The Ghost of Beauty Cave

By Sam Williams

On the trail rising steeply and steadily
Out of Kings Canyon
The layers of shale are the edges of pages
In a worn book

I’m breathing heavy when I reach
The rusted red railing
Announcing plainly in peeling paint
Trail closed beyond this point

Turning into the pines and poison oak
I’m crunching leaves and small acorns
Sounding like the mice that scurry unseen
Through the brush

There is a bald incline
A granite slide like a lazy V
Between two wooded hillsides
Half a mile of polished slickness
Rock reflecting sun as if it were snow

At the top Avalanche Creek is 40 feet wide
Spilling over boulders and tree trunks
Suddenly it stops and drops like a waterfall
Through the ceiling of Church Cave
And three miles of underground passage
Before joining the Kings on its sprint to the sea

Just up the hill obscured by shrubs
And scrawny oaks lay Beauty Cave
With provisions for a few days Putt Boyden
A friend of John Muir’s
Threaded his way down from the high country
Camped here and died here
Waiting for a storm to pass
One winter 80 some years ago

I sit inside by the pit he dug with a branch
The stones he stacked in a circle
The grill and the cast iron skillet
Ready for another meal

I imagine how it was
Firelight frisking the walls
Smoke sooting the ceiling
Pouring out of the silhouetted entrance
Soaring into the fury
Of a frosty white December sky
Fingers and toes melting icicles
30 years of mountaineering and boiled rice
Waiting to go home

I imagine his ghost sitting next to me
Leaning on his knapsack
Writing in his notebook
Listening to the steady ringing
Of rock and water
Tree and air
Watching the butterflies drift by slowly
Dandelions loose in the wind

Dear California

By Emily Avlen

Can I call you "Cal"?
I feel like we're friends by now.
A child in San Francisco, I never
made it to Alcatraz but the
Thai restaurant on Geary St.—
dimly lit, ephemeral,
brought ginger and lemongrass to my palate
and forged a new dimension.
Thank you for your nooks and crannies
to melt into like butter;
for the hushed groves of eucalyptus trees
whose identities peel in layers.
And L.A, the
petri dish of
cars amongst cars amongst
dreams jostling dreams.
Scores of false starts and home runs
a kind of cuneiform of success which
the rest of the world learned to translate.
Oh, and congrats on the promotion of your
"roach coaches" in alleys
to stallions of world-class cuisine.
Thank you for the free yoga
in San Luis Obispo's wineries,
a little Europe, a backyard reverie.
They say you take an arm and a leg but
I offer mine up in Reverse Warrior,
followed by Mountain Pose.
But listen to me going on and on.
Let me hear you now.
Tell me, what are your ineffable longings,
thoughts brought along by the desert breeze
and dreams seduced into the ocean's endless expanse?

Califragilistic

By Uvea Grace (College)

Califragilistic
life is awesome, amazing and
majestic like Thompson Peak
life is the inspiring desert flower on a dry and dusty walk,
the hopeful green sprout on the edge of a muddy bog,
delicious hot Chai lattes,
and gorgeous tangerine sunrise
life rocking in a wooden rocker on the edge of Sierra Nevada

Califragilistic
Life is imported Palm trees and salty margaritas,
dancing under blue moon,
and dipping your feet in the gentle Ocean
life is hearing the long hoots of a barn owl after midnight,
seeing the sunshine making rainbows through the rain,
and watching millions of butterflies being born then migrating

Life is Califragilistic time
passing with or without notice,
smoothly rolling like a luxury train
on beautiful Northern and Southern tracks to Paradise

Highway 395: Another Ordinary Day in the High Desert

By June Sanders

Early songbirds are throwing their hearts at the sky

before I'm out of bed. In the front yard twin fawns

are leaping for the sheer joy of being alive this April

morning. Desert Primrose and the thorny but beautiful

Desert Peach are in full bloom along our sandy lane.

Beside Honey Lake flocks of snow geese

look like patches of snow. Last week I saw

a male Sandhill Crane doing a courting dance,

sometimes leaping high into the air, while

the female worked hard at ignoring him.

Two nights ago at midnight, a fox barked a mating call

across the ravine. Beside 395, a hawk sits motionless on the highest

bare branch of a mesquite tree. A raven and a magpie fly in tandem

near the Bird Flat Ranch where after the Dixie Fire, the bears

came down from the mountains and devoured all the apples.

A lone pronghorn (the world’s second fastest

land mammal) keeps lookout atop a small hill

while a dozen more graze peacefully

in the sagebrush a few yards away. A herd

of black Angus wander contentedly in the new grass.

A few miles farther on, just past that coyote

in the pasture stealthily stalking his breakfast

the beavers finally felled that last tall cottonwood

and finished their dam. Now only a trickle

of water makes its way down Long Valley Creek

toward Honey Lake. But the small pond that formed

behind their dam is now home to coots, pintails

and mallards. Sometimes there are Canada geese

or Tundra Swans. Gold-hooded blackbirds

balance on cattails growing lush near the bank.

Around a few more curves a windmill high on a hill spins

slowly under the cloud-proud sky. I see a pure white horse,

a golden palomino, and a glorious paint. I’ll leave my car

beside the road, jump onto the white steed and race away

toward the distant snowy mountains. I may not come back.