Back in late September having returned early from a trip that was far too long to be as short as I made it, I drove to the southwest corner of Mt. Baker to make my way to a place called “High Camp”. Those weeks hold motion in the air, knowledge of the equinox is not required to feel the rotational axis of the earth becoming perpendicular to the Earth-Sun line or knowing somewhere in the recesses of primordial awareness that night and day were close to achieving relative parity, however brief. The sun no longer graces the Tropic of Cancer having fled to the equatorial plane and we here above the 47th parallel are left to stain our mouths with huckleberries and anticipate the larches display, everything in relation to the other from the cosmic to terrestrial, the glacial rivers rising as the sun does, a solar tide, governed by thermal exchange in lue of lunar gravitational forces. Being subject to such an exchange of energy glacial rivers are best traversed before dawn and so I did only this time I would seek the source. Once the trail diverges and a short ascent up what resembles a berm created by earth moving equipment until reaching the boot packed trail on top leading to the southernmost lobe of the Easton Glacier the scale is revealed. In the case of the scablands or Dry falls we can think cataclysmically in terms of time, a sudden violence unleashed, unchecked, the brakes have glassed over, emergency lanes occupied, all variables have been reduced to the square root of certainty and our taxes have already been paid. But what stretches south of the Easton Glacier represents nothing of the cataclysmic, rather a geologic palindrome written by time. Standing on the western most lateral moraine looking eastward attempting to discern glacial striations, attempting to understand the interplay of forces I have neither the vocabulary nor the vision to fully hold and again I am lost. How many times have I sat on the mountains seeing without sight, listened without hearing, allowed the glacial till to run through my fingers feeling nothing but particles of dust? Worst yet are the moments of action filled with the hubris of the absolute; certain of the Verbum Dei. I sat after six miles and thousands of feet of elevation gained attempting to work out the details of a life I don’t understand, close my eyes, attempt to carve petroglyphs on the inside of my skull diagramming rotational tilt and geologic time, hoping that while etching I’ll induce a form of synesthesia allowing me the sight to see photosynthesis in the taste of delicate alpine berries.
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