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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Oct 24, 2017 - 01:27pm PT
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Pass The Piano, Pete
Good boogie woogie is hard to find
When you hear good boogie it will blow your mind
We heard some playing on The Captain one night
Some cats were wailing (but they were out of sight)
They were rockin' the Captain all night through
I couldn't stop tapping with my old tennis shoe
One big problem, though (and this wasn't all)
The boogie vibrations caused a giant rockfall!
--MFM
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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I hope it's not too soon for this one...
The Razor of the Great Heart Flake
Many walls ago
There once was a man
Who came from way south of Yucatán
The mightiest chieftain
Of his great clan
To bag the big walls was his goal and his plan
Well he almost bailed
From old Mt Conness
But finished with style and the greatest finesse
And was first to nail
With style and grace
A route missing now on Half Dome's Northwest Face
'Twas long before
The age of steel
When the men ate nettles for their every meal
They climbed the cliffs
With wooden spikes
Rotted with termites to their dislike
Their ropes were all woven
From maidens hair
And they climbed mostly free with the utmost of care
And they dared not to fall
For the pro was all bad
And their iron grip was most ironclad
But the El Cap routes
Though none went free
Were expanding and dangerous as they could be
And the southwest face
Had the boldest lines
Where a first ascent might prove most sublime
Here sat the fiercest
Down hanging flake
From Mammoth on up with no ledge to make
For eight hundred feet
A continuous test
Of expanding bombay without any rest
Above this great cleaver
The cracks looked quite sound
Where keys to the summit might surely be found
But the huge expander
Named the Great Heart Flake
Was a perilous difficult route to take
So the Chieftain trained
For many months on end
When the route became dry then the climb began
The lower slabs
Went with minimal aid
Arriving at Mammoth without accolade
His good partner by
The name of Crag
Had their secret weapon in a big haul bag
Two fine spun lengths of
Nine hundred foot rope
Were flaked out on Mammoth with all faith and hope
A continuous lead
With minimal pro
Up the the perilous flake if it ever would go
At five eleven plus
It would be the only way
Making all other routes like a leisure holiday
The Chieftain set out
With the mightiest of racks
Of many wooden pegs slung below his back
With fifty foot run outs
Between every peg
He was loath then to suffer with the Elvis Leg
On the lead of his life
He did the chicken wing hop
'Twas slickest technique to avoid the great chop
As he tapped in each peg
As if on a dare
In the massive expander with most loving care
The chimney narrowed down
To an offwidth hang
And was finally barred by a loose granite fang
Where the Chieftain swung out
And he layed it away
As the story now goes many years to the day
At that greasy lieback
On a quivering shard
At forty feet out the climb got way hard
The Chieftain freed higher
'Till his strength gave out
And he tapped in a peg as he started to shout
The flake quivered once
Then it settled to a groan
So he slotted his pegs just to quiet the moan
The last forty feet
Went aid five to a ledge
Where the towering flake hung by only a wedge
The haul line hung free
And when Chief hauled the bag
It nary would touch and it nary would drag
Pulling pegs with a tug
Crag cleaned the whole pitch
And swung ever so gently o'er Yosemite ditch
The Chieftain was nervous
And took the next lead
Deciding to bivvy he fired up some weed
As Crag cleaned away
The chief quenched his thirst
As he tapped a cold lager now only his first
As the bottle cap fell
It hit once and twirled
With the oddest vibration it arced and it curled
And just below Crag
As he carefully cleaned
The bottle cap struck as it wildly careened
A strange echoing noise
Sounded off the Cathedrals
As the party hung high in their airy dihedral
Then a small crack appeared
Atop the huge flake
With an audible grinding it started to break
The climbers looked down
Their mouths all agape
Both faces affixed in a silent scream shape
Below the flake pivoted
Slow-mo like a dream
Building momentum it fell and gained steam
The massive flake dropped
With a thunderous clap
Exploding in clouds on the slabs of El Cap
Thirty five million tons
Of boulderous debri
Plummeting out as it once more fell free
And it peppered the ground
It mowed down great trees
With nowhere to go people dropped to their knees
But the meadow was spared
As the clouds of dust cleared
No folks were below nor was anyone near
But two climbers in shock
Hung two thousand feet up
Their retreat was now missing and full was their cup
They climbed through the nights
And slept in short fits
Hanging in their slings with no option to quit
They topped out in a storm
At the end of day five
Hiking to Tamarack still glad to be alive
On return to the valley
