Vly Mountain

An exploration into zones left unmarked, following Batavia Kill or East Kill or Schoharie Creek, stumbling against the upper reaches of the Delaware, the thin, sinuous twistings of the mind to capture water, to release light as rain releases energy, sun flooding the days with an intense luminosity the mind cannot harbor but seeks again eagerly under the shadow of the next rain, the next storming wildness above Johnson Hollow Brook, above West Kill Mountain, Diamond Notch, Notre Dame, Balsam Mountain, the names string across the afternoon as a wavering thread of stone and fir, a wavering line of light under the vast preserve of rock around where the body seeks a more gentle rest, a place of clover and sudden showers, a place where weariness can be eased and the blunt heat of stone tempered by flower and fern, wandering across the uppermost reaches of the Catskills, where the Spruceton Trail rises above and Stony Clove Notch casts a brilliant shadow on the creek below,

an exploration into ancient zones whose stones are rounded and full, where deer and bear have found shelter despite the vast maze to the southeast, despite repeated pillaging and plundering, the loss of green and grey, black and brown, the forcing of paths, the insertion of structures, an exploration into ancient zones whose names do not form a common myth, whose names are distinct and linked gently, Little Delaware, East Branch and West Branch, crisscrossing the hills as Vly Creek moves above the stars, as the folds of Vly Mountain twist around the sun, moving in a pattern the eye cannot discern, a pattern of folds and fault, shiftings and hammering rains, the sight of snow on the heart as a dream we cannot hold, as a dream on Vly Mountain in the August rains, in the sleek heat of a September morning when the mind is weary and the body longs for October, for the wild high clouds before snow, for the depth of sun unmatched in August, for the heat locked in a leaf, repeated in a branch, moving and folded over the earth, a pattern of wings and light, matching the uppermost branches of apple, fruit still high and gold while the winds accumulate force, turning to the east with fury, October in the high peaks of the mind, as the light shifts and the body learns how to follow the dead, how to wander in the tall grasses, the dwarf birch, the scented pine, how to see Pacific waters without falling to the siren, how to map the meadows under the heart, the forest lying to the north, the patterns of snow and ice, sun and leaf on the mind, the body still resisting the light, learning how to follow the dead, to accompany them across Catskill and Hudson, Taconic and Berkshire, how to accompany then as they leave this earth and wander more fully, into the night as the day is stunned, into the day with a gold and greening dream of light,

an exploration of zones the body has witnessed, the mind retained as a trail leading across sleep and consciousness, across memory and oblivion, across the routine gestures that bring food and shelter, comfort and solace, an exploration of trails the heart has conceived, trails that bring no fruit without sight, no sight without this constant crossing and recrossing, wandering and forgetting, trails up onto Vly Mountain, in a lost zone between Schoharie Creek and the East Branch of the Delaware River, in a zone the heart has not before imagined, a zone of fir and birch, lightning and flowers, the rod of sleep tuned to another wind, falling gently as eyes remain closed and drifting brings us back to sleep, to the gentleness before dream, to the starting point of exploration, somewhere in the land to the west of the Hudson, somewhere in the bright hills above memory while the mind is resting and the body cannot fail to send forth the light, turn over the last stone left on the field, move again in the wind without fear, a turning of snow to light and rain to dust, a turning of the blood to fire, of fire to waters unknown, in a land unmarked but fragrance yet in apple lies beneath the moon.

Andrea Moorhead

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