in pursuit of harmony

 

of slope, stream, forest, and us

every time we make our way back to the Smokies,

I intensely feel the call to savor these moments

of slope and stream and forest,

where nature, geology and biology,

are still free enough to remind us

that our dominion over the Earth 

is temporary, limited, illusion,

we need to be slapped awake

like that first shock of early morning air in the winter

or with the brusque reset of our systems

when we immerse in a mountain stream,

we need to be humbled, 

to be put in our place,

and we are, if we open enough,

this house, this home. hard against the creek,

was created by my parents

as a place to fully find ourselves as family,

as a place to build toward community and harmony,

as a place in which the best within us

can work to be true to the best outside of us,

every moment here can open us to glory,

if we're lucky,

we can find that within

that can harmonize with the music 

that is all around us.

by Henry H. Walker

August 19, ‘26

Kodak: "Wear red in the woods!"

 

of the cardinal flower

the last month of summer

has not been a time for us to be here in the Smokies,

for decades we have returned 

to home and work in the piedmont

before August is halfway over,

a bittersweet sign for us to say goodbye to our mountain summer

has been the first appearance of the cardinal flower,

as if following Kodak's advice,

it lives a brilliant red to draw the eye to it,

within a world so green

that the eye can be lost 

within a grand wash of chlorophyll,

we return today to the mountains,

and the cardinal flowers, some of which we have planted,

welcome us with their hellos,

with the clarity and sureness they calmly assert,

it is good to be centered by such a reality.

by Henry H. Walker

August 19, ‘26

the interaction of word and thought

 

Word!

what is the relationship of word to thought?

a concrete reality, a noun,

can be obvious in the equivalence of word and thought,

what's in front of us, "apple" for the fruit sitting there,

much, though, of our thinking is far more abstract and intangible,

the word itself creates a new reality

of concept and relationship not held before the word captures an idea,

a word that speaks to a truth just within our ability

to stretch enough to hold it,

I learned the word "pareidolia,"

it expresses our need, our ability,

to perceive recognizable pattern in the shapes before us,

a face in the clouds or in the branches,

a geometric pattern that reveals a truth,

like the spiral for Indigenous creators of petroglyphs,

the seeker within feels something important in the universe around them,

and finds how to precipitate meaning from out of the random,

as I focused on our grandchildren learning to speak,

I saw an openness in speaking 

as they sought to see patterns

of relationship, to see depth to reality.

they opened themselves into a burgeoning understanding of pattern,

they sought how to find words, sounds

that could hold pieces of the world before them,

and allow those pieces to fit together into meaning,

sounds that increasingly revealed what could be known,

what should be known, what will be known,

each of us then can break free

into the power of the complexity outside and within us,

we ache to understand

and to then act upon the world,

think of the word "love,"

and of how the very word 

demands we understand and act upon a reality

that is as real as the apple,

but a reality that demands we expand ourselves

and use language as both a holder and a creator of meaning,

can we love without the word itself?

by Henry H. Walker

August 18, ‘26

still noticing glories

  

good for the soul

as aging reduces some of the doors into the wild

I can readily open,

I easily slip into obsessing 

about the loss of those doors,

once a vital part of my year--

particularly the annual Mt. LeConte trek:

intense exertion, sunset and sunrise from the mountain's long top,

camaraderie with family and friends,

good food and drink and sharing

within the spruce-fir, as if we'd transported to Canada,

and found ourselves held within the spirit of Mary Oliver,

or maybe within that of Loren Eiseley,

whose joy in the wild was blessed with scientific insights,

I would take middle schoolers every May to the Smokies,

lead them on a 10-12 mile hike 

up Mt. LeConte, the fourth highest peak in the East,

or up Mt. Cammerer, with the Appalachian Ridge dropping steeply below it,

or to Ramsay Cascades, a high waterfall with no trail above it

up the next two miles to the top of Mt Guyot,

the third highest peak east of the Rockies,

they would experience, write, share,

allow themselves to be transformed,

my aging body is daunted by the possibility

of reprising any of those three hikes,

each experience was of an "I-Thou"

relationship to the natural world,

within which each of us had the opportunity

to slow down and notice glory outside us, 

and then within us,

I will now miss such long efforts

that shouted at us and thus demanded

to be heard and appreciated,

instead I now seek other opportunities

for the natural world to speak clearly to me,

still its "Thou" to my "I,"

in quieter  ways, no less intense in revelation,

just subtler in their offerings,

perhaps the eruption overnight of fungus,

such as the incredible Amanita mushrooms I saw last week,

perhaps the subtle shades and textures 

of a sensuously morphing cumulus cloud,

a fairyland tableau of moss or lichen,

the eloquent bark of a beech tree,

the soft laugh of a small rapids,

the cascading view from an overlook,

my soul is not diminished now like my body,

it just needs shorter immersions to find what it needs,

my body cautions me to do less,

while my soul craves to do even more

in noticing the glories within where I am,

within where I still can be.

by Henry H. Walker

August 14, ‘26