In Loving Memory of My Mentor,
The Poet and Writer Lyn Lifshin
"Write a Poem about it. Go for a wander walk. Don't make any sense! Write nonsense! Make the Senator really dastardly! You forgot to say Poet!"
It was morning, early frigid morning. The smoke rose slowly and drifted across the frozen waters of Nottingham Lake in Beaver Creek, Colorado. It formed small whiffs of cirrus clouds as it curled lazily among the rows of tepees and pine pole lodges erected for the Mountain Man Festival and the World Alpine Ski Championships. Vail Mountain bent the bright shafts of sunlight, at sunrise, as they rose from far below its back bowls. They came together like the patterns of a kaleidoscope touching, moving away and touching again. They were sent scattering and streaming into the steely blueness of the dawn sky. Tom Dillon, tugged down on his Stetson, turned away from the beige metal building of the Avon Stohl Port. His attention was drawn by the roaring of propane burners, two large hot air balloons began rising. A black, white, and red Mickey Mouse followed by a yellow, white and blue Donald Duck. The music crackled crisp and clear from an ominous column of black speakers. Each note, resonating from the sound check, split the twenty-five below air at eight thousand feet in elevation.
“Early one morning, the sun was shining
I was laying in bed
Wondering if she'd changed it all
If her hair was still red.
Tom banged his thick ski gloves together to the beat of A Dylan Tune, Tangled Up In Blue.
The rushing water of Eagle River flowed freely during the cold front that had descended out of Alaska across the Cascades of the Pacific Northwest, and into the White River National Forest. It had followed directly on the cusp of the freak winter storm that had deposited enough powder to cripple and close the men’s downhill competition.
Tom watched as the darkened hill along Wildridge to the west began to lighten. The high country snow sparkled like a shining sea of grandmother’s eyes. The northernmost peak was a virgin thread looping the purple hills. The southern ridge, the ski mountain of Beaver Creek, was a thin slot before a narrow rocky valley. The ski trails a wizard’s snowy fingers clawing at the weather-checked rock, and reaching down into the evergreens.
The Eagle River churned and grated against the icy shores as it disappeared beneath the bridge named ‘Bob.’ A dark rough wood and glass sentry post stood at the entrance to the resort. The road was lined with a bronze peasant woman carrying water pots and three young bronze stallions. The water flowed from the snowfields above Ski Cooper and Camp Hale, in the San Isabel National Forest, the training grounds of the men from the Tenth Mountain Armor Division, the first American Ski Troops. It cascaded down along the gorges and arroyos of the range. It gathered momentum pouring off the rock faces by the town of Redcliff and bobbed along past the shanty-turned new age town of Minturn. It turned sharply and wandered into the Vail Valley and mixed with Gore Creek. It traveled past Beaver Creek, the town of Avon and the New York Range at Eagle before mixing and flowing into the Colorado River Basin.
“Caw! Caw! Caw!” a black and white magpie startled Tom. He spun quickly to face Vail Mountain. Tom was thinking of a quote and Professor Sara Lacey and what he had come away with after a workshop. “There is intelligence only when there is no fear, when you are willing to rebel, to go against the whole social structure in order to find out what God is, or to discover the truth of anything.”
“He yaw, he yaw!” he yelled, scaring away the scavengers.
“Hee haw, hee haw!” the little grey and white paint burro, mimicked.
“Easy Hercules, Whoa Snowy,” he said to the screaming white Appaloosa gelding with one brown spot on his nose. He pulled on the lead rope of Beau the Buckskin Stallion and adjusted the panniers of the Burro, his companion. He was looking forward to performing at the Beaver Creek Children’s Theatre for Former President Gerald and Betty Ford and his guest Professor Sara Lacey.
Tom stood upright in the bright and warming morning sunlight and was no longer frozen up inside. He had paid some dues getting through to the mountains and had to sell just about everything he owned to get there.
The Silver and grey Continental Express Stohl plane sat on the tarmac of the Denver International Airport. Sara Lacey smoothed the wrinkles in her blue shirt that the seat belt of her flight from New York had made. She set down her green and blue backpack, and bent down and tied the laces of her hiking shoes. They felt awkward on her feet. Breaking them in was proving more uncomfortable then she would have liked. She silently watched as the Jumbo Jet dwarfed the smaller one and disappeared down along the white tented topped terminal building and turned in a cloud of black smoke and then seemingly vanished, into the heat shimmer of the distant runway. Sara was tangled up in blue.
“What do you mean?” she had inquired of the ticket agent.
“The tickets are refundable if the plane cannot fly.”
“Why couldn’t the plane fly?”
“It has nothing to do with the plane. You’ll be flying from an elevation of 5,280 ft. into and over mountains in excess of 14,000 ft. in elevation. Since we have no control over the weather we offer refunds if the planes can’t fly, into the weather.” the agent had said.
“Oh!” was her only reply.
