Duni’skwalgun’i guards the ancient road
indigenous peoples keep speaking to me,
though it’s hard to hear them,
for the language they heard the Earth speak
keeps being just beyond my grasp,
we hike high-up a valley
on a trail those peoples made when the Ice treated,
for maybe 10,000 years people have followed this path
high toward the top of the ridge
where now two states diverge,
even the names they used obscured by change,
now the mountain at the base of the trail is called The Chimney Tops,
whereas the Cherokee called it Duni’skwalgun’i,
a forked antler of a great deer,
maybe a mile below the ridge line,
a waterfall and its pool regularly draw us up here
to savor the beauty with eyes, with soul,
and with a plunge into the bracing water,
primal sounds force themselves from us
as we know for sure we are still alive,
and connected to all who have been here before,
and done the same.
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