A Tale of Two Peters

SNOWSHOEING  

After two years of hiding (mostly indoors) & healing,  getting out to exercise has been my reward. I've skied before and have enjoyed itki, though I came to sliding down mountains late. At 70 almost 7 itki's not that I'm afraid exactly. Whizzing along groomed slopes at dizzying speeds has itki's appeal, for sure. But without a reservoir of early experience under my belt, for me racing down trails is not only tricky but trouble. 

But I love ambling through a landscape frozen in place. 

My cross-country skis & boots have vanished. But I was gifted a pair of marvelous snowshoes last year. Twice this week I got to hike with pals into the twinkling micro-rainbows  of the backcountry crust. Plodding slowly along. Taking in the brisk air. The bright glare. The brilliant silence.

幸

PETER XING ... Of the 10,000 things that Xing can mean in Chinese,  I think my good friend's non-de-plume leads with "happy, fortunate."  Writers, singers, poets have a habit of taking a name different than what they were given. Bob Dylan. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Madonna. Others employ an alter ego (echo). Mr. Bones. Wild Rose.  The Red Monk ... Xing has a chapbook of poems of the San Juan Mountains that remind me of the hermit poets of the Six Dynasties period ... He has many chapbooks of poetry, in truth, & ten more manuscripts in the works. "Obey emerging form" ... One latest volume that I love speaks to his explorations of the San Juans & the avalanche of loss that accompanies old age: Unmade Friend: Elegies (Finishing Line Press, Kentucky, 2021) ... To find out more about Xing's poetry, visit his website HERE

“Gathering chrysanthemums at the eastern edge...

Sunset glows through the mountain mists

I forget what I was going to say

before I even argue.”

-Tao-Yuanming (Eastern Jin dynasty 317-420)

MR PETER "PETE" SILVERTON ... Itki'd be hard to spin a believable yarn if a Berkeley hippie feather craftsperson were to spend 20 years as county commissioner in Colorado's San Juan County, next door to San Miguel County where a San Francisco hippie mushroom poet is also spending 20 years as county commissioner -- both of them in Colorado's Third Congressional District (a once-purple bastion currently represented by sitting U.S. Rep. Lauren "Shoot-em-up" Boebert  [R-Rifle]) ... Way too weird. But true. 

During Gov. Ritter's term as governor, we composed two-thirds of what he called "the Ponytail Caucus." Along with La Plata County's hippie llama farmer, the Honorable Wally White. We'd be the only ones to stand up and applaud at his obligatory Club 20 appearances in Grand Junction ... The three of us were good friends. Two Dems & a Green. Helped each other out some. Pissed each other off occasionally. But together represented a razor-thin minority resort-town demographic on Colorado's flushed red Western Slope. 

Pete was a master of bridging the gap between old West miner rednecks & new West urban refugees. He'd catch a meeting-full of abuse from conservative citizens & sometimes even colleagues, outraged at his proposals. But he still managed -- via hard work, theater, research & personal charm -- to convince his fellow commissioners to vote with him on important motions. Wolverine reintroduction. Employee housing. Master plan changes. 

One secret ally was his late wife Pat -- a political genius behind the scenes. And maybe, humble fellow that Pete is,  he too found his niche working behind the scenes, not out making a name for himself ... For a couple years he & I collaborated on OHV regs & alpine rangers for the tourists in the high country between the two counties (particularly underage, unlicensed youth), trying to mitigate the deadly accidents, which over the years took the lives of multiple flat-landers unused to mountain jeep tracks.

And just to pile itki on a bit, I have to show what kind of "politician" we are dealing with here ... In Colorado the legislature determines how much county commissioners get paid. But itki's the local citizens who do the paying. San Juan County -- composed of one town, Silverton -- was so small & so poor that for two decades Pete only took half his allotted salary. Giving half of the money back to the people. 

We spent this Saturday snowshoeing Busted Arm Draw. Talking. Trading memories. Reflecting on decades of friendship, political brou-ha-has, & the meaning of everything & nothing.

