On the southeast slope of Mount Junueau, whose name I do not know, however who’s northwest slope I do. The slope has been lovingly named Yaadaa.at Kalé, that beautiful face of the mountain, this is where I look. The mountain is made clearer by binoculars, old but better than my naked eye. They were brought to the wooden hollow trail in a splendid carry case, old leathery brown box, dusty dark, coffee spilled in midnight straps, a silver detailed square above the bag clasp note its maker & year. I am sitting on the channel of water corralled by human hands, “The Flume” a wooden passage that allows the water company to use the kinetic energy of the river to push it through the filtering system & generate electricity.

“Junwoo” means mountain goat, who is chewing, searching for new growth on the spring stand of trees. I did not see them at first, blended as they coat themselves in shades of fallen snow & glacial boulder, baying head in blurry arch-ing horns back & eyes unseeable from this distance, standing proud & hungry, two fingers distance from the summit of the mountain. Alpine flowers seem to be the first native flower to bloom where I'm from. Their bright, pinpricked colors painted into being through snowmelt & warm temperatures. I was scanning the mountain slopes in search of fauna, flora lay in waiting. Watching me watch the goats, searching the steeps until fireflach, gold foil, pink petals on winter cliath, saw me through my eyeglass like a hagstone, I fail to recognize their form from such a distance.

The rain poured today soaking my jacket to my sweater to my skin. Wet cotton blend meld into pink pyrite flesh. The water has seeped into the padded black lining of the jacket. The rain will swell the rivers near my home, calbh in tenor, ice like premonition when you wade in. Gold creek is cold, fresh melted mountain run off, brought to your lips by hand, & water company. Whose pumping station is tucked into alder & pine blanket 50 feet from the MT. Roberts unofficial trail head. “NO TRESSPASSING” a red sign proudly states, I imagine it's placed for tourists & liability, as the red sign speaks like an old friend.

The mountains bodies are diffused in the fret. Ducks have flown in from their winter stowaways, they dip & bob in the briny tides. Black necks curved, feathery fiddleheads, white false eyes with lacey wings, orange beaks florescent like the diamond hazard sign perched on a tiny island, mile off from shore. Steady rain, we have found shelter in the wooden arms of King Bench. The tide is creeping low & the bladderwrack sings dusty gold on the revealing rocks. Outer point North Douglas has remained the same. Is what I tell myself fear of loosing years years to time & eventually degradation of memory frightens me in a way that is guttural & raw. The shelter is new & there is a new path through the woods. Three years back beavers damn flooded & a new foot path was walked into creation. The tide has lowered more now revealing white clam shell beach on Shaman Island.

I refer to myself as a city kid, this tends to fuddle other city kids as our homes have a hundred thousand population difference. The reason I consider this is from the ratio of stuff I do & the amount of times the cops have been called. Funny thing the cops our never called on me for things that may be dangerous for myself, read as exploring old mineshafts, driving in a snow storm without working wipers, attempting & pretty spectacularly failing to do parkour on old mine ruins.

The AG mines fester & burrow in the mountains Mariya, Robert, Clark, & Juneau, 500 miles of shifting dark rock, these are the dead organisms most familiar with.

The anatomy of a mine specifically the AG mines tend to cluster & curve like a deceased spine, twisting & furrowing further & further into rock & vein. When you walk into the mines the first thing that hits you is the lack, the lack of movement, the lack of smell, the lack of green, the lack of life. Thin places are those that dance with unreal, a place where you might walk & stumble into a world you don't belong in, something deeper, quieter less physical. Deep underground is one of the more thin places I walk through, whose strangeness walks through me. The tunnels are so fresh & the pain that carved them so present, see it in the way the body of the rock cries calthemite, red iron blood, spilling & crawling from its skin, the lungs of the mine breathing mist from the cold air meeting the humid & hot from outside the portal. What a fitting word, the portal, the mouth of the mine, its gaping maw.