Moon Mountains 2017

Nameless crags of schist by Fairview Creek

It was many and many a year ago
In a kingdom by the sea,
Two Park Rangers and a teacher
Started hiking happily

Toward the Mountains of Moon
Where exactly a year before
They had wandered lost, chilly and cross,
For what seemed like many years more.

Now, to return, and step at last
On the Mountains of Moon,
To reach the barren tundra
Where grey is the tundra's hue,

And hope that the fog racing over the bog
Sweeping up from Woolley Lagoon
Would not suck them again, completely within,
On their way to the Mountains of Moon.

Bouldering of Beringia 

To publish in a blog, the 'tudes of the Moon
Might piss off the corporation--
Not to mention the spirits of the land
That dwell in that sacred location

On a mound from the war, they left their sorry car
And headed southeast towards the Moons,
The season was Fall, Friday the call,
And they figured they'd get there soon.

But the bog was all squishy
And the mountains so far,
They pitched tents in the darkness
Still rather close to the car.

And started hiking by ten when the morning came again,
Keeping on a southwest tack,
Until they got to the cut bank at Fairview Creek
Where each one dropped his pack.

Then past the Cranestock Tors, they hiked
Past Skin Folded Badly Rock.
Just ahead lay the grey tundra bed
They had hiked so far to walk.

Derek, Lucy, and David, with the Cranestock Boulders in background.

And they came to a hutch, between two creeks,
The ptarmigan dormitory,
The birds took to the air, the hikers walked right in there,
Into the tundra food factory.

Bushes to the left, bushes to the right
Bushes above and around;
Fur on the branches, blood in the halls,
And feathers on the ground

Of  little ptarmigan rooms
Where birds hopped through the willows.
The bellhops were all foxes.
Fluffing up the pillows.

The desk clerk was an aklaq,
They saw the poop on the floor,
The three hikers tip-toed on by
Singing on the way out the door.

The doorman was a raven
Hanging with two pals.
His hands were full as he perched on his stool
With a parking lot full of owls.

All day at the buffet, with their families,
The owls were three to a bush;
With all the secondary consumers all around,
The hikers bushwhacked out in a rush.

Three photos of the hike in to the Moon Mountains. We only barely penetrated  to the lunar "playa".  The peak in the distance on the bottom picture is probably the high point of the Moons. I have not found evidence of a rock climbing cornucopia in here. Mostly the rock seems to be degraded piles of rotten marble. 

And they came to a land like the surface of the moon,
Though to the moon they had never been.
Had Qaweraq turned to Nevada?
It could have been Burning Man.

Oh, limestone is a choss rock
It falls down bonk on your head
It has saturated the soil
And turned the red to gray, instead.

No wind on the moon like they had it,
But no less of a lunar cold,
The breeze it did freeze as we hid behind a wall
That had the look of a wall of old.

"So this is all you get, well, I've seen this before, 
In Death Valley And the Bristlecone.
Will it someday be a reserve, all special and preserved,
Or hope they just leave it alone?"

Too far of a way to go
Down the Valley of Shadow
Three hikers turned round, for the Glue of Town,
To come back for the Moon Mountains tomorrow.

To the north into Livingston Creek
The travelers made their way,
An interesting drain that goes against the grain
They wandered the rest of the day.

Proof of climbing: the author, resembling a patch of lichen, is visible dangling from numb hands on another enjoyable highball at the Fairview Creek crags.

At Livingston Creek, a swarm of crags
Came up on the horizon
Lined up on a ridge
Like heads on Easter Island.

The rock was choss, as a matter of course,
A not unagreeable kind.
The vibes were good and it was understood
That there would be time to climb.

I grabbed a jug and hoisted high,
The jug held in its place.
I yarded another, testing the wine,
Just a little taste.

And then great draughts of climbing,
Of cruising over the stone,
Your ass hanging over the land
Out in the great alone.

Jugs with crinkles of lichen
Jams full of dirt and grit
Wearing the desert like clothing
Trying not to fall off of it.

Crack and chimney, crimp and bone,
Clutch on the moss, cling to the stone;
A thousand years is passing by,
A part of the rock you have grown.

Camp at Fairview Creek. Pk. 940 in background.

They walked a circle on the Moon.
It was time to get back to the module.
They got back to their tents at Fairview Crick
And crawled through their vestibule.

Nothing was said, though everyone knew
The three had changed since they began.
This place they had traveled, its mysteries unraveled,
This place where the peninsula ran

Counter to the grain, had taken them in,
This land of playa and fog;
What resonates with beauty becomes beautiful
Felt the hikers and the dog.

The GLUE of TOWN began to come down,
They rose the morrow morn,
Back to the car to go,
Someday to return.

David's record of our hike made by his Delorme, for which I am grateful, because I can't for the life of me ever figure out where we hiked in this region. The area is plagued by electromagnetic anomalies that interfere with my already poor sense of direction. It's as if the Moon Mountains are permanently shrouded in a fog of the mind as obfuscatory as the ones that sweep up from Woolley Lagoon. The jury is still out on which is the shortest way to hike in to the Moons from the road. There is a 4-wheeler road we saw intermittently that covers this same ground. Hopefully, we will return each Fall for our own, lonely, cold, Burning Man celebration. Thanks to David Panepinto for supplying a few pictures and this map. And thanks to Edgar Allen Poe.