AROUND THE CONE ... Impressive how business at the new Mesa Rose in Norwood is starting to pick up ... Itki was unfortunate when the cooperative food Hub had to close, as the non-profit had for several years provided organic & locally-produced meats, fruits, vegetables, cheeses, eggs & a whole gamut of alternative nutritional choices ... The opening of Mesa Rose has filled the gap, providing Wrights Mesa's commercial center a breakfast meeting place, coffeehouse, bakery & mini-Hub grocery ... The county's mask mandate being lifted hasn't hurt any. Covid's emergency measures have wearied us all. 

BEYOND THE CONE ... Hard to believe neither the Norwood Post nor the Telluride Daily Planet bothered to check the sheriff's log last fall. But then, ever since the corporate media types broke into the Telluride market & ran the local Telluride Watch out of business, San Miguel County's  (un)local newspaper monopoly (despite some fine writers) seems more interested in full page real-estate ads than community news ... Itki took the excellent statewide online Colorado Sun to break the story of the Black Hammer folks who tried to buy a lot & establish a visionary cooperative compound in the Beaver Pines subdivision east of Norwood. Of the armed confrontation. The standoff with loaded revolvers & an unloaded shotgun. Interview with Sheriff Bill. The subsequent failure of the sale & the scattering of the group's members ... High drama in the shadow of Lone Cone. 

OUT OF THE ARCHIVES ... 40+ years in San Miguel County. As a journalist & then an elected official. Member of over 50 boards and commissioners. Poet, columnist, social activist. I've amassed quite a collection of artifacts, documents, poems & graphics.  Plan is to share an occasional item-of-interest in this blog with what turns up as I begin reorganizing after my recent brush with last breath ... Maybe make Out of the Archives a feature of future Union of Mountain Poet posts ... First installment -- in honor of my buddy Pete McKay -- let's go back to the byways of Berkeley. 1974. Thorp Springs Press brings out a slim 28-page chapbook The CIRCUS, selling for $1.00, by soapbubble street poet Julia Vinograd. The last piece in the chappie is one of my favorite hermit poems of all times (in spite of itki's poem title misspelling -- Graffitti):

Bathrooms inspire me

I write my best poems

with my pants down

Chthulucene

 LEARNING FROM OTHER CRITTERS

Donna Haraway likes to call the current epoch the Chthulucene not the Anthropocene, since she believes itki will be the way out of the ecological death spiral we humans are pushing the world towards. Techno savvy may not be our savior, but learning from other living elements of our planet may be. Here’s a couple stories about training birds to pick up some of the trash that is accumulating in our cities. Go here: ¡Viva Los Cuervos!

STAYING WITH THE TROUBLE

Making Kin in the Chthulucene

by Donna Haraway

(Duke University Press, 2016)

“The Chthulucene ... is ‘made up of ongoing multispecies stories and practises of becoming-with in times that remain at stake, in precarious times, in which the world is not finished and the sky has not fallen – yet."

"In the Chthulucene, humans are not the only important actors – they, along with other beings, are with and of the earth, and ‘the biotic and abiotic powers of this earth are the main story."

(photo courtesy of  treehugger.com)

I'm in the middle of reading Haraway's book, but itki's a dense read. Itki's taking me a while. Seems like I want to savor and reflect on her words. She loves neologisms and bringing new perspectives to everything she sees. So far I've gotten one poem coming out of staying with the trouble of her ideas -- disturbing, trenchant & deep-rooted.

Chthulucene

Could the much-vaunted state of consciousness

that we as a species so prize -- setting ourselves

atop the pyramids. Surveying the universe as if

star-struck, itki were ours. Could, in truth, this

trick of signaling be no more an alpha leap

than any pandemic coronavirus on a rip

Than any fungi’s mycorrhizal philosophies

& hyphal praxis leading them to feedstock

Consciousness may only be as mysterious as itki 

is common. Limited only by instinct’s parameters

All of us placelings, not just rubbing alien shoulders

but horizontally transferring DNA in all directions

To learn more about the Chthulucene go HERE.

