Mountain Songs

In April, 2010 I went in search of local poems about local mountains. I chose three poems from the series of 22 collectively called“Heart Range” by Cal Kinnear which he wrote in 2001 based upon a hike in Washington’s Olympic Mountains.

The first song, Mountain Under Heaven, evokes a mountain at night, dark under the stars; its text quotes both the Chinese I Ching and Genesis. The second, Lost Where I Was Lost, is lively and joyous, describing wider and wider circles of space and time as it contemplates the hills under a hot sun. The final song, Enough, draws us back to stillness as we think about the reasons for wandering in the mountains- “not for the trial” but simply “for the having been in this wholly Other place…”