More than Mountains

Wasn’t our first question whether the map
could be trusted? And didn’t we set out to test it
by following to the source one of those silver

snow-melt streams that wrinkled down a side canyon
feeding the green river in the canyon below? 
And isn’t that why we forded the river that morning

barefoot with our boots tied around our necks
and then climbed the dusty switchbacks
until our knees ached and our heels blistered

and our t-shirts stuck to the smalls of our backs?
And didn’t we keep climbing when the trail left off—
losing sight of the stream often—by following

the downhill, trickling, water-sound that led us up 
finally to a field of bear grass and a lake walled in
by rockslides loosed from the peaks above? 

And why weren’t we satisfied to rest there and swim
instead of filling our canteens, circling the lake
and plotting the next leg of our climb? 

Did we both have the same idea—being young
and well-equipped—of reaching a peak that day? 
Or did one persuade the other that the last leg

would be an easy scramble over raw boulders
once we left the hampering brush behind?
It wasn’t, but when we got to the first high ridge—

both of us gasping, hearts pumping, half dizzy
under the breathless, western sky—
didn’t you want to go on as I did?

And wasn’t a higher one waiting for us
and then a third further on where we finally stopped,
realizing the ridges might go on and on

without certainty of height ever being established
by us at least, our judgments already distorted  
by thin air, by the metallic, high-altitude light?

Yet wasn’t this summit what we’d aimed for,
this being above and yet surrounded
by mountains going off into mountains,

folding over and down into a distance dappled 
by more and everlasting mountains? 
What was the restlessness then, the necessity 

that stood us up against our exhaustion,
that set us casting about, kicking and knocking loose
random stones on the flat of our ridge?

What were we dreaming of more than mountains?
What did we feel in the stones that made us gather them
first into a ring, then a cairn, then an upright shape 

that gradually took on the appearance of a man?
Remember the horizontal slab I found for shoulders
and the squared-off block you placed for the head?

Didn’t we try our best to make a standing man 
and to face him west, returning the sun’s late gaze?
And in raising him up did you not find yourself

naming this figure in your mind, as I did?
And later, burnt-out, sweat-chilled, half-staggering
down hard ridges into valley twilight

didn’t other names occur to you as well,
word-forms that tumbled out of the mountains
as things do in the dusk, taking shape suddenly

from nothing, then falling back, reabsorbed?
Did you think the names would never be forgotten?
Yet do you remember even half of them now

half as well as you do our cold camp that night,
or the next-day muscle ache, or the morning forest light
you called breakfast light, as pale 

and washed out as the green half-tones of the map 
we carried all that summer, unfolding it
and refolding it until the creases finally tore?