A day short of the year’s shortest day,
We pile packs and boots into the car
And drive north in the dark –
Sky paling only past Togwotee pass –
And coast into sleepy, sleeping Dubois.
Tires thrum on dirt as the sky’s pink
Sinks into the Wind River Mountains.
We tumble from the car
And like four underfunded astronauts
In moon boots and T-shirts
Clomp into a rising canyon.
It draws a wind that keens
Through the trees and rounds the rocks around us.
We strike frozen Lake Louise –
Dark as a lens, aimed up at its origins.
Someone fell through a few weeks ago.
But we have Christian among us –
Piously, or heedlessly, he walks across the water
And we follow, prayerful.

The lake is alive.
Not that it moves or sighs
But it catches your eye and sends it flying
After cracks, streaks, filigreed seams.
The ice among the bubbles, the blots,
The white spiders and serpents is so clear
it could be inch-thin membrane
Or a meter of armor.
But it’s marble-hard, and slippery as a minute.
Camera out, I’m lost in its diagrams.
My partners look back and see me hunched,
Wonder if I’ve broken through.
No time for breakthroughs.
I make for the far shore
Itchin’ for friction.

We’re close.
The slope is fenced with fallen trees
And boulders poorly mortared with snow.
We wind up and through, winched in by the wall.
We stop and gape.
The whole cliff is furred by ice,
A white rug thrown against a rockpile,
Collapsed in cold heaps.
We dump everything out of our packs
And make ourselves beserkers –
Talons on feet, hoods over heads, scythes in hand.
We laugh off such dark, old errands.
We’re here for nonsense,
To wale against stuck water,
To conspire against icicles.
Greg and Christian start up,
Rob and I feeding out the line
That bind us together, tethered,
Of all things, to a layered cake.

Greg and Christian scuttle like housecats,
Propelled by skill, sticky ice,
And constant threat of catcall.
A long pause and we yell,
“There’s something wrong with the rope!”
“What?!” Christian is new to an old joke,
Or too intent on his tools
Loosening in cramped hands.
“It’s not moving!” we jeer.
His curdling answer, like ballast tossed,
Lifts him up the brittle wall. Then,
When I’m at the wall’s worst,
The good Christian slacks the rope.
Comedy is in the eye of the comedic.
But my axe, swung like I mean it,
Sticks fast, while shards explode below.

We’re up, but the sun will beat us down.
We tiptoe the waterfall’s roof
And lower from a ribboned tree.
This fine absurdity, to play all day
On a cathedral of mere rime,
Infects us all, blooms in us
Like the piles of wild color
That mass in the sky while we fall.
How can time race amid such antiquity,
Where the brown bones of the earth
Have broken the skin, then break themselves,
Where high pines lean over their fallen fathers?
Maybe time moves like a laugh
That you catch in the ribs and keep there,
Though it dies quick in the wintry air.

We stumble to the lake’s edge
As night tramples evening’s gray,
And lose our sense of hurry.
We gather close, lit by flame
Then scatter wide,
Flung across the polished ice.
The half moon slips under our feet,
Finds the white dragonflies and anemones
And flicks them alive.
Greg, ahead, crunches on crampons.
The splinters find the breeze
And tumble away, singing like chimes.
The music brings news of new winds,
And ice so slick I lack all resistance.
A gust shoves and turns me, mock terrified.
Frozen for balance, arms outspread,
I spin like a tin soldier
Turned in a child’s hand,
Until cut down by a laugh.

I’m tired.
Before refinding my feet,
I find the sky.
Kneeling on the ice,
I feel foolish, my friends gone ahead
Tugged by thoughts of home and beds.
But I watch the stars and consider the holiday
That comes close,
So wrapped in flattery and odd piety.
And I thank whoever wants the credit
For the crystal mass my friends and I
Have shared today.
Then I rise and move on,
Skating across the glossy fog,
And think of the drive, dinner to come,
And the little laughing dog at home.

Published in Powder Magazine, December 2006. It’s about last winter. Here’s to more of the same.

By David Gonzales

In mid January, the phone company cut off my service. In February, I noticed. On my way out the door, skis in hand, I happened to pick up the phone, which had been knocked off its cradle the day or maybe the week before. I clicked it on and put it to my ear.

Silence.

I laughed, threw it on the couch, and headed out. Anybody I needed to talk to I’d find in the tram line. Or maybe I wouldn’t. No friends on a powder day, as they say. And no bills to pay, no groceries to buy, no errands to run. I felt only one obligation, to the fat flakes that filled the sky, day after day after day. They were my supervisors, my excuses, my saviors. Bless their icy little hearts.

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