Sierra Nevada
Rooted in a century of alpine life
Endless dreams of cleaving
Through fanciful puffs of white,
Gracefully she engages
In a tenuous to and fro
Blind to a casting call
For life-turned-death row.
The ponderosa pine rests
In all her glory and expanding might,
A bashful dance breaking
Through bold shadows and laced light,
Her storied past enwreathing
Yesteryear’s founding bark.
Today’s emerald needles signaling
A vehement will to survive,
Indigent jewels ensnared
In a desperate fight or flight
Longing to evict the stowaways
To whom she’d kindly turned a blind eye,
Thankless creatures abrading
The remains of her sheltering life.
A song of death approaches
Eager to bleed her dry,
Fragments of a life well lived unfurl
Before misty, forlorn eyes —
An owl’s starlit lullaby
The canopied dance below,
Her selfless viridian sanctum
Beneath the beating sun.
Evolving games of hide and seek
Between cubs and mamma squirrels,
The blessed weight of winter
And promise of Christmas snow.
Stillness unwinding the passage of time
No longer serving our cravings
Nor esteemed by the sublime.
And as her confounded ethos
leads her through a labyrinth of grime
Might we salvage the beauty
Of the forest we once knew
Or will it succumb to our indifference
And everlasting burn?
***
A recent trip to Bass Lake taught me much about the mountain range that California shares with neighboring Nevada. When we inquired about the needleless trees that aboud, our host schooled us on how the bark beetle has been literally choking the ponderosa pine to death. Upon further research I discovered that following a six year drought from 2010-2016, the Sierra Nevada forest lost 102 million trees to the pest, 68 million in 2016 alone. Notwithstanding, the mountain range has yet to part ways with the dead trees that are now but sitting ducks for the raging fires that, exacerbated by climate change, continue to erode our forests in recent years.
And yet, as interesting as it was to learn about the life and early death awaiting the ponderosa pine, nothing was more memorable than what unfurled before my eyes while driving on California State Route 41 to feed a band of 11 teens and 5 adults who had made the lake home over the course of five days. It took a few heartbeats to discern that the slow moving animal crossing the road was a baby bear. When it reached the road’s edge, another was patiently awaiting the cub, which in one quick swoop latched onto the pine about 15 feet away from my transfixed eyes. Just as my numerous efforts to circle back failed to regale me with the photo I yearned to snap, my will to unearth a similar image from the web, too failed to capture the intangible beauty suspended in silence between mamma human and baby bear.
Landing page:
Ski trip, Mammoth, California
Circa 2010
Mesmerized in Bass Lake, I barely managed to get this shot.
Bass Lake, CA 2021
Bass Lake today. Photo: Getty Images
This is what I saw but with its sibling beneath.
Photo: Wall Monkeys