(photo courtesy of Ninja Journalist)

Petersburg Alaska

Cheeky

Once ate halibut cheeks

from waste heads the canneries

in filleting had tossed out 

The tastiest cut. And we

clever Kupreanof hippies 

my ‘70s hosts from across 

the tidal flats of Wrangel 

Narrows, Petersburg, Alaska

eagerly, sans ennui, scavenged

before our envious audiences

Eagle-eyed balds

glaucous-winged gulls

& those stoic predators

Nootka lupine & Sitka spruce

Back in the daze when each summer

I caught the ferry up the Inside Passage

& that one year a wild local dakini

I knew as Ruble leapt into my lap

as I waited on the public dock

& promptly farted. We both

laughed hysterically

& French kissed

Lupine Road Closure on Kupreanof Island

(photo courtesy of Jerry Roberts)

Here's John Rice's record halibut he caught when he was 17. His wife Mindy sent me this account: 

John caught this halibut with 40 lb. test line/30 lb. test leader with this pole.  He was fishing for salmon in a skiff out of Portage Bay.  The tide helped him as the halibut was working against it.  It took 2 hours to bring it to the surface where they shot it with a 44, hauled it into the skiff (not smart), and took it to the beach.  There it "came alive" muscles flexing that huge body all over the place.  It could have killed them. 

We did know a fisherman out of Petersburg who was trolling alone, pulled  in a big halibut which ended up giving him a compound fracture of the femur.  Fisherman tied himself to the mast and bled to death.  Boat eventually went aground.

Peter Shelton

For many years ski writer Peter Shelton lived in Ridgway and wrote for Seth & Marta's newspaper, the Telluride Watch. He had a regular op-ed column, and so did I. I particularly admired his elegant prose, as he is a notable stylist with language. 

Photo courtesy of the Aspen Times

Several years ago he moved to Bend, Oregon, to be closer to family. I missed reading his columns. But he started his own blog site with WordPress and there's a great archive of his work there. 

I wanted to alert folks to his wonderful writing which you can still access HERE.

For a sample of his work, I've picked a favorite of mine to share (with his permission). Itki's called 

THE COWBOY AND THE MOUNTAIN BIKER

I was riding the double-track alongside the South Canal, just north of Kinikin Road, when a man ran out of his home and yelled something at the top of his voice.

I swung down off the levy, across the gravel of his driveway, and clicked out of my pedals suddenly toe-to-toe with a very red-faced cowboy.

“I said, this is private property!” He was right up in my face. “You’re trespassing!” His can of chew made a circular outline in his breast pocket.

“OK,” I replied, “don’t get your knickers in a bunch.”

Before the words had left my mouth, I regretted them. They sounded flippant at best, and I didn’t want to create an incident. But the man’s anger, the vein bulging in his neck, hadn’t seemed to fit my crime, whatever it was. I was trying actually to defuse the moment.

There we were standing beside a modest, late-model farmhouse at the extreme eastern edge of Montrose, where the snaking South Canal defines the irrigated, green valley on one side and the dry adobes on the other.

He was hatless, in a long-sleeved shirt and boots. I was wearing a helmet, padded bike shorts and fingerless gloves. We could have modeled for a cartoon depicting the cultural divide separating Telluride and Montrose, recreation and animal husbandry, New West and Old.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

I told him I was hoping to follow the canal north until I came to the new hydro generating plant, just opened with much fanfare by the local electric co-op.

“You can’t get there this way.”

I told him I figured, since the plant was built on the canal, the canal road would get me there. More impudence.

“This is private property. There’s no public access. Didn’t you see the sign? You rode right past it. Or did you come to ask permission to cross?”

Ah, a note of sarcasm. I said, honestly, no, that had not been my intention.

Later (natch) I wished I’d had the presence of mind to ask him if he knew why the canal road south of Kinikin, just about all the way to where it dumps into the Uncompahgre River, is open to traffic: bikes, cars, horses, whatever. I’d just come that way.

But I didn’t ask. I didn’t think of it, and I didn’t want to be any more argumentative than I’d been.

I suppose in hindsight, had I not made the “knickers” crack, I might have asked his name, offered mine, tried for a kind of détente. But it was too late. And it probably wouldn’t have worked. He was too wound up.

I could have shared with him the fact that I was a fellow Montrovian, from down in the south end of the county. That I’d lived on the Western Slope for a good long time, maybe even longer than he’d been alive. It was hard to tell, the way upset transformed his face, but he was actually a youngish man, probably younger than either of my daughters, who were born in Montrose.

