Climbing Suilven

I nod and nod to my own shadow and thrust
A mountain down and down.
Between my feet a loch shines in the brown,
It's silver paper crinkled and edged with rust.
My lungs say No;
But down and down this treadmill hill must go

Parishes dwinde. But my parish is
This stone, that tuft, this stone
And the cramped quarters of my flesh and bone.
I claw that tall horizon down to this;
And suddenly
My shadow jumps huge miles away from me.

Norman MacCaig, March 1954

Moon rising over Canisp & Suilven, April 2007, at the end of a gloriously long day, walking from Lochinver to Elphin with Jim and Roxy (my loving dog), having returned back to our starting point.

mountain study

Every now and then
I go up into the mountains:
fire and snow-
trudging for hours
along the black line of the river
following it right to the crest
or, when the snow's gone
moving up through the forest
to the thin grass and the rocks
the high country-
up there in the stillness
thinking of nothing
only the body moving

extract (section 2) from Kenneth White's Mountain Study, from The Bird Path - Collected Longer Poems 1964-1988

cold mountain

 extracts from Han-Shan's, cold mountain.

On Climbing the Sierra Matterhorn Again After Thirty-One Years

Range after range of mountains
Year after year
I am still in love

Gary Snyder

haiku

Reflected
in the dragonfly's eye -
mountains.

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