History, Natural History & the Arts
Ed Zahniser retired as the senior writer and editor with the National Park Service Publications Group in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. He writes and lectures frequently about wilderness, wildlands, and conservation history topics. He is the youngest child of Alice (1918-2014) and Howard Zahniser (1906–1964). Ed’s father was the principal author and chief lobbyist for the National Wilderness Preservation System Act of 1964. Ed edited his father’s Adirondack writings in Where Wilderness Preservation Began: Adirondack Writings of Howard Zahniser, and also edited Daisy Mavis Dalaba Allen’s Ranger Bowback: An Adirondack farmer - a memoir of Hillmount Farms (Bakers Mills).
At the Cabin
Maybe a bitter frost
burned away the herbs
our mother planted
by the stone chimney
and cabin back door
in a former millennium
before she left us here
in this one tutored by
her own life’s example
to point out the way
our journey should take
to a like fulfillment
and model of service.
Pro @ Crastination
Off-year for apples
on the shed-side tree
Pruners rust in cabin
Mind chants to heart:
“There’s always next year”
So I’ve ever hoped
Skinned right shin
stepping through brush
Woodlot darkness thickens
Which way mindfulness?
Adirondack Blue
Wind-spun cirrus clouds
Heaven’s cotton batting
Sky background that blue
we call “Adirondack blue”
St. Paul’s Ephesians letter
lays peace to a Quiet Mind
See how Black-eyed Susans
stare Autumn-ward now
Changes
Broken by brief rain
dull heat disappears
tail between its clouds
I recall late-August
mornings as a child
dressing by the fire
Oatmeal bubbled thick
in big blackened pot
Mountains unmoved
since we went to bed
Clouds now crest them
heavily like a toddler
riding your shoulders
By August We Pray for a Killing Frost
This summer our bumper zucchini
crop way outweighed
the entire oeuvre of Puccini.
Neighbors early on inveighed
against the chronic lack of canning jars.
By mid-July you couldn’t give a squash away.
People started locking their cars.
I logged my days’ cholesterol work-out miles
wheeling barrows-full to multiple compost piles.
Adirondack August
Cutting wood and carrying water
Mind empty with no effort
Nearly stepped in the spring
I hum all day and no repetition
Wind soughs through fir balsams
Night silence so thick I hear it
Can’t keep things straight
Stars don’t seem to mind
Nundegao Ridge
On a table monolith
granite veined by quartz
like so many zippers
The children dance
in rock rain reservoirs
Nibble blueberries
Wind-protected
Hare-bells dance
on the ledge below
as hawk bursts out
below us forty feet
to rise on a thermal
Hollow hawk bones
soon “cloud-hidden
whereabouts unknown”
Eleventh Mountain
Yellow coffee can lids
nailed to trees through
gray duct tape squares
A worn path through ferns
vanishes in forest duff
Now and then a cut blaze
or rarely rock cairns
The way is not difficult
for those who have
no preferences
Summit
Wind dances atop
Crane Mountain
blowing sideways
No mosquitoes
fewer deerflies
No sweat beads
bud on face or neck
as the trail dries too
Nature balances
costs and benefits.
In-Tent Desire
Cushioning softness
your warm belly
The Buddha
gave this up for
thin straw mats
on bare floors
whatever ground
of our being being
Who knows what other
folly might well indwell
that Eightfold Path?