little bit of lithography, screenprinting, and woodworking, it is a dream of an artform.

Anyway, the work of Tom Killion is incredible, and he details the process beautifully in that book I found in the little shop in Bishop. First, he sketches in the wilderness what will become the final print. Only one color can be printed at a time, and each color requires its own plate of sorts (in this case, they are etched wooden blocks as opposed to the aluminum plates used in traditional lithographic printing). Some of the prints can take close to three hundred hours to complete, he writes.

His work isn't excessively-priced relative to other art, and likely is quite reasonable… about four hundred dollars for a modest, twelve-by-eighteen inch print. The catch is he prints in limited runs (obviously, since all prints are done by hand), and the ones I really like are already out of print.



This one, looking up to Evolution Basin from the valley below with Evolution Creek meandering through the foreground, is my favourite.

"Evolution Valley From McClure Meadow" (12.5" x 19")

climbing.

C L I M B I N G .

Eldorado Peak, North Cascades National Park, Washington

© 2013 All Rights Reserved

At this elevation snow fields

lie like afghans for the slopes,

make shawls for the avalanche lilies.

To breathe becomes the rule,

to move,

each leg a body,

to squeeze oxygen

out of the air.

Think of conjugations

to gain five minutes.

Stopping beneath this last stand of trees

the rain slips down rocks and faces,

luminous from hours of rain,

legs prickling

inside soggy wool.

Hunched into the wind,

it whips and wraps cold fingers

around the ridges, ripping the

clouds,

and bringing an indictment; there is

no hiding on this face.

~ Phyllis Munzlinger

Excerpted from The Mountaineer, January 1977

From within the sounds and banners of the vast horizon,
        without words, into an inner silence, came:
        Remember well this magnitude.
        Lift your eyes,
            that the great meanings shall not flow by unheeded.
        See.
        The world's beauty carries in trust
            the importance of your salvation.

~ Cedric Wright
From Words of the Earth published by the Sierra Club © 1960

Afoot and light-hearted, I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune—I myself am good fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more,
Strong and content, I travel the open road.

The earth—that is sufficient;
I do not want the constellations any nearer;
I know they are very well where they are;
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens;
I carry them, men and women—I carry them with me wherever I go;
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them;
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return).

I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me;
I can repeat over to men and women, you have done such good to me, I would do the same to you.

I will scatter myself among men and women as I go;
I will toss the new gladness and roughness among them;
Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me;
Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Here is realization;
Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him;
The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

The efflux of the Soul is happiness—here is happiness;
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times;
Now it flows unto us—we are rightly charged.

Here rises the fluid and attaching character;
From it falls distill’d the charm that mocks beauty and attainments;
Toward it heaves the shuddering longing ache of contact.

Let's go! We must not stop here!
However sweet these laid-up stores—however convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain here;
However shelter’d this port, and however calm these waters, we must not anchor here;
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us, we are permitted to receive it but a little while.

Listen! I will be honest with you;
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes;
These are the days that must happen to you.

You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve.

Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and sustenance. 

Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
They go! They go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go;
But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great.

Have the past struggles succeeded?
What has succeeded?

Now understand me well—
It is provided in the essence of things, that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

I give you my hand!
I give you my love, more precious than money,
I give you myself, before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? Will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

~ Walt Whitman

Excerpted from 'Song of the Open Road' (from the larger work Leaves of Grass)

The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first;
        nature is rude and incomprehensible at first;
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

~ Walt Whitman, 'Song of the Open Road' (from the larger work Leaves of Grass)
Excerpted from These We Inherit the Parklands of America by Ansel Adams

this we inherit.

What time's my heart? I care.
I cherish what I have
Had of the temporal:
I am no longer young
But the winds and waters are;
What falls away will fall;
All things bring me to love.

~ Theodore Roethke

Excerpted from the Sierra Club Exhibit-Format Series book The Wild Cascades: Forgotten Parkland 

eldorado.

So I was going through an old box heaping with music stuff to research writing the complete story of No. 8056 mostly filling in the gaps coming across invoices for piano movers and clippings from newspapers of pianos I have sold to get to the Bechstein and in the heaps found a printout a few pages dated August 2003 from a no-doubt-now-defunct website called peakspeak.net (maybe has since morphed into summitpost.org) on climbing Eldorado that apparently I wanted to climb even way back then and it included the poem of the same name by Edgar Allen Poe that I - well - quite liked.

Gaily bedight,

A gallant knight,

In sunshine and in shadow,

Had journeyed long,

Singing a song,

In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old -

This knight so bold -

And o'er his heart a shadow

Fell as he found

No spot of ground

That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength

Failed him at length,

He met a pilgrim shadow -

'Shadow,' said he,

'Where can it be -

This land of Eldorado?'

'Over the mountains

of the moon,

Down the Valley of the Shadow,

Ride, boldy ride,'

The shade replied -

'If you seek for Eldorado!'

julian and maddalo.

© 2011 silver star mountain, north cascades, washington

... and the tide makes

A narrow space of level sand thereon,

Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down.

This ride was my delight. I love all waste

And solitary places; where we taste

The pleasure of believing what we see

Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:

And such was this wide ocean, and this shore

More barren than its billows; and yet more

Than all, with a remember'd friend I love

To ride as then I rode; for the winds drove

The living spray along the sunny air

Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,

Stripp'd to their depths by the awakening north;

And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth

Harmonizing with solitude, and sent

Into our hearts aëreal merriment.

~ Percy Shelley

annual autumn holiday in one hundred seventy-one words.

23 september.

Campground just outside the town of Banff.

Only one night in the Bugaboos.
Glacier cracking and moaning.

Weather moved in.
Rain.

Drive through Kootenay spectacular.

Light amazing.

Glimpses of impressive mountains with fresh snow.

Glaciers.

Sound of wind through the trees over din of car camping.

Smell of pines.

So much better than a hotel room.

Posh Nemo air mattress.

Pillow.

Poofy down bag. 

Going to sleep good tonight. 

Finally tired. 

Stars. 

Up before eight. 

Pulled on wool zip-T. 

Chilly. 

Campground waking up. 

Into town of Banff. 

Coffee. 

Up Bow Valley Parkway. 

Moraine Lake. 

Hike to Larch Valley. 

Throngs of people. 

Ugh. 

No wilderness here. 

Drove Icefields Parkway. 

No wilderness there. 

Cannot be impressed by glaciers viewed from the sides of highways. 

Lots of driving. 

Back through Kootenay. 

Light less impressive. 

No clouds. 

No clouds. 

No clouds. 

Hotel in Idaho. 

Shower felt good but miss the smell of outside. 

Already. 

Wind in trees. 

Cozy-warm in down bag. 

On puffy air mattress. 

Pine sweet. 

Stars. 

Stars. 

More stars.

at the edge of light.

It comes blundering over the

Boulders at night, it stays

Frightened outside the

Range of my campfire

I go to meet it at the

Edge of light.

The mountains are your mind.

~ Gary Snyder, excerpted from The High Sierra Of California

the climbers.

For next month's book project, Julian chose the 'Poetry' category and Shel Silverstein's A Light In The Attic. For his project, he'll have to pick two or three poems out and read them to his class. My favourite has always been a poem called 'This Bridge,' but he was reading the book tonight in the living room while I cooked dinner in the kitchen and I overheard another poem, which I thought was perfect ~

A mountain climbing exploration

Took us to these distant peaks

Where no one's ever been before.

Was it my imagination?

Did I feel this mountain move?

Did I hear it snore?