"Do animals make a human cry
when their loved one staggers
fowled dragged down
the blue veined river
Does the female wail
miming the wolf of suffering
do lilies trumpet the pup
plucked for skin and skein

Do animals cry like humans
as I having lost you
yowled flagged
curled in a ball

This is how
we beat the icy field
shoeless and empty handed
hardly human at all

Negotiating a wilderness
we have yet to know
this is where time stops
and we have none to go."

-Patti Smith, "Wilderness"

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Rattlesnake

The ice was already cracked
but we still skated across it like ducks.

I walked on water
and watched it breathe beneath the layer
I trusted

and breathed softly


The dry air sucked the moisture from my cheeks and left them sticky
with salt.

It was a lake--
fresh water
(until I got there).


We watched the mallards and canada geese through your binoculars
even when they were two feet away.

We wondered at them and everything.




I wondered why you weren't more angry.
          You told me the ice was already cracked.

And then you said this felt like Refuge
and I slipped

into its arms.



-me-


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"The eastern shore of Great Salt Lake is frozen, and for as far as I can see it translates into isolation[...]

Because of the high water level and drop in salinity, Great Salt Lake can freeze and does[...]

I want to see it for myself, wild exposure, in January, when this desert is most severe. The lake is like steel. I wrap my alpaca shawl tight around my face until only my eyes are exposed. I must keep walking to stay warm. Even the land is frozen. There is no give beneath my feet.

I want to see the lake as Woman, as myself, in her refusal to be tamed. The state of Utah may try to dike her, divert her waters, build roads across her shores, but ultimately, it won't matter. She will survive us. I recognize her as a wilderness, raw and self-defined. Great Salt Lake strips me of contrivances and conditioning, saying, "I am not what you see. Question me. Stand by your own impressions.

We are taught not to trust our own experiences. Great Salt Lake teaches me experience is all we have."

-Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge-