Christine Hemp has served as Park Poet for three U.S. National Parks-- writing poems, giving workshops for visitors and rangers, and leaving poems for future visitors.                                                                              
click to see her poem for Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota


Mt. Rainier National Park

THE VESSEL

for Mt. Rainier National Park on its Centennial Celebration
AUGUST 14, 1999

for Mt. Rainier National Park 
on its Centennial Celebration

My father would say, “The Mountain’s out
today!” and he’d smile while I, astonished
looked across at him behind the wheel.
Driving down I-5, it was as if he had a magic
eye. How do you know? I’d ask again.

Then we’d round the bend and sure 
enough, like Oz at the end of the road, 
or the biggest ice cream cone ever: Elegant 
flowing, pink with morning sun, the shapely 
mountain stood in our path, spilling

glaciers down her sides. Years later
my father confessed 
about the cut in the trees on one stretch
of the highway —where on a clear day, 
the mountain peeked 

through for an instant. We marveled
at his mystic powers, but how, in the end,
it’s the mountain who has the last word. 
She decides when she’ll grace us 
with her shape or when she’ll hide 

for days and weeks, shrouded with clouds.
Tonight on the shoulder of this peak
we huddle, bound by the night and edges
of what is wild. The summit is hidden, but
in our bones and flesh we feel

the stirrings underneath. Volcanic veins
and glacial waters pulse and flow. We are but 
a drop in the giant vessel, glittering briefly,
then disappearing downstream, gone 
with the tide of all that passes. 

This mountain stays. She is not only nature
but wilderness and wildness, unfettered 
by choice or moral code. Tomorrow we will pour 
down her sides and leave this corporate body
of timber and ice. But like a lover 

whose scent we carry always, the mountain 
will reveal herself again through the cut 
in the trees of our daily lives – when
folding laundry, sipping coffee, or checking
e-mail. Suddenly we’ll hear, “The Mountain

is out!” and we’ll be filled with a restless 
longing, a primal urge, and slowly we’ll turn
our faces toward the face of mighty Tahoma,
forever stirred by what she holds.

 
Christine Hemp

 

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