The Overlook

This is a poem I wrote for, and about, my son.


The Overlook

In 1988 Evan was three
and I began the trail.
We would reach The Overlook
and its eagle view
for the first time four years later.

I began by moving aside volcanic rock
trimming fir and pine and oak branches
slicing through fallen logs, shoveling a flat place
where the slope was steep. Sometimes following a deer trail,
more often not. My only goal
the top of the butte.
Hard work.
Loved every moment.

At four years old, Evan helped as I worked, finding always
the hidden nest, the small dark holes — snakes?
he asked in his tiny, high voice; worms? mice?
Moving one stone revealed three mysteries.

In winter the new trail rose up, tiny forests
of dirt-filled icy columns, crushed
by our boots, crackling
in the still, cold air. Evan delighted
in stomping them flat.

A barbed wire fence lay rusting on the ground for forty years,
no longer fencing,
beyond caring. I buried it in three places
where it crossed the new trail, and later
cut it when the land was mine.

A length of trail finally finished
and The Overlook a bit closer. I pushed on,
never allowing the latest section
to remain the end of the trail, for long.
Deer now using my trails through the dense forest
as I did theirs.

As the new trail climbed higher, the valley below
and beyond were seen always as though glimpsed
between fingers held in front of my eyes.

The Overlook waited for us, the trail
unerringly advancing toward it as though following
a survey line. As the trail grew longer
Evan grew taller. At six years old, Legos and weekend buddies
now competed for trail time.

In his seventh summer we walked a new section
high on the butte. Evan chased blue-bellied lizards
beneath the hot summer sun. Those he caught
he held a moment, gently, then released.
I plodded along, my hat brim dark with sweat.

He discovered a deer trail that day
and down we went, over rotting logs
and blue-gray boulders, shouldered aside filbert trees
that whipped our knees. A clearing on the hillside
beckoned.

And suddenly, the forest was gone. The slope now began
at our feet and stretched a half mile to the bottom of the butte.
My eyes were inadequate to the task: Centerville straight south,
Goldendale to the southeast, dark green folds of the Klickitat River Gorge
to the southwest, Mount Hood a large white breast
sixty miles away.
Sixty miles further, the smaller white breast
of Mount Jefferson; the observatory to my left, two hundred miles
of roads with specks of cars, forty miles
of transmission towers marching across patterned fields;
a vast carpet of brittle balsam root leaves played by the wind,
and the turpentine sweet heady scent of pine pitch
rising from the forest baking in the noonday summer sun—

I was overwhelmed, my mouth and nose and ears opened wide,
words stalled in my throat, my head and eyes turning,
twisting, to see it all. My arms stretched wide
my empty hands envying my eyes.

Evan, he was screeching
in delight
rolling rocks
down the slope.

I discovered in that moment that vast views
are an adult thing: Evan’s world needed no Overlook.
He had mystery and delight aplenty
at arm’s reach
in every moment.

Evan is fifteen now. Brings his walking stick
always, and I mine. Our walks to The Overlook
are no longer the journeys they once were,
but he’s no longer the child he was
and the trail to The Overlook
is long finished. Now he enjoys the view;
even brings his buddies here without me.
They sit on the bench I made
and look out upon much of the world
as I’m clearing a path
at the end of the trail.

Grady Bradley
April 2000