Here is another reflection on the Paradise Below Zero retreat, this time courtesy of head student Peter Joryu Harris:

On the Edge of the Unincorporated

East of the North Road that leads to no named town
the weather wilded whenever when we were in the yurt,
big multi-toned throat singing stereo winds and rain
splat choruses sweeping in from can’t-say-wheres.

But when we emerged it calmed, snowed lightly
or not. Thought burden lifting step by step,
we did slow kinhin in snowshoes down untracked trails
through beech, hemlock, maple, spruce and pine.
An hour walk, a hundred yards,
glimpses of the great white empty snowfield
of frozen Moosehead, Mount Kineo incarnating
in eyeblink flashbacks in gaps of treebark,
animal tracks, trembling needles,
algae blackened hemlocks, pearl white and
pale green lichen swatches painted on the north
faces of older maple trees.

Each morning the night’s snow outlined branches
with two-inch eyebrows that tumbled in the slightest
sun-awakened breeze. Each minute, fresh blood
in our ears: Day One must-do mind
giving way to Day Two deeper breathing
seeping up through rib branches unawares. .
Day Three morning walk going nowhere:
blinkers, headbands loosen, slip free,
padlocks fall off the lips of trees,
doors open in the snow banks, skin portals
unbatten, blue flags snap open the rootless sky.