Three Poems for Eagle Mountain Wilderness Preserve and Northeast Wilderness Trust
by Sylvia Karman
Eagle Mountain Wilderness is in the northern foothills of the Adirondacks, a geologically young mountain range at five to ten million years old. The preserve is part of the ancestral land of the Kanien’kehá:ka—or the Mohawk nation. I hiked into Eagle Mountain Wilderness for the first time in October 2020 along the remnants of an old logging road reminding me of the history of the land and our relationship with it. Eagle Mountain Wilderness has much to offer about that relationship and how we can restore it. Since then I have had the good fortune to return to the preserve. The following poems represent my attempt to reflect on what wilderness can share when I pay attention.
Sylvia Karman
Mar 2021
Hiking Eagle Mountain Wilderness
Imagine walking through a richly inhabited world
of Birch people, Bear people, Rock people…
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
By what name do the trees know us?
They speak in balsam scents, their breezy brogues swish & creak,
birch & maple crowns cast sunlight coins that wink
my name along the logging road long surrendered
to pioneers whose seeds tag my sleeves & the wolfish drape
of my shepherd mix’s tail—they mark us chance in motion
& settle on a giant’s fist of till near a pond where the shepherd spies a beaver
Tsianì:to le castor der Biber Castor canadensis
whose gaze returns our marvel before he turns to ripples, water covers him sleek in sleek reflecting
the mountain—her south facing ice-plucked cliffs shelter raptor nations—she extends her wild
lap to the winged & mineraled, the rooted & roaming, to any called to wonder & become
possibility.
Northern Flicker (Yellow Shafted) Meets Cooper’s Hawks
Gold feathers, coal tips
fanned at birch roots, an offering.
Hawk shadows cross paths.
A breeze lifts the retrices
Of those in flight or service.
One Myotis Lucifugus
Lone mouse-eared brown bat
skirrs dusk, feeding on echoes.
Absence chases her.
Beneath her mammalian wings
trail cauldrons of white-nosed ghosts.
Eagle Mountain Wilderness Preserve, Chesterfield, NY
Sylvia Karman is a writer located in the northern Adirondacks, who also has roots in central Maryland. Her work has appeared in literary journals, such as Delmarva Review and Blueline. She has been an invited guest reader for numerous literary events, including The Scheherazade Project #101Nights video broadcast and Poetry Opening hosted by North Wind Fine Arts gallery in Saranac Lake, NY. She recently completed her first novel, Ghosts of Vienna. Sylvia is member of the Adirondack Center for Writers, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, Maryland Writers’ Association, and the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
Northeast Wilderness Trust (newildernesstrust.org) is a non-profit land trust, founded in 2002 to fill the vacant niche of wilderness protection in the Northeast. Their mission is to conserve forever-wild landscapes for nature and people. To date, they have protected more than 41,000 forever-wild acres across New England and New York.