Tissiack's Tears

Tissiack’s Tears “[F]or I was absorbed in the great Tissiack [Half Dome]-- I have gazed on Tissiack a thousand times -- in days of solemn storms, and when her form shone divine with the jewelry of winter, or was veiled in living clouds; and I have heard her voice of winds, and snowy, tuneful waters when floods were falling; yet never did her soul reveal itself more impressively than now. John Muir Tissiack’s tears fall from her rain-stained face, her profile one with the lichened rock. She, the spirit of the Ahwahneechees, speaks silently, with the voice of winds, of time, change and the valley's past. My tent at the Lodge opened to her and for a year I gazed upon and thought I had begun to understand - but youth is distracted by what is and can't see what can't been seen. Years later, I return to her and sit in the moonlight at Mirror Lake. As my eyes tire and become unfocused, I see her missing half in the water - her half that isn’t, her mystic moiety. She then whispers of unhalves, and in the rippled, reflective waters appears my unhalf – those thoughts, unthought and that life, unlived. I now share in her tears and embrace her unseen soul.