I am a Quaking Aspen

 

            I am a quaking aspen and not a Douglas fir.  I can move with the patterns of the second growth of the Coast Range.  The winds blowing in from the Pacific call me by my first name.  The Old Growth of the cascades is as alien to me as  the extraneous landscape of a distant planet.  It is eerie and incorporeal as the arcane draught severing the immovably sepulcher, that surrounds and suffocates the extinction of the composition of the creation.   The open meadows and park lands open unto me as a home in a storm.  I  am a child of industry.  I feel  the injury of industry upon the earth  and I am a part of the healing of the planet that is the movements of my life.  The weeds that crack through the pavements, as the earth reclaims what was taken without respect is the revolution of the humanity of the soul of my life.  It is the small places with insects and grasses and miniature blossoms, that clothe me as my own land as I am part of that land.  I am a quaking aspen reclaiming the lands logged over or burned in serial succession and not the climax community of the wisdom of the ages.  Revolutionary and not the memorial sage.  My grandfather was a Douglas fir I am a quaking aspen.

            I grew up on the edge of town, in a small housing development, between the railroad tracks and the factories.  Acreage properties, railroad right of ways, and empty lots were my wilderness.  Catching toads and snakes in the irrigation ditches were my wildlife adventures.  Disturbed lands reclaiming its wildness was my love of nature.  I am a quaking aspen growing in extensive groves in cut over Douglas fir remains in Gibson Jack one ridge over from Pocatello, behind Kimport peak.