Lone Skier in Glacier George

75 Lone Skier in Glacier George Reg Saner All afternoon blown snow has screamed off the summits into sky’s high-altitude cobalt. Even now as the sun dips westerly and ice crags burn gold at the edges those snow-shapes keep hurling up, dervishing so wildly away over iron peaks of the headwall I pause, ski pole in each mittened hand and lean forward, spellbound. Worlds beyond my own little whiff of existence, and these pitiful schemes we believe we believe in, I’m held by more than just whirlwind crystals ripped from escarpments of granite. Within white fire’s endless wheel Apparitional I see myself done for, shot with my own blood . . . by an immense incandescence bound to annihilate me and all it makes, as it must, to be what it is. A radiance so beyond knowable I can’t wish it otherwise. And can’t want to. Then, unbidden as it came, the revelation wanes, leaving the one true thing tremendously gone and our entire, ingenious planet, a blown snowflake. Returned, I’m once more in a deep glacial valley filling to the brim with tinted shadow. The great-hearted, snow-loaded fir, the hugely stupid boulders 76 Ecotone: reimagining place I love, the dear wind-haggard spruce, wind-flustered ravens. All of us, one sky-lit and empty blue. ...