“We go up the mountain
we go down the mountain” –
the mantra –
spit hard between steep steps and hot breaths –
one hundred and eight times –
to the deafening beat of gravity –
admiring the infiniteness of leaves, petals and blades –
an everchanging sum of parts –
I walk down the mountain side.
“We go up the mountain we go down the mountain”
the terrain changes fast in the backcountry –
forest hearth –
canopy rock –
and glacial streams alternate –
and often fall sideways –
dead arms branching out omnipotently like a Ganeshian nightmare –
I know the Lord of Obstacles will lay here dead long after we leave –
and again, before we arrive.
“We go up the mountain we go down the mountain” –
I had been here before –
half a life ago –
but feeling much longer than that –
I remembered the songs of ice melting –
a gentle respiration is mama nature’s scream –
I remembered the clearings –
the ascent –
the crown –
but not the down –
for I was on the way up.
“We go up the mountain we go down the mountain” –
so this is how a trail is made –
not in climbing but in the descent –
each muscle exerting three times the force –
to slow it down –
no one teaches the descent –
we run at times –
climb duck and lunge at others –
carving our prints into the trail into the mountain –
no one teaches the descent –
so I walk the end alone.
“We walk up the mountain we walk down the mountain”