I crave the quiet intimacy of creeks
that feed the bigger rivers
roaring in the granite gorges
or widespread in redundant riffles
with nothing to say. I rather fish
dark cutbanks and water skeeter
eddies frothed below white dogwoods
arching over High Sierra leaks, eclipsing
all but mottled light as I move upstream—
each small pool a unique realm
for browns and rainbows
grazing transparent skirts.
Now that I know I won’t go back,
it is not an appetite for trout
that consumes sweet memories.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022
Tagged fishing, High Sierra creeks, memories, mountains, photography, poetry, trout
I look to the ridges for clarity,
for a sign of an approaching storm
gathering somewhere north—
trace silhouetted skeletons
of drought-killed oaks, branched
like Challenge Butter bucks.
As my eyes escape the first waft
of chaos and claustrophobe,
I leave my flesh to rest among
all the old cowmen with nothing to do
but watch the learning process
over and over again.
The Natives retreated to the hills,
but at the top of mountain peaks,
there’s no place left to go.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022
As children in the mountains
we learned to walk in the dark
on the uneven ground we knew
sometimes shadowed by starlight
or an occasional moon.
It was a wonder watching it rise
behind the far pines
as we lay on our backs
supposing excitedly about something
long since resolved,
but such a luxury to feel the hair
on familiar cedars, puzzle
over the sap of sugar pines,
fish the river for adventure
in the old days.
Time has simplified my map
to safe and basic trails
with many landmarks,
each with a story
to remind me where I am.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2022
Tagged children, dark, mountains, old days, photography, poetry
The gods
abhor halters and stirrups, even a horse
blanket to protect our asses is forbidden.
– Jim Harrison (“Poet No. 7”)
Handful of mane, wrap
of hair gripped and entwined,
I plowed the pine duff on the Kern
with my chin loping back to the picket line,
bell mare clenched between my legs
when she shied.
A pigeon-toed bay,
my legs and heart
grew into.
A plucky kid
leading mules and people
over granite scree
to snowmelt meadows
framing heaven’s
blue-cloud reflection
I could have died
half-dozen times
were I not so close
to the hands of gods
and goddesses
that may have placed
a rattler in the corner of her eye
for entertainment.
for Bill DeCarteret
“Mountains, Mules and Memories”
Posted in Poems 2019
Tagged Bill DeCarteret, Jim Harrison, mountains, Mules and Memories", poetry
Few of us know what it’s like to fall in love with the mountains, the backcountry of the High Sierras, and fewer yet who can put that feeling into words, but Bill DeCarteret has humbly woven a lifetime’s love of its rivers and rugged terrain with the mules, horses and the ‘kids’ who worked for him at Wolverton and Mineral King Pack Stations from 1958 through 1982. Over fifty years ago, I was lucky enough to be one of those kids.
Bill became acquainted with the High Sierras as a Boy Scout in 1941 as he wrangled his way to his first job as a packer for Vaud Cunningham in 1945 near Huntington Lake. In 1947, he packed out of Mineral King for Ray Buckman from whom he later bought the pack station in 1958 with a $12,000 loan from Adolph Gill. As the author unwinds his stories in chronological order, it becomes apparent from the outset that they could never happen again, that his experiences were limited to a slice of time that will never be repeated. In this regard, “Mountains, Mules and Memories” becomes a part of our local history.
The author’s voice on the page is consistent with the man I know, replete with his understated humor as he relates his stories, especially his observations and compassion for his horses and his mules—a must read for animal rights advocates, DeCarteret was light years ahead of most. Like so many outfits in the business of packing people on horses and mules, anything can happen anytime and usually did. It’s from the stories that we not only learn about the man, and his wife Marilyn, but what it took to keep their summer enterprise afloat for twenty-five years.
Perhaps the most important thing I took away from this book was the impact that Bill and Marilyn’s business had on so many lives, affording many their first glimpse of the Sierras, cooking on a wood fire, catching fish in mountain streams and lakes in the middle of miles of untarnished landscapes, and all the degrees of awe that must have inspired them. The 83 ‘kids’, mostly teenagers at the time who worked for him in those twenty-five years, had to know how to work, often long hours, and to take responsibility because he couldn’t be with them on the pack trips—his business depended on it. Many are involved in the stories he tells as they became packers ‘his way’, safety first, learning to observe and read horses and mules—and most of all, how to reach inside for something more they didn’t know they had. Thank you, Bill.
BOOK SIGNING
Saturday, October 29th
Noon to 4 p.m.
Courthouse Gallery and Museum
125 S. ‘B’ St.
Exeter, CA
ORDER:
% Bill DeCarteret
758 Sherwood St.
Exeter, CA 93221
(559) 592-2878
349 pp. $21.95
Posted in Ranch Journal
Tagged Bill DeCarteret, High Sierras, Mineral King, mountains, Mules and Memories", Wolverton
December 10, 2015
1.
Small at first, rivers spill
High Sierra snowmelt,
water pure as it will ever be
falling to the call of gravity
and time’s relentless roar
over granite smooth, worn
by cataracts and cascades
dressed in rainbow mists
ascending to the whispers
among a million pines—
a timbered mat of arrows
headed to the sky.
2.
We have been there
in our perfect innocence
before our courses
changed the world
as it changed us.
I think it was the waiting
for the war I never served
that made me see that
spilling the blood of boys
could not kill ideas
or forever eliminate
a differing philosophy.
3.
Like water pooled
I am damned again
in someone else’s business
at the whims of men
I’ll never understand
beyond their lust for power
and their addiction to greed
while dancing to the tune
of men and women working
with their heads and hands.
I stay the slope and cling
to the sound of the river
chasing lyrics on paper
since the war—poor poetry
released like mist ascending
to the muse that must
report my plodding progress
to goddesses and gods.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016
Tagged mountains, photography, poetry, red sky, rivers, water
A man gives up early in the summer,
too warm for wine, too hot for evening
poetry to endure, before darkness closes
the oven doors to bake in the black.
The Kings River calls, trout singing
from the riffles, asking why, when
trails of natives and early settlers rise
into the mountains, spread like webs
into the pine cabins and camps
beside the mantra of running water
through the night. I go early to bed
to get there in my dreams.
Posted in Poems 2015
Tagged "Mountains and Rivers Without End", heat, mountains, rivers, summer, weather
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