Author’s note: I went backpacking with a couple of friends up in Desolation wilderness (southwest of Lake Tahoe) this past weekend. The timing was fortuitous because I’ve recently really gotten into “thinking”, and there’s no better time and place to do that than out in nature. Over three days: we hiked well past midnight, drank lake water (filtered courtesy of my friend’s filter), swam in lakes and quite nearly succumbed to wind chill after, eagerly prayed that we’d see some bears (or that they’d at least disturb our bear canisters overnight), did some minimal clambering, told some terrible jokes, had our tents nearly blown away by the strong winds, pretended I was Napoleon, somehow woke up all together at 3 am to pee and then look at the stars, and a lot more. It was a great trip, and in the times where we were quiet, I did some thinking. Some thinking on the math and machine learning that’s grabbed my attention at the moment and some thinking on poetry. On the latter, it seemed incredibly fitting given the surrounding nature to come up with several haikus. The following were developed as I tried to go back to sleep after that 3 am excursion with the stars. As is ever the common theme in my life, they are concerned with ambition and the feeling of never quite being content.
Crater fills with rain.
Grateful, now a lake, yet still
dreams of being sea.
Lofty Mountain sighs,
While Lake’s depths echoes with want,
Siblings share in ache.
Granite envies grass,
Grass wishes to be like man,
Stardust in his eyes.