Years of Poems and Spirits

Since I don’t write often, I might as let the momentum carry me one more tonight.

Just came back from a day hike to the Carne Mountain near Leavenworth. It was a pleasant surprise (I admit I am at the same time pursuing and abusing the sense of “surprise”). Larch trees are at their peak and, just like my last trip to the Enchantments, all the larch trees seemed to hide in a high mountain basin. This means we traveled for hours with nothing to see, but once we stepped across a threshold—the rim of the basin, suddenly we were in a different realm.

The color was so vibrant as if gold was lit on fire. Unlike the New England foliage, which I could never get enough of, the larch color is much more light dependent. Without light, it is darkish gray. As the light changes, gray changes into yellow, than an orange glow.

We thought we got what we were here for in the middle of the basin and were almost ready to turn around. Another couple coming down from the nearby summit told us enough to keep going. Thanks to them, we got much more than what we expected.

The peak of Carne was one of the high points along a mountain spine sandwiched between two huge glacier-carved valleys. Where we stood, lights from a setting sun piercing through thick clouds cast stage lights over the near end of the valley to our west. When we look out along the valley to the other end, the rolling clouds thickened and darkened, as if the valley is a gigantic pathway leading to a different world. Turning around, we saw in the shadows of clouds and ridge light, cluster of larch trees’ tip glowing like budding golden flowers. It is a scene worth the lost of sleep now, to say the least.

As I soaked myself in the view, Rachmaninoff’s second symphony got in my head, and I just couldn’t shake it off. However I think about Rachmaninoff, his music does conjure an expansive imagery. And a sense of unreserved devotion. That is how I felt at that moment – I was as naked in front of nature as it is to me. It was a wonderful feeling.

Finally finished reading Ian Frazier’s travel journal across Siberia. Loved it.

I liked “Cold Mountain” a lot, even though I usually don’t get excited with this type of romance-tragedy. For example, I know what The English Patient was trying to say, but I just didn’t feel anything afterwards. Cold Mountain, somehow, is different. The connection to “Odysseus” was unmistakable, and if the impact of that ancient epic was dormant before, Cold Mountain certainly awoke it. I was swept away.

Soon I learned that the title was named after 寒山 the poet. Although I don’t know much about Han Shan (and I still don’t. As much as I admire Frazier, I don’t think Han Shan is the same guy to me as he’s to him. So I just didn’t try), it is enough for me to pick out the Asian sentiment in Frazier’s work. And the Siberian journal is another example.

What I read in the journal was a sense of nostalgia, of attachment to the past (and present) being lost and a slight touch of homesickness. I guess for a popular Western literati, you can’t get more Asian than that. But I really appreciate his angle here: there was a parallel in the vastness of the terrain and the infinity of history. What we consider as “history” today is nothing but a narrow and crooked narrative not unlike the barely-maintained highway threading across Siberia.

Reminded me of a trip of my own. I was in Dun Huang a couple of years ago. ZR and I visited an ancient ruin called “锁阳城”. It was one of the frontier posts manned against the desert nomads since Tang Dynasty. At its peak, the walled area housed thousands of people. But when we got there, it was almost buried in sand dunes drifted south from the nearby Gobi Dessert.

A village girl came to greet us. The ruin was so remote and so little known outside of the famous mural caves, she was as lonely as the half-buried ruin in the middle of the dessert. As we walked onto the once teethed castle wall, a gust of wind whipped up. ZR and the girl stayed behind but I pressed on. At the out-most point where I stood, I could see nothing but an endless span of land that touched sky with a blurred line of horizon. Every here and there, a cyclone danced up, drifted for a while, then faded.

To my left, about less than a mile, was a half collapsed kiln-like structure. It was said to be the stupa of a once prominent Buddhist temple complex. Today, except this structure, there was nothing left. All I found after a short walk around was part of a mummified goat lightly covered by sand under a cluster of desert shrub.

Then and there, I thought I was touching the true, pristine history.

For some reason, a 苏东坡 poem popped in my head:
人生到处知何似?应似飞鸿踏雪泥。
泥上偶然留指爪,鸿飞那复计东西。
老僧已死成新塔,坏壁无由见旧题。
往日崎岖还记否,路长人困蹇驴嘶。