Legacy

Whitebark PineCrater Lake National Park, Oregon

This poem and photo appeared in the third edition of Trouble magazine:

Legacy

By Matt Witt

Alone

trying to find my way up

with no trail

no footprints to follow

just snow

Through woods of firs and hemlocks

climbing steep open spaces

that would be meadows in summer

but now are huge white expanses

too cold to melt

Higher

a whitebark pine

alone

sticking out of the snow

After three miles

the Crater Lake rim

formed by a volcano

thousands of years ago

The lake

a caldera

twenty square miles

winter blue

Frigid wind

cornices of unsupported snow

one wrong step

into the water

two thousand feet below

and almost two thousand feet deep

To the left

a massive peak

named by white men

for a president’s son

To the right

another

named for a federal agent

who annihilated native people

Peaks named as if this place

is a monument

to their legacy

This place

that was here

long before us

and will be here

long after we

melt away

like the snow

I am standing on

Back then

average snowfall

was nearly twice

what it is now

and the lake and air

were many degrees cooler

Habitat for

furry pikas

whitebark pines

and gray-crowned rosy finches

already in danger

and that’s just the beginning

Our legacy

what to name it?