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by Alison Knowles
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Flaky bark in common cone is stand of jack pine
Fires a process of necessity and near at hand ignite naturally
the mountain pine is now forbidden flames
Stands of gray silk trunks the whole hill taken down
Still in the mountains we do not know ever exactly
what country we are traveling in
small probable rise then tumbledown rock scree
scramble on all fours
green all the way all day in Canada
thistle and small butterfly bee to Cory Pass
hawk crow and raven do come up so high
Describe the Ponderosa pine lengthwise with a stick
branch and foliage tufted towards the end
needled and coned in devils paintbrush summer attire
How things look is how things are in southern Manitoba
All come vulnerable to the mountains
the old trees commonly wind-thrown
appear to accept the human intervention
Mill wheel to sluice box
Ponderosa pine clear cut to soak and dry at harvest
red to brown smooth to furrowed thick blackish plates
man stages in his program to make the mountain authentic
like the picture says
First coming by train we stayed a week
and now by car hoping for a picture postcard day
The mountain absents itself under the pressure
a hoary marmot in the sun
Twig short hairless yellow green to orange but with sharp point
Resinous second to the Douglas fir the Ponderosa for use in sashes
frames door mouldings panelling patterned cabinets boxes
and particularly crates
Cone bearing tree in cluster of five at the crown finely toothed on margin
seedwing rarely visible in three concealed twigs
The cultural other and the natural order are widely spread apart
In pursuit of red jack pitch Alberta and Saskatchewan
Spiral twist dark green to yellow clear cut down the trees
to rail ties and local fuel
"Natural hot springs a lucrative destiny for these mountains" he said,
Landscape a process mountains as fantasy as triumph or as guilt
Jackpine arching branch and tapered trunk prospers in poor soil
Staged authenticity is mountains now
fires always in control and in the right place a process away from nature
We lose the mountains for the trees
The crown two hundred feet to see is gently swaying from the top
smiles down at lesser trees not touched by this wind
Sapwood very wide from white to pale yellow cone
scale seed is wingless globular
and regularly stunted in exposed situations
June August and September
Ponderosa pine cone seeds to bird and rodents tear them up
a tough and hairy greenish gray to nearly black and fissured bark
a scattered western foothill scape of lumber pine
Southern Alberta space and Rocky outcrop in strong winds
grow where other trees would not
heather prevails in mats of sedge depressions where the snow is deep
special growth includes the cushion plants
wedging in crevices with purple saxifrage
pink pyrola Butterwort and moss campion
alpine rockcress and mountain sorrel
Lousewort and contorted Lousewort
Drummond's Anemone and Chalice flower
blooms of fringed Grass of Parnassus
Powdered root of Solomons Seal helps to clot the blood
And starflower widespread in open meadow
roughfruited bell form and worty like the other lily
wooly Pussytoes tall white bog orchid
chokeberry leaves and twigs eaten by deer elk and moose
Saskatoon used fresh in soups
and dried for winter
from bluff and open woods
Great size and foliage alone
make Hellebore a sight impressive massed together
powdered flower and Pearly Everlasting
rubbed on horses hooves and in ears giving spirit
prefers moist sites in valley bottom
Pearly Everlasting Bishop's Hat or Bare Stemmed Mitrewort
fringed threads as strung between a crafted jewel
Bend down for moss in wintergreen terrain is worth the fragrance
Leaves three let it be Colt's Foot White Thistle and Wooly Pussytoes
Fleabane Chokeberry and Chalice Flower
Parry Oat Grass and Yellow Columbine
Juniper, the common Juniper
and various willows shrubs as Gooseberry
and in a meadow of the Montane zone
nodding onion Wild Gaillardia and Blue Clematis
Baneberry Fireweed and Asters
Bluebeard Tongue and Goldenrod a wetland complex
Vetch and Willow to sedge Meadowscarlet
feathered moss lichen like flame hats every stone
Twinflower and several Wintergreen
Bronze Bell Northern Bedstraw
Common Yarrow and even Mountain Heather dominate the Grassland
Systems maintain when flower is lifted
run-off sluice is down before the avalanche
Glaciers in full melt and rain make rivers easier to cross by morning
The upper portions of the watershed secure of beaver
In the mountain Finding the Lost Child that's the trail to follow
Snap Dragon and Pale Lobelia some food for thought in Thimbleberries
"The right songs I forgot the right songs"
but needing to sing she does so anyway in open meadow
Humble roadside blooming weedy Dandelion and a Blue Verveine
Obedience to ways of being found here in the woods
Railways go through but do not terminate in Canada
Self healing nature body sweats by dew
walk gently as to feel her every breath
store up her influence in blooms and breezes
the particles of scree run roundly down
to find the moon in water underfoot
a living mountain body maintains the dissipations of a needy world
Snowbed filled with ragwort blooming
an alternate beginning of the Southbound trail
Free and whimsy nature knowing and not knowing excludes no one
With peaceful passion Ponderosa pine tree
takes the time in any place to make its culture
The breathing of crickets under the sod
our own small boreal night light
The rocks and trees will come to you
if you have leisure to be met the pines will meet you
Bunch grasses herbs and river valleys have their northern limits
Scattered Tamarack and Eastern Hemlock
native people left in a few places function to authenticate the situation
Coned Black Spruce White and Trembling Aspen It is a Poplar
European cultural other creeps on up the hills into the mountains
an occasional chateau
we carved another path north of the lake Southeastern as not on the map
And in a small cave a ptarmigan steps with delight
on abundant droppings of brown bats
the northern wilds of Jasper Park are fairly few
sporadic over a few decades
Chinook tornado winds three metres wide cuts a swath of trees
at Deer Creek clear down to Heaven Junction
With naming comes identity and comfort
it makes us feel we know about it all
enhance security and make it more like what it is?
