The Dark Green Conifers

another day in the woods. on Strawberry ridge looking out over undulating green hills to the next great wall of mountains. the last morning clouds left from last night's storm hanging in the valley mistily. the sun eventually burns them away. the respect between old Paul Karlsen and I continues to exist. even though he's a Mormon and I'm a fallen New Yorker. the work is comparatively easy, lifting hundred pound bags, so you can just imagine what we do other days. in fact, it's fun, especially for young Bates. we get all white (and our lungs dusty). on the way to and from the work site I read in Silent Spring, the chapter against herbicides, gathering inspiration for the upcoming controversy. in the end perhaps I'll be fired for refusing to lay down Tordon beads. realizing this, as I drive with Bates, I see the dark green conifers and begin to miss them. Rocks and rattlesnakes, bluebells and mountain daisies, grasses and cactuses, mahogany bush, lodgepole pine and quaking aspen, lush forest and dry sun-tortured mountainside, wind and seed carried by wind, ants, streams, hummingbird and hawk, deer, badger, ground squirrel, wolverine.