Dry Canyon Form

Last fall I began reading some of Jack Kerouac's books and turned into quite the beatnick wanna be. I started with Dharma Bums which became my new favorite book(and still is). The book has two awesome places where his characters are hiking the Matterhorn in California, and a distant fire watch cabin in Washington. Those places are now on my list of things to do, as for now I have just stuck to my local canyons and tried to write in those places. I have also done my best to be more like John Muir and leave the trail behind venture to places where trails seem lame and seek talus and boulder hopping routes. As I was boulder hopping in Smithfield Dry canyon I sat and read some of Kerouacs Haikus and other poetry and began my own compilation of poems. It took awhile to get going, I am usually a visual artist but have wanted to branch out and began writing. So I sat and looked at the many crags and stone structures that plastered the canyon walls and realized none of the other canyons had theses types of forms, and then I began to write...

geodesic slabs, slant

perfect formation steep sheets

junipers abound

swiftly setting sun

one lone cliff tree, sillohuete

inspiration flows!

After writing these poems I began sketching, and things flowed. It was just an awesome place to be at that moment. I wasn't atop the Matterhorn skipping down boulder fields like Kerouac's character Japhy. But it didn't matter I had found a spot close by that takes me farther than Dry Canyon, maybe farther than Kerouac's Desolation Mountain. The Naomi Wilderness is now a place for me to be a Dharma Bum, a place that I find whatever it is I am looking for at the time. We all need a Naomi place, a Dharma place.