At Play...

Shrouded in white, the misty mountain peaks push their backs and their ridges through the low lying cloud formations, like hump-back canyon whale creatures on a cross country journey of some kind. It is a cool and a crisp, moderately bright February day. The (Appalachian) mountain tops are set adrift and they are rising, suspended, across the low lying expanse that opens up out in the canyon. Ridge after ridge fades off into the dusty blue horizon. Where do the cloud formations meet up with the vast blueness of the sky? The expanse is mystical, today; yes, there is something new at work, leaving the mountain tops to exist as tree-lined sleepy, giant islands.

[My dreaming takes me there, to the curling and the lifting place; to the place where the mist vapor holds and tugs at the solid base of each tree, and to the white blanketed forest--heavily draped in mountain's mist--shrouded in the fine, white, milk of silken-dull mist fingers. They are numb and yet--they hold tight. Today, they tug on the mountain's ridges. Yes, they hold them back (and down.) I have stumbled upon a game; the game of the push and the pull. Yes--it is the (mountain) mist's game today, and in her splendor she plain suits herself, as she is fancy up along the ridges and not the least bit ashamed. She lifts, rising in shafts and in columns, and she then fans herself out, spreading up and then up again--all the while dancing. The mist is at work here in a mindless kind of fashion, but for our sake (only) she plays out sweetly as she sings songs across these ol' mountain hills.]