John Brantingham
After Backpacking Over Mt. Whitney My back’s propped against the rock wall so I can stare into the Milky Way’s middle distance or watch that creek flowing down into Owen’s Valley, and I think maybe I’ll just stay up tonight, let the stream and the sky do their thing to my head and have the ancient thoughts of water and stars. Of course, that’s when I fall asleep and dream totems that are either personal or Jungian, and who cares what they are as long as they’re drawn from the springs of the High Sierras, the waters older than these mountains, the waters that incite bears to dance their joy in the meadows downstream, the waters that will eventually split these mountains in half. They are in me.
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