they pull up short up of the shoulder
just shy of the overhangs
when the rope swing blows towards them
cut in the fortnight prior to half its length –
tied too high in the ferns to get at properly
the Whistler authorities have put it out of service
much as the ski runs not converted
to mountain bike trails are in summer
or the chairlifts hanging in PVC bags
so high above the bears on Fitzsimons river
because a boy leapt off too late and later died –
and so they swim out to the furthest raft
tied like a timber planter box in the turquoise
of Lost Lake – a naked man who looks adrift
lies belly-up on the middle raft, long white hair
laid out on the treated pinewood like a spill
and I am on the closest, eyeing the snow
stained a corrective pen red by summer algae
from the point where vegetation dies away
up to the summit – that black and white candelabra –
one boy decides to eat his apple core –
the stem he tosses almost hits the head
of a whiskeyjack buried in wildflowers
a holograph flickering over purple pixels
or so it looks to me in the alpine glare –
another boy is so hyperaware of his steps
so conscious of the places his feet go
and the will that ferried them there
that he strikes me as far older than the rest
like the glaciers frozen over all year round –
even when it’s thirty degrees down in the village –
I spied from the edge of rock faces
mossy with marmot hair, almost motherly
swans behind their signets of spearmint water
and the pine hills, higher and lower than most
of the sloping meadows, but always whiter
stiller – less convivial with the sun
but conduits so faithful as to boil out eyes
or put the sharpest into misapprehension
not glaciers but clouds, or raw brightness, or
raw silence – I think I see the Quicksilver
logo on the bikinis of all three girls
riding their feathery weight down to the boys
and on their bags, that expensive yoga brand
all Canadians love, especially the men –
so dazzling is the pink – the green – the blue
like malamute eyes, that the bathers must be new
must never have been in water –
I’d never been in water as cold as Garibaldi Lake
where sunken trees were teased by rainbow
flurries in the clear-as-teardrop shallows
bonsai pines held fast to every outcrop
glacial runoff threaded from the green
into spillways overtopped by folkloric footbridges
and every tree branch was a caribou antler returned
chipmunks darting from tent to bear-proof food bags
never less than desperate to look upon the unseen
to move, like the boy who’s nature seems more mystic
than it is, with purpose unswerving
but always just beyond grasp,
like the farthest raft
on account of the naked man, farthest outcrop
on account of hypothermia –
the aluminium ring around the billy can
blackened as the water boiled, turned green
at the points where the kerosene flames licked
the ice on the path to the drop toilet, bored
by snowshoes searching for grip atop the slick.
paddle boarders pass me, headed north
to the busier shore, the one on Blackcomb side
alive with a sort of bucolic, carefree whimsy
I’d thought dead – then a kayaking armada
headed by the only soldier over ten
a First Nation woman with hair like black boiled wool
takes the naked island – the savage flees
and is made to flee even faster by the names they call
so loud the black bears hear, and the laughter –
in a squint I can see the polish
on the second girl’s toenails – orange
like the tigerlilies opening, at last, in Anna’s
garden
at the corner where the hangers meet the herbs
and the first of the tree log pylons
pushing the ceiling to such vertiginous heights
begins on its concrete bed –
on their pine needle plinth I sight those feet
as one might a photograph of better times –
dark red lint from the bamboo socks
all there was adorning mine when suddenly
I found that both my boot soles had fallen off
to the toes at the foot of our six hour hike
to the lakeside campsite, and with no other choice
I cast my heavy pack off onto the trail
bent the legs, feeling the strain of the early start
and the weight of the camping stove and three days’
food
stretched a sock over each boot to the heel
where the glue had come unstuck, and toiled as if
in snowshoes up the jagged switchbacks
the soaring, sunless ascents through walls and rooves
of ferns like the one that rope swing limps from now
intermittent glacial panoramas
rivers turned from thunderous to mute by single
hairpins
and the soundproofing of a thousand trees, a thousand
boulders
floral galaxies orbited by bees
with paler stripes than those at home
rustle of cold cascades passing under the path
sweat paralysing my back where the load pressed hard
brooks like gutters formed along tree root escarpments
my resolve to keep from breaking up the moss
to keep the sodden soil away from my mouth
the soil shaken free of the body by a wind that only
blew
when the terrain opened out, and a lake, unnamed
on the map, would soon appear
fitting and starting like light off the dewy grass –
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