To Camp Four in the dark
All the campers were missing not even a lark
In the morning they rose
And packed up their canoe
With no mojo left it was all they could do
As they rowed the Merced
Through that valley of bliss
Any climbers who saw them would let out a hiss
And they paused by the meadow
Seeing they never could brag
For the greatest disservice to the mightiest of crags
Once the loveliest of flakes
Formed the shape of a heart
'Twas now rendered asunder and ruptured apart
So the Chieftain and Crag
Slunk on back to their craft
No climbers bade farewell nor stifled a laugh
Though they might have been famous
And proud to a man
When the Great Heart Flake fell out of El Capitan
-Tim Sorenson
11/05/2015
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Oodles of Poodles
Known far and away and round the world
Clever and talented and looking spit-curled
The dogs who search ways for us climbers to cross
Unspeakable patches of avalanche-prone choss
Are mocked and vilified and even abused
So that stoopid climbers will be highly amused
But the Canadian Miss had to pick and to choose
The canine heroes who must pay for our dues
I sit and I laugh at the cartoons she draws
The results echoing like thunderous guffaws
The last thing a poodle hears are his claws
Scritching and scratching now let's take a pause
To honor the Dead Poodles Society.
--Walt Singlemalt
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Out Of the Mouth Of One Of My Champs
In the light of Coleman lamps
With a case of sudden cramps
From the lips of young Bob Kamps
Poured a solid stream of some of the vilest invective ever to have been heard in Yosemite’s camps.
--Big Fan In Little Yosemite
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Nov 23, 2017 - 03:11pm PT
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After Turkey
Look at all those
Swelling bellies
Full of turkey
Ham and jellies
Stuffed with stuffing
Dressed with care
You’ve been a piggie
Slide back your chair
Cut loose a burp
Forget dessert
Just loose your belt
Un-tuck your shirt
--MFM, Thanksgiving 2017
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Nov 23, 2017 - 07:57pm PT
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Mouse - glad you're still in the rhyming game! And Bushman - missed that last one, but love it.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Nov 23, 2017 - 09:10pm PT
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Wayne, thank you.
As Old Lodge Skins would suggest, let us go and eat our fill.
My new Ute wife, Loves Turkey Neck, has a meal ready for us over the hill.
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Nov 25, 2017 - 01:17am PT
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Kind words from a Merry old soul, always welcome...
The Wild Norwegian
A few years back in Idaho
as I walked along
the rocky scree
under cloudy skies on a mountain flank
I happened across a bighorn herd
moving swiftly down the landscape
or they happened on me
then I should say
Staring down at wildflowers
I looked up to see them trotting by
not more than twenty yards away
Effortlessly they moved on by
like gentle waves upon the sea
And someone followed at a distance
in the misted gray
A man in many layered coats
appeared afar
as the wind picked up
I raised my arm to greet him
But he disappeared
on the distant mountainside
Out west in the Sierras
on Shadow Lake at dawn
I pulled another golden trout
from below the frigid algae murk
And there across the way
another angler looked east on morning clouds
the golden light of sunrise
reflecting off his ruddy cheeks
He looked familiar
as I thought to speak
He turned and climbed the other bank
and as I looked again his way
only silence stared back at me
I haven’t fished there for awhile now
A cacophonous din wracked hard
on my headache
My eyes bloodshot as I stared
The nightclub rang with laughter
as a crumpled soul stood quietly
then began his act
This poet in leu of a comic
met taunting words
and angry scowls
Then the raucous tribe
met face to face with this man’s tale
as words flowed out his face
onto the crowd
Taken aback the customers fell silent
until
It dawned on them
how the poets words
described in crude detail
the empty cold half dead remains
of an alcoholic’s life
Though I’d heard his work someplace before
Some pissed off drunks in that crowd
stymied his rhythm
and he was out the door
I took my dogs
down to the beach one day
near Carmet north of Bodega way
Ate my baguette with some gouda
and salami in the sun as
the crisp wind blew my face
My male dog ran ahead
as a stranger knelt to greet him
The surf and ocean spray
hit my feet and wet my sneakers
And my dog charged back to me
The man was gone and to this day
I would swear I thought I’d seen him
somewhere else before
-bushman
11/25/2017
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Nov 25, 2017 - 08:51am PT
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Let It Be Recorded
Let it be recorded
my wish to live
where I can sleep
in good weather or bad
upon a beach festooned
in the bric-a-brac
of the ages.