I know, standing on longevity is a weak argument. Used by people who can’t think of anything else to bolster their cred. But it does come to mind, maybe to both of us standing there on a hot June morning, when we are both feeling unfairly caricatured. He thinking I’m an arrogant newcomer, oblivious, or insensitive, to the way things have been done. Me thinking he’s an off-the-rails reactionary, clinging to a pioneer past that may never have existed.

I came here for the skiing. His meat, I assume, is growing hay. Although you could say it might be otherwise, that is the irreducible gap between us. That and probably political affiliation, and guns, and ATVs, and most likely religion, too.

I just finished reading an article about Mali by Jon Lee Anderson, on how difficult it is to keep a nation together when the people in the north, in Timbuktu, are light-skinned Arabs who mistrust the people in the south, in the capital Bamako, who are mostly black Africans, with their own language, music, and resentments. There is a history, quite recent, of those Arabs owning black slaves.

And here we all are on the Western Slope of Colorado – red county, blue county – speaking the same language, coming from more or less the same democratic, ostensibly tolerant national cosmology. Can’t we all, as Rodney King asked, “just get along?”

The answer, at least in this instance, was no.

“I guess I’ll go find another route then,” I said, turning my bike beneath me.

“I appreciate it,” he said, biting off a piece of rote politeness from the trailing edge of our tension.

Trickster Ridge newsletter (feb22)

 

POETRY

THE ARTS AND LEARNING 

IN THE GRAND VALLEY AND BEYOND

Formerly called Palisade Arts, the inimitable Wendy Videlock of Palisade's Trickster Ridge Presentations has been putting out  this Western Slope email listserve some two or three times a year. It has her striking alcohol ink visuals as well as info on a potpourri of events, info and opportunities.

A visual artist with pieces in multiple galleries and a poet of note publishing regionally and nationally. 

Worth checking out her Speaking Ravanese event on Trickster Ridge April 9th, a Multitudes workshop/playground for those interested in creative aging May into June, the Crestone Poetry Festival Feb. 26-27, and much more.

Sign up for the Trickster newsletter in the upper right-hand corner of the site.

Some URLs

RABBIT HOLES

I may not be the duke of URLs but I know what rabbit-holes I like slipping into. 

Here's a few.

MICROCOSMS: Sacred Plants of the Americas

LORD OF THE RAINY SKY: A Possible Redefinition of Pre-Columbian Aquaculture

BIANCA MIKAHN: Denver Performance Poet Extraordinaire

PAUL CELAN: Audacious Rhetorical Devices in Paul Celan’s“Todesfuge” 

RALPH PEARCE: Weeds in Australia

DAN PAGIS: Holocaust tutorial

KINSHIP: BELONGING IN A WORLD OF RELATIONS: Center for Humans and Nature (Chicago)

GHOSTHORSE TIOKASIN: First Voices Indigenous Radio

JONATHAN STALLINGS: Sinophonic English Poetry and Poetics

Bardic Trails: Goodtimes Coming-Out Playground

GOOD QUESTIONS

Two years of working on myself. Not carrying the county burden. Or the ecopolitical albatross. I'm not used to paying attention to my body, that trusty spacetimeship. For two years that's about all I've done. But maybe itki's all done.

Or at least appears to be. See this morning's post in the queue far below, PSA Lab Report.

Tonight's for poetry! KC Trommer in New York City  and the Shroompa in Telluride. Join us for Bardic Trails virtual poetry series 7 pm MST at the Wilkinson Public Library in collaboration with the Telluride Institute's Talking Gourds poetry program. Come bring a poem to the playground. Or a story, a heartsong.

Talking Gourds is about performing, not just listening -- although that's an important lesson always. But after tonight's feature we'll have a virtual Gourd Circle with everyone in the Zoom getting a chance to read a poem, tell a story, sing a song, or just say a word of thanks and mute.

Here's the Zoom Recording 

if you missed my Bardic Trails 

Coming-Out Reading, Interview & Gourd Circle

this Chinese New Year's

Halle-fuckin'-lulia

as my one buddy media'd me earlier

Today's the Year of the Tiger

If you missed this performance, you can access it HERE