What Lizard Forgot

You look ahead, up ahead is fate. 

—Anzhelina Polonskaya

 

Lizard does recall!  The Great Remembering. The Vast Cycles.

“… global warming of more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end … faces as much as 3.1C (5.6F) of warming … prevent a cascade of dangerous … hottest in recorded … 57.1 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide … collectively a cut of 42 … 57 percent by 2035 for any hope … 20 largest economies…” —From news agencies per UN October 2024

Time measured in the counting.
The stories they don’t tell.
The brilliant bones.
Scattered shards of light.
 —DB

We suddenly discovered the sun, and we were vouchedsafed white stones and a dusky and wild body. —Anzhelina Polonskaya

Yes, we are envoys of a flat earth, our only vocabulary is antonyms. —Ostap Slyvynsky

Who needs TV drama? This is life in the volcano. This is as cold as it gets. —Meg Kearney

NOTES
—Anzhelina Polonskaya: You look… from the poem Calculator; We suddenly… from the poem Saga, both in A Voice: Selected Poems 2004. (trans from Russian by Andrew Wachtel). Anzhelina Polonskaya lives in Germany; her poems are prohibited in Russia.
—Meg Kearney from the poem Living in the Volcano in her collection Home By Now 2009.
—Kateryna Kalytko and Ostap Slyvynsky excerpts from the anthology In the Hour Of War:  Poetry from Ukraine 2023, tr. by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky

PHOTOS Oregon’s Northern Great Basin, October 2024. Click to enlarge

CODA
Who knew? Everyone knew.
Inevitability spreads like nuclear radiation,
breaking down words …
It's easier, now, that the war has started. Easier, after all
now. How clear is our past, with its mistakes of tone,
its sincerity, its
air.
—Kateryna Kalytko

 

FIRE : Murderers Creek

Murderers Creek, a tributary to the wild and scenic South Fork of the John Day River, lies  at the heart of the Rail Ridge Fire: 175,000 acres September/October this year and not fully contained as of this writing.

Murderers Creek, a 19th century naming of a valley in traditional Northern Paiute country. The Northern Paiute arriving several centuries before Euro-American incursion, conflicts, and displacements began 200 years ago. The Creek’s name holds diverse tellings of origins.  What is to be believed?

Indigenous Peoples’ Day, recognized on October 14 in Oregon, offers a time to reflect on dramatic changes in the lifeways of the Northern Paiute beginning with the Hudson Bay fur traders in the 1820-1830s.  Murderers Creek figures prominently, yet elusively, in the 1850-1870s — an era of movement, mining, fighting, tracking, killing, capturing, and claiming in Oregon. Including the infamous and devastating Paiute War, 1864-1868. Well-documented, by Anglos — military, newspapers, settlers reports, histories, etc. — in various ways and styles.

Another kind of document:  I speculate that some of the many rock paintings in places of movement and conflict in Central and SE Oregon were made during that era, 1840s-1870s.  This may apply to some of Murderers Creek’s complex of rock paintings by indigenous people. 

Unusual image combines incising and abrading, appears to intentionally connect with the visible power of the natural stone.

Black grid/net: origin and intent unknown

NOTES
— Rail Ridge Fire Sep-Oct 2024 LINK with maps and updates
— Aurora Borealis over the Rail Ridge Fire and other photos LINK
— Photos above May 2018. Click to enlarge. Feel free to inquire. Most of these images, in Grant County, documented by the intrepid Lorings in the 1960s.

— Murderers Creek also imaged and discussed July 20 2023: https://rockartoregon.blogspot.com/2023/07/beneath-us-other-order-already-moves.html

 

CODA

        The Valley of Birds

We'll lock the door
and head for the valley of birds.
Hold on,
while I douse the fire
to ensure that no one
can block our path.

Sit down for a minute and rest
by the tree where the doves sing.
And if I don't appear,
don't turn around,
don't let out a scream.
Let the silence protect you.

If I don't appear
it means the fire is unquenchable.
But a swift is flying circles
above you!
Lift your head up
and watch it.
        — Anzhelina Polonskaya