Mt. Whitney Viewed from Bristlecone Pine Road – a poem

Out here in the desert the summit just a snaggle-tooth in a granite gumline.

Anyone, they say, can reach the peak of peaks though the air is thin and the summer heat brutal. Up there at night you can freeze to death.

But if you prepare, then dare, all it takes is what made you a toddler, your one step then another trudging resolution, until you stand atop a sea of rock and nothing anywhere higher.

Who wouldn’t want to do that? But why, you ask?

Well, to go with friends and reach the pinnacle of something look around at the world at our feet come down, look up, and nod

having tested for once the lie that distance makes everything small.

#friendship #mountains #poem