there are no pews more suitable for prayer

than naked river rock or exposed cliff ledge

no votary impulse more satisfied than at mountaintop

or at the base of inexorable whitewater

under big bossy cumuli

the whole body seems tempted toward campfire

as it does toward sunshine

breathing such living air

your skin is summoned to drink

the fine atmospheric champagne that on its own

comes to its knees

by earthy drunkenness or faith

faith in the wildness of life

in the sturdy storm enduring tree

and the white stamen of shooting star

that has been
abhorrently commandeered

by creation

For The Love Of A River.

When winter lacquers lakes and river tops, attacks breath and nose as it always does here in New England, when no bow can breach the white glass of January, we go along the waist, the feminine neck of what we would otherwise paddle, merely for our eyes to fondle the aching ice moaning under it's own weight, shrieking and shattering like a crystal chime on a windy day.

Camping Alongside The Pemi

the Pemigewasset River

photos by rick beaty

Final Night's Camp, Chesuncook.

The Crooked Blue Spine Of Maine

"a heaving, swelling, sea of color, chanting overhead."
"How deep our sleep, under the starry composite. Only the unwinding yarn of our exhausted fire, scribbles itself against the dark cluttered backdrop."

"The light, its cheek pressed against the lake, burns the skin of the deep unsettled. Over in the trees that spring from shore, as arrows do from the chest of an unfinished man, labored breath laps at the shore I can hardly see, my squint filtering nothing. My blindness on this day, that took so long to arrive, is more apparent than the clear-cut scars along the soft crooked spine of Maine."

Leafing Through The Last Days "Journal Quotes"

"The lake jostles in it's earthy cup -reverberating against stars that tonight are tourists that flock to my magnificent sleep."

"So big a lake, after being confined to the hallways of the Penobscot, you feel and hear; rising and cowering tides."
"Paddling open wind swept lakes -keeps shores at a distance and arms strong."
"No matter how glorious the river is, rushing beside this campfire I enjoy alone among the quiet; it is meant to be shared!

On Chesuncook...

the hours wait, hanging in the sky smelling of charred arrangements, the sun expelling itself wringing the lake of light so that emptiness could only be more emptyto voyeur the nudness of loons and the great body of Chesuncook curling its shoulder into the corner of the open rock, accepting it’s loose advances,

so that underneath the retracting tide the hips of rock hiking skirt, reveal the dried bone and warmth, bed and coal of what we could and shouldn’t be.

bivouacked in moonlight and sound so that escaping the wheeze of shore in a scattered lace written out along the beach you can read you, in a scribbled, tide-abandoned tongue, the hours waiting and smelling themselves.

Prose Flows Down The River

the linoleum reflecting cheap 70’s blue sky, the covers of magazines trickling through the limbs of downed trees, newsprint smoldering above poorly enunciated fires and books, books stack, leaning and reaching towards the sun, telling no stories, inventing no truths about eddy foam swirling, panting after crawling through the lungs of wheezing channels and roads that swell and slosh against the creek of camp, searching the cracking and aging, the pale and smooth bed its flesh sweats against.

The Burden Of Watch & Motor

The quiet opened and revealed the end of the Nob, which seemed to widen with each paddle stroke as it nudged its shoulders toward Chesuncook; the end of the trip, the final night. The sound of phones and traffic, nines & fives, un-raked leaves and the burden of watches and noise of motors arrive, the machinery of everyday life, all seemed closer now, and our beers were warmer than the water we fought through on our way towards Gero Island. The quiet was heavy until it was ripped through.......