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