Great nature wild has no road to the lake
the trail ends with the Old Moraine the basins boulder field
with spruce tea served by Native people weekend afternoons in summer
Particularly spectacle the ramparts of Mt. Bess
The process starts we don't know how the mountain mass discomfort
two inches moving on the mobile ocean floor
it keeps itself going the rocks compressed from the sides
the shrinking crust of earth
planes thrown into folds making irregular shapes of themselves
dates are unwieldy the lamination of events in tall trees
Like a wave the mountain rises with catastrophy it crests and breaks
a million years in growing pines are rent by giant power
to set enchantment free again
for dreaming for fancy and for wandering
intelligent and peaceful under the sky
the mountain mudcracked shale concretions top
at the top cross bedded limestone windy peak
this place will pay its way and keep to promises
Bunchberry and calypso orchid
Ponderosa Pin~on Pine and One seed Juniper
wild turkey and Gambel Oak
The stress of time on natural condition prehistoric caves into Las Vegas
white hills in a sandstone climate Pueblo Chihuahua
water serpent turtle moon Chamisa Nauseosis
a great antiquity in plants and with dry color
Blue Gamma grasses Sideoats and Black Gamma
Canada Wildrye Bottlebush and Squirreltail Deer Vetch
Mountain Lupine Locoweed Blazingstar with Cane Cholla
Stinging Nettle Stickleleaf
Throughout the year the rootstocks peeled away
within the yellow flower
dust a fleshy sheathing of the stem
Yampa abundant Four-winged Saltbrush Sage
Sacred mountains mark the borders of the homeland
gather clouds to target the lightning
Scarlet Penstemon and Wooly Mullein Rubiaceae is rose madder
Snakeweed Broom and Firewheel Perky Sue and Pussytoes
Fleabane Saisify and Yarrow
A wooden steeple partially destroyed remains suppressed
a low but restored school caravans the trail borderlands
corn husk tamales eat here or take out
at no great depth is salt the sign says Running Water
Describe the Ponderosa lengthwise with a stick
Major Prickley Peat Aster Greenthread and Ragwort
Fendler and Claretcup Hedgehog
"The Anasazi used the caves in this canyon for homes.
Bats also make their homes in caves, during the summer
a small colony of bats inhabits the cave above you. To
enter the cave you must climb four ladders one hundred
and forty feet above the canyon floor. Never enter a
cave without a ladder. Leaving the cave you may return
the way you came or continue across the creek"
Pueblo gods and goddesses
people familiar with their animals
Great Spirit evidenced by intuition
fresh and green without shadow the earth is square and flat
nature understood is right away
no need to turn the head this way and that
a tiny mirror showing no commotion poems very much design the mind
with life impurities all taking turns
perennial from fleshy worth as any weed to be
A Spanish tyranny with horses rifles arrows warfare a wild tribe
conquistadores had in mind one hand of cavaliers
Santo Nin~o with a basket
at Chimayo an informant told she comes at night in little shoes
some water and some bread the patron saint
In at least Costilla a fee to the church
Penitente Brothers enact a fundamental passion link
configuring a Spanish persistent in mystics
Southwest suggests a landscape of Volunteer Arroyo
There is a ground cause the shoulder of the return trip entails sacrifice
a mile distant
this madero is much heavier than the rest
wrapped in ropes cacti or chains and singing
Brothers of Blood it is uphill
these they are Brothers of Light to balance
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Author's Note:Frijoles Canyon is issued on CD and cassette by Aerial Productions, Santa Fe. Field Recording: Steve Peters. Producers: Joshua Selman and Steve Peters. The text and sounds derive from time spent in New Mexico and Alberta, Canada, a span of several years. Frijoles Canyon is the name of the site where the recordings were made in New Mexico.
Sources: Brothers of Light, Brothers of Blood; Villages of Hispanic New Mexico; Southwestern Indian Ceremonials; Santos and Saints; and Enchantment and Exploitation -- all from the library of Steve and Jen Peters in Santa Fe; nature books fr om the Banff Library, Alberta. Hiking companions in the Rocky Mountains supplied information and experiences.
__________________________________________________________________From Spoken Text, Left Hand Books, Barrytown, N.Y. Copyright © 1993 by Alison Knowles.
The CD and tape Frijoles Canyon are available through Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening Catalogue. This catalogue may be found at the following gopher site:
etext.archive.umich.edu / The Well / Art / New.Music / deep.listening.catalogue.
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