Infernal Caverns

 Cinder
—Susan Stewart

We needed fire to make
the tongs and tongs to hold
us from the flame; we needed
ash to clean the cloth
and cloth to clean the ash's
stain; we needed stars
to find our way, to make
the light that blurred the stars;
we needed death to mark
an end, an end that time
in time could mend.
Born in love, the consequence-
born of love, the need.
Tell me, ravaged singer,
how the cinder bears the seed

Photos above and below: the site of the 1867 Battle of Infernal Caverns, near Likely in Modoc County CA. Note: Restricted access through a private ranch. (Click photos to enlarge.)  

Above, left: click to enlarge, on far left eight tombstones. 

Below:  Bob, who served in Viet Nam in the 1st Cavalry, notes several of the dead soldiers were 1st Cavalry in 1867. The graves of the dead are not actually at the location of the memorial; 6 were buried about a mile away, and later when a reburial was attempted, the bones could not be located. That's another story. 

As is the story of the approximately 14 to 20 Native Americans that were killed in the narrow canyon during the two-day battle in September 1867. As far as I know, there's no memorial to them. 

This intense battle, forced by Lieutenant Colonel George Crook, proved to be a pivotal one concluding, in 1868, what is known (by the whites) as the Snake War when the remnants of the Native Americans battling for their homelands were forced onto reservation

Above:  The horseshoe and the U.S. Army emblem are located on the concrete to the right edge of the memorial. A horseshoe from a horse of a soldier of the 1st Cavalry?

Below: John Madigan, the only officer killed, was buried near Alturas. This stone was added later at the memorial site. The other seven stones include Christian crosses as an emblem. If you zoom in, you'll see a Celtic cross; Madigan was Irish. 

Below: Looking west over the Likely Plains from the Springs site -- in the distance the hills of the Infernal Caverns. Foreground: petroglyphs on boulder below spring. (All photos by DB, October 2026

"Until we can hear the cries of the world and let them pierce through to the undivided place in ourselves, we can't realize the cries of the world and the angry groaning of the Earth as our own.

"Until then, we're prone to be ghosts to ourselves and to one another, ghosts to the Earth. A cry completely heard can shatter the dream of any gap between self and human or creaturely others, self and the living Earth. Intimacy appears, all beings are close, and the way is very wide." 

—Susan Murphy in A Fire Runs Through All Things 

 

Transcendent 97

Nature may increasingly be human made, but humans have not only lost control of this nature, making and unmaking; we have increasingly lost the ability to tell the difference between our own world and the natural worlds we make and destroy.  —Nils Bubandt

According to the best empirical evidence we have, observed present trends indicate that the future we face is one of accelerating planetary transformation, with catastrophic consequences for human society. At the same time, this future is radically unknowable. —Roy Scranton

NOTES
—Photos by DB, Klamath County US Highway 97, October 2026: Reflextions on a Road Trip to Modoc County CA.
—Nils Bubandt from the essay "Haunted Geologies: Spirits, Stones, and the Necropolitics of the Anthropocene" in Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet (2017)
—Roy Scranton in IMPASSE: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress (2025)

Remember the Anthropocene?

Let there be an earth with a form like a jigsaw and let it fit for all of ye.

—Anne Sexton

INTERLUDE: A Not-Knowing

Remember, the Anthropocene? An innocent time ten years ago. Concerns for global heating, the accelerating anthropogenic catalyzing eco-collapse, the extinction of species.  Remember the urgencies and intentions of the early 21st century ?

Then American elections. Covid. Russian invasion of Ukraine. The relentless genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli military government. 

Now, shadowing the modest fright of the Anthropocene, Artificial Intelligence looms.  What does AI want? What is AI capable of? To save us from ourselves? Will there come another time when we ask: Remember Artificial Intelligence?  Or will AI ask:  Remember Humans?

A road trip in early September in southeast Oregon glances back. To times of weathering, erosions, to places making a living in odd places. The intent to get by and make do, maybe do some good, pass something along. An innocent appearing time, not too long ago.

CODA
Anne Sexton in her late poems becomes furious. In 1974 she published, in the volume The Death Notebooks, a series of Fury poems.  This is one.  

The Fury Of Earth

The day of fire is coming, the thrush, 
will fly ablaze like a little sky rocket, 
the beetle will sink like a giant bulldozer, 
and at the breaking of the morning the houses 
will turn into oil and will in their tides 
of fire be a becoming and an ending, a red fan. 
What then, man in your easy chair, 
of the anointment of the sick, 
of the New Jerusalem? 
You will have to polish up the stars 
with Bab-o and find a new God 
as the earth empties out 
into the gnarled hands of the old redeemer.

Invisibilities

 Conversed today with this older woman. I've noticed her living outdoors in her wheelchair. In a store parking lot for at least three months. The above photo was taken earlier this month, the photo below early July.

 

Astute, alert, she said she had a career in the medical field. 

 I asked her if she was in pain. She said all the time. I asked her if she could walk she said no, but she can stand.. Well enough to get a ride as needed.

We talked about her attempts to find services and support. The degrading situations she encounters regularly when seeking such support. We talked about trust.  She says people just don't know how the systems work and don't work. They just don't know.  

Burial

                Burial

Shrouded in sand draped

In a million lucent stars

Flight as ascent

At the closest beat of the heart

Did they know feathers

In the eyes’  mind

At the burst of the universe

At the closest beat of the heart

So grace does bestow a peace

Through sea’s sound lament

With tides sure to rise

At the furthest beat of the heart

Leap! In the imagination!

Leap! In black the granular light!

                Exoskeletal

                Silica Galatic

                Inquiry Into Seeing

                Original Self

                True North

                Your needle swings magnetic. 

                Was it your will to follow the 

                Seashore, to navigate the 

                Lace of bays. 

                An old knowing, a young 

                Thing. And of the moon 

                Made lunatic or game. 

                Does dark always bear sleep 

                Carry you wingless 

                Now a child of wind

                Whim, say fate.

                Was gravity so strong she 

                Descended into grief. 

                Where the luxury of grief of

                Living as gravity herself defies 

                Further flight and demands 

                An instant end.

                A final swerve to true north.

Oregon Coast Dunes:  Images & poems DB, August 2026

The Baked Goods

Language, I love it, but it is of the air

and we are of the earth. 

—Ada Limón 

The day after the County Fair closed, strolling through the fairgrounds. A side-trip on this mystery called Life, to the eerily vacant exhibit hall. This way-seeking fellow arrives to the tables array, the Baked Goods display.  

Discovering the absolute presence of the individual baked good, each hand-crafted with memory and care.  Conveyed to the Fair, carried by hand, by the desire to show, to share. Beyond food items:  a deep nostalgia, a love, a gift, a letting loss. The warmth of the kitchen, the oven, a soft aroma upon delivery continuing to infuse senses.

The judges taste and consider, view texture, appearance, in devotion to the awarding of ribbons.  As memory and desire float among the samplings.

Now the day, after after a week in the hall, baked goods desiccated, some slightly molding, to tossed in a bin. The weight of presentation.  As these photos become evidence, fossilized, endless seasons of baking will continue as long as there are humans at the hearth.

CODA

The supervisor of the Baked Goods area, the sole person present this morning, spoke of her memories of growing up in the rural town of Drain when the summer fair was a highlight of the year. 

So, to witness and serve this cycle of a life.