Perhaps a vanishing glow
far to the south
all that is left
of that common pestilence
known intimately
as a lifetime
of earthly dues
Now I am leaning with shoulders leeward
a ship's pilot
eyeing the reef submerged
steering his vessel
beyond the shoals
victorious
to the open sea
From breath to breath
I exhale the plague
once tyrannical
against every stemming cell
once dominant
over every
pulsing heartbeat.
The sea now
lives inside my cells
where time itself
tunnels the sun
through woven matrixes
a surface below
tethered skin
I can only hope
as I fall into sleep
that I soon be awakened
by sea birds squawking
at something of interest
in the tumbling
surf
WT
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Nov 27, 2017 - 04:31am PT
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No Success
I recall when I met The Legend.
I was hoping to create my own and he was living his.
There was a spark in each of us with which we were born,
one common to all men in all places who perform athletic maneuvers high above the ground.
He gave me willingly what I thought I needed then
and I was grateful for his generosity and the small amount of time we spent talking.
But in the years following our meeting I met with little success and saw much failure.
I was willing to settle for what I’d done and then other things got in my way
and the dream faded to almost nothing.
Meantime, his legend grew and flourished, his brand became known internationally, as well.
The difference between The Legend and myself became clear to me, eventually.
He had the ability to remain fixed on his goals while I was willing to accept failure.
When The Legend died and the whole world cried I cried for myself as well.
My Main Chance never came again until later, but in a different discipline entirely.
I would like to say I will never cry for myself again.
For now that the lesson’s learned the hard way,
“I’ll never take the easy way again,” I tell myself.
But of course, like when making a New Year resolution, I’m only hoping that this will be so.
Wish me luck, for it takes some of that to become legendary.
Sometimes things are not in our hands, but that of Fate.
And she’s a fickle one.
The only thing about her which we can trust is her fickleness.
So let me tell you that I will try my best when I sit down to the desk,
quill sharpened, ink bottle full, and parchment scraped clean,
mind awake and waiting patiently for the Muse to come to my aid.
I still need all the help which I can find
but most of all from my own mind.
--MFM
Rest in peace, Royal. Thanks for everything.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Skittering STones
Slung with skill,
slick flat river rocks can kill
--just ask Golitath.
He won't dispute this, guaranteed.
In shallow leaps,
one-after-another
and leaving ripples
in a parabolic path,
a lith lain dormant for centuries
now seems like it is walking on water.
Banished to the deeps
of the river,
it has been there before
and will rise again someday
on a beach further on down
this river of no return.
And some day yet more distant
it will, like its cousins
on Mickey's Beach,
Waikiki, and North,
or its long-long-long-lost shirt-tail relation in Carpinteria
--the world's safest beach--
it will come to my hand once again
and maybe I will decide to take it home,
not throw it out to sea,
and put it in a jar with others like it.
Shelf-life expectancy:
up to one hundred million years
without refrigeration.
--MFM
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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A Poem For Royal
by Peter Stavrianoudakis
Up the mountain, down the river.
Touch a rock he hasn’t touched.
Find a rock he hasn’t touched much.
I dare you.
Train jumper, law breaker, self namer, mountain tamer.
Upright man in a vertical world.
Up the mountain, down the river.
Beware the flat ground.
Prospect’n, no regret’n, find a rock he hasn’t touched.
Find a river he hasn’t run.
Up the mountain, down the river.
Lord of the rings, lord of the rocks.
Swapped his pitons for a sling with chocks.
Renegade boyscout on the loose.
Glad that this one slipped the noose.
Up the mountain, down the river.
Name a tree, a flower, a rock.
Name a crack, a face, a route.
Up the chimney, down the shoot.
Pointy end of the rope.
Envy of every mountain goat.
El Cap, North Face, name a buttress, a pinnacle.
