Overnight at Haypress Creek

We hiked into the deep ravine

of a quick, cold creek, High Sierra.
Found a place to camp and caught
a couple trout to eat. Evening:

lit a small fire to cook the fish
and heat some beans. Ate, then
doused the fire and slipped
into sleeping bags. Night:

wilderness became immense,
swallowed any sense of self-importance.
A world of creatures came alive,
bears and bobcats and bats,
deer, raccoon, rodents, and night-bugs.

Stirring in the brush, snapped sticks,
owl-hoots and the haunting yips
of coyotes coming through the canyon.
Walls of tall conifers turned black,
their furred edges outlined against
a star-choked sky, where meteors
scratched glow-trails close and far away.

Fatigue smothered awe. We slept....
Woke to a rotated sky and a risen moon
bearing down on us like one mad headlight
from a nightmare. Cricket choruses,
unceasing. Freshest air filling lungs.
And the creek: talking, talking, telling
tales of time we could never comprehend.

hans ostrom 2022

William Tell Ravine

(a tributary of the North Yuba River, Sierra County, California)

Before he'd heard anything about Switzerland, Schiller,
Rossini & stuff, he'd looked across the river from the house
at the long white beard of William Tell Falls. The sheer-drop
ravine seemed perpendicular.  No home for trout.  Im-

pulsively, as usual, he decided to hike up there when he was
17. He headed out, crossed the river, climbed straight up,
more laddering than walking. Ravine was path as rock
and manzanita brush walled the sides. He made it

as far as the flat pool the falls slapped in a-rhythmic
pulses. Sounds of that constant collision careened
around the stone box. There was no climbing further.
In soaked jeans and wet boots, legs loaded up

with lactic acid, he slithered down like an arthritic
snake, satisfied to have spied on a geologic scene,
to have introduced himself to William Tell Ravine,
and to have seen water and rock in their own time.


hans ostrom 2017