Ice cold footsteps
Crunch underfoot
Cracking like crisp candy canes
Steam fogs these glasses
As we all exhale from heated lungs
The trees smell pungent
Green pine dust fills our nostrils
A creek rages beside the trail
Bubbles gurgling
Churlish burglary of thought
Let go into a blue frosted sky
Don’t ask why
Just keep climbing ever colder, bolder
Up over yonder horizon the gales
Of water solidified in crowns
Stacked on top of each other
Perfectly placed crystals
A frigid stupa glistens
With the sound of sunshine
Reminds me that all the time
things climb
Out of the rock hard tundra
To enrapture and capture imagination
Three generations of Joe Barrett’s family call Oregon home. Growing up in Eugene, he gathered memories of the Dunes, the Sea Lion Caves, Lincoln City, the Seaside Turnaround, and the Peter Iredale. Now living in the High Desert, he and his family always return to the ocean for renewal.
