SAM GREEN: One of
the things that
is hard for me is when we know
what to do about something
and we don't do it.
That's the toughest thing.
It's one thing to
make a mistake.
I make so many mistakes.
But I have a hard
time forgiving myself
when I know what I need to do.
I know how to do it.
I have the time to do it.
And I don't.
I don't sleep well.
"What We Carry on the
Trail," for the dedication
of the Vancouver Land
Bridge Confluence Project,
August 2008.
Remember that Lewis was the
scientist of the couple.
We know that Lewis
saw the hoary aster.
He left a sketch and kept
a sample pressed and dried
like something in a card
sent back from holy lands
by some devoted uncle.
We know how well
he kept his watch.
No doubt he heard the
hiss of water over sand,
of fur sliding through
an ocean of grass,
and knew the difference.
All day he cast the heavy
net of his attention
and sorted the cache at night--
the size and shape
of a grizzly's track,
the raucous calls
of geese and ducks.
He ground ink, mixed
colors, and left his mark.
At times, his notebook
seemed to fear
the awful abundance of things.
We know he never saw a
salt cedar, Russian olive,
the ruthless canes of
Himalayan blackberry.
They came, like us, later.
We don't know whether he
noticed a certain lupine.
Had it been in bloom, it would
have seemed just one more patch
of color on the spread
quilt of the day, something
to remind him of
his sisters bonnet,
his mother's apron, or laundry
drying on a neighbor's line.
He might have picked a stalk
to count its leaves or tally
its tight buds the
way a man at rest
might finger wet
stones after rain
or pick and chew
a stem of grass.
He might have seen cocoons
hidden in the leaves.
A few weeks more, and a
butterfly, blue as trade beads
or prairie sky, would have
been riding the breeze,
dependent on this single plant.
He could not have known how
rare that lupine would become,
how trained dogs would
come to hunt it by scent,
how every year it blooms
more near the abrupt cliff
of absence.
If wild bees hummed
prayers, they
might contain the names
of flowers in trouble.
Air doesn't recall the
shape of a bird's song.
Water can't remember the
weight of a swimming frog.
Like Lewis, like Clark, we
have set our feet on a bridge
into the future, intending
to arrive with everything
we love, including the brown
pelican, Kincaid's lupine,
Fender's blue butterfly.
We teach our children each
step is a name that matters.
We have traveled a long, long
way and are traveling still.
We carry the cost of failure,
the lengthening list of what
is gone already,
of all that might
be lost, knowing what we have
to do, not knowing if we will.
