Sometimes grief moves in silence, a dark undertow too deep to fathom. Sometimes it is moments of bright grace, and tears that heal. Sometimes it is a screaming howl. Sometimes it’s gratitude. Sometimes rage. Always raw, unwieldy, unexpected…
The flowers have all faded, the seeds scattered to the wind and to be swallowed by the ground; the moisture has evaporated and leaves burnt by the sun hang on by a mere thread before casting themselves off to die and become mulch and eventually new soil…
And still there are places where the pika squeak and thrive, where cold-loving evergreens reach toward the sky, where wild mountain waters run under stone through creases in alpine meadows… . . . …But even those pikas are threatened, so many of the trees have been lost to beetle-kill and other blight, and the waters are low, the snows shallow…