Camp 4 saver, Yosemite Fund raiser, never nay sayer.
Bolt cutt’n, head butt’n, fast climber, slow driver.
Beware the flat ground.
NOTE: Published in the event guide for the Oakdale Climbers Festival, 10/26-28, 2012.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Green Mountain
By Li Bai
You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
As the peach-blossom flows downstream and is gone into the unknown,
I have a world apart that is not among men.
Li Bai and Du Fu: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-19884020
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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A charming story of the love of poetry, Marlow. Thank you.
It is similar in many ways to the philosophy of the sage Epicurus from Greek antiquity.
from
"On the Nature of Things"
by Lucretius, 1st century BCE Roman poet who subscribed to Epicurus' ideas
What then has death, if death be mere repose, 940
And quiet only in a peaceful grave.
What has it thus to mar this life of man ?
Yet mar it does. E'en o'er the festive board.
The glass while grasping, and with garlands crowned.
The thoughtless maniacs oft indignant roar, 945
" How short the joys of wine ! — e'en while we drink
Life ceases, and to-morrow ne'er returns ! "
As if, in death, the worst such wretches feared
Were thirst unquenched, parching every nerve,
Or deemed their passions would pursue them still. 950
https://archive.org/stream/onnaturethingsd00carugoog/onnaturethingsd00carugoog_djvu.txt
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Dec 11, 2017 - 04:43pm PT
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Little Loch Broom
When the sun sets down over Little Loch Broom
You know I’ll be waiting for you
On the path above the cliff I’ll stand
Looking out to the ocean soon
Where once I tried to followed the moon
A boy who once stood trembling
Ran away from his ma and da that day
By the mouth of Little Loch Broom
For the world and the water horse
Are at odds whatever they do
When our journey has gone full circle
It is liken you’ll call for him too
When the water horse comes a ‘calling
You know I’ll be waiting there too
On the path above the shore I’ll stand
At the mouth of Little Loch Broom
-bushman
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Dec 20, 2017 - 10:04am PT
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Great Horned Owls
Many many moons ago
leaving the porch
of a south-facing canyon,
I hiked to a place
where the foothills
narrowed,
Where the asphalt road
ran astride the reservoir lake
into which kingfishers
dived at will,
and Great Horned owls
hooted at passerby,
And crickets chirped
in the castor bean
in the broom grass,
in the sumac and sorrel
and the scrub oak
and the sage,
I walked with gathering dusk
upslope to the ridge
where one lone bat
in diving approach,
plunged to air
as kingfisher to lake,
As owl to moon
or as moon to owl
or as owl to owl,
two owls upon the perch
fated couple
to a lifelong mate.
At this very place
I saw my mission unfold
in ceremony of solemn joining
in deepest respect
this wedded pair
framed aside starlight,
Framed within angles
of better aspect
placing male to left
female to right,
then married them there
till death do they part,
He in a cassock of feathers
all attention to duty
she with a blink
of a solitary eye,
I with a wave
of the official hand,
"I decree thee man and wife"
I the chaparral poet of authority
captain on this ship
I do wed thee,
witnessed by bat and kingfisher
cricket and castor bean.
And so my sudden voice
startled both to flight
he with wings to eclipse
the moon, the sky
she in silence
winged forever to his side.
W.T.
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Bushman
climber
The state of quantum flux
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Dec 21, 2017 - 07:13am PT
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^^^^^
Ward, that was excellent in my view...
The Reverend of the Field
(For the Right Reverend Trotter)
When he wed the two owls
Unlike domestic fowl
They both startled to flight
And they soiled his new cowl
Now he only enjoins
Goats and pigs for a coin
On occasion he’s married
Some chickens less harried
By such ceremony and pomp
Though they’d like a good romp
Or a roll in zee hay
Much to some folks dismay
For the reverend of the field
The fornicators must yield
And delay all their furgling
‘Till their union’s been sealed
-bushman
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Fossil climber
Trad climber
Atlin, B. C.
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Dec 21, 2017 - 09:50am PT
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Things just keep getting better around here!
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Dec 21, 2017 - 10:51am PT
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It's now your turn, FC...post'em if ya got'em.
Merry Christmas to you & Cindy!
--MFM
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