These Red Roads
writing from our recent time in Shasta and Lassen national forests camping and mushroom hunting.
drive out along these rugged red roads,
wild mountain miles
folded green on green -
pine, fir, dogwood,
white blossoms blink
in early summer sun,
follow a grey silt stream,
last years fire-snow-melt-flood,
fiddleheads just begin
to peak their fresh curls
through thick brown duff,
pine needles as long as my hand,
and mushrooms,
always mushrooms,
fat white and rust topped boletes,
half hidden lumps in roadside dust,
lavender cup fungi break open underfoot,
and crinkled morels hidden in shadows,
under fallen logs,
or bits of damp bark,
where shy brown lizards
and shiny backed stink beetles roam
free as light on water
.
I love how this poem moves at the pace of a quiet walk, noticing what so easily goes unseen. Every detail—the streams, the ferns, the mushrooms, even the beetles—feels like part of the same living conversation. It left me with the feeling of having wandered those forest roads alongside you.