She picked up and swung the heavy pack on to her shoulders over her Parka. She walked up the stairs, stopped and took a deep breath, flipped her long red hair back and made her way to a vacant seat. The plane began moving slowly along the runway. The drone of the turbo propellers increased with the speed, until it became a steady throb, the plane staged at the end of the runway. The engines increased to a high-pitched whine, and the plane moved quickly down the runway. It rose rapidly, and banked steeply to the left. It climbed above the rows of houses and swimming pools. It turned and climbed high over Interstate 70 and into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Sara rested her head against the window, studied the lines of her face and glanced out at the snow-capped horizon. She didn’t understand the draw of this empty whiteness for Tom. He was the silent type and an odd beat, but she liked things that were different and he had never escaped her mind. Out of the desire for a change of scenery, she had agreed to be present for his reading at Beaver Creek.
How many readings? The Mother and Daughter, the Political Readings, and the lugging of the books, the headaches and backaches, her car accident had upended her world, the world of books and poetry. She had made fun of his poems wrapped in a red ribbon.
“Write about something of substance,” she had chastised, but was secretly pleased. It had said, I see a sunrise in your eyes across an American Nation at twelve thousand five hundred feet in elevation. They shared their days in her study writing and talking about his favorite mountains and out of bounds ski runs and her attraction to the ocean. She dressed in her soft white Hiawatha looking dress, finally having someone to share her love of writing with. She had read to him from a book of poems written by an Italian Poet of the Thirteenth Century and they had discussed how relevant the truths and words were in his mountaineering life. Discovering their mutual love of horses and Sara explaining to Tom all about her time writing about Ruffian, and the awful demise of the famed horse. They had laughed over Rolling Stone commenting that she looked a lot like Bob Dylan’s first wife Sara, also. They were celebrating her publishing poems in the magazine after receiving the Jack Kerouac Award for her latest book of Poetry Kiss The Skin Off. He had attended a workshop along with his friends, at her house for the taping of a movie, about her life. It had been an important event in her life. Shortly after, he had betrayed her trust. Angered, she had severed their working relationship.
His first attempt to contact her had come shortly afterwards from Awenda, South Carolina. He had stayed along the Intracoastal waterway on a large plantation. The full moon rising out of the shimmering waters through the hanging Spanish moss, and the couples dancing cheek to cheek at the Piccolo Spoleto Arts Festival, in Charleston, had driven him to write to her.
The second attempt from Vail, Colorado, he had been skiing the expansion of the back bowls in a sea of fresh powder snow. The exhilaration and the grandeur of the views had dwarfed him in loneliness to his pen.
How very little we know about life! He had called her after climbing The Grand Traverse in Vail, where he had bivouacked to watch a sunrise across the valley at 13,000 feet in elevation, the smoke from the fires of Yellowstone National Park were clearly visible. She had never answered. He was hoping to get to her somehow. She questioned his motives, and his sincerity. What would she say to him? What would he say to her?
The plane banked sharply to the right as it passed over the Eisenhower Tunnel, the Continental Divide and Loveland Pass. She was curious and falling in love with the land. The large reservoir of Lake Dillon and the highest yacht club marina in North America became visible. The great expanse of Summit County and the Valley of the Blue opened to her view. Looking down upon Arapahoe Basin, along route six, just below the Divide, she was beginning to understand what drew him to these mountains. It was exceptionally beautiful. He had read a quote to her from one of his favorite author’s. “Wild places do not exist to be convenient, or entertaining, or safe, or useful, or even what we choose to call beautiful. They do not exist to be admired or visited or photographed. They are there for themselves alone, and that is enough.” It was from Diane Sylvain, a contributor to Writer’s on the Range, and she now understood the meaning.
The views of Vail Pass and the Gore Mountain Range quickly gave way to the Spires of the Grand Traverse as they rose to meet the plane. She was flying over the White River National. The plane began descending rapidly and very steeply over Vail Mountain.
Tom didn’t notice the tiny silver speck at first, or the twinkle of the sunlight from the wing tips. He was gazing directly at the massive earthen mound and its open snowfields.
The small lift towers were glittering in the morning sun, a millipede connected by a thin sterling string crawling out of the contrasting pines.
He had come to realize that his Everest wasn’t even a mountain after all. It was the struggle to become a paper lion, by putting one word after another, like one foot in front of the other when climbing. Perhaps that was finally bringing them together. They were so much alike in such very different ways, they just looked at life from a different point of view.
There! He saw it, the sunlight flashing off the seesawing wings. It had begun its perilous descent. The plane was buffeted by updrafts and unstable wind torrents. It dropped from far above Vail Mountain to the small airstrip in Avon. It landed quickly and in seconds was roaring past the odd group waiting. The large stabilizing tail rising awkwardly from the smaller fuselage, it turned several hundred yards from them and began taxiing towards the Continental Express Terminal. It rolled to a halt. The turboprops stopped creating an ominous silence. He removed his gloves and slid them into the pack of his horse. He calmed the animals, even though he felt like a young schoolboy.
She had already overcome the butterflies of self-doubt and was descending the portable stairway, smiling brightly as she approached the group.
“Hee Haw! Hee Haw!” Hercules yelled.
“ Tell me,” Sara smiled broadly, “Don’t I know you name?”
They erupted in laughter as their eyes met, breaking the white silence.
Silent Running, Mike and the Mechanics
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