Took a trip down to the swimming hole under the old 49er bridge on Sunday evening. While there my creative self started talking telling me things that were greater and more beautiful than I could ever come up with on my own. and so the Poem Yuba 1921 was born (see below). I hope I can share a bit of my experience in this beautiful place with you in some small way. Hail All-Father Odin, Thank the Ancestors, Hail Life!

Yuba 1921

Cool blue-green water flows with gentle roar over torrent smoothed stone; Ripples capture days last light glittering like diamonds; Light show interrupted by jagged crags and boulders, Granite jutting in granular solidity from cool dark depths; Wild Grapes climb, vines winding, reaching toward tree carpeted horizon; Swallows dip, cutting across reddening twilight skies like drunken arrows, sure in flight but erratic in destination; This scene all framed by hard angular arches, mans contribution compliments an already perfect landscape; Bathers seeking asylum from the inferno that is July, long awaited respite in cool silky embrace; The spirit of the Yuba slides sensuously over heat scorched skin and soul.

Still enmeshed, hypnotized by the monotonous treadmill of day to day life at first some fail to experience fully the grandeur that surrounds and envelopes one like stepping through a portal and into a masterpiece; By inexorable osmosis the gentle spirit and beauty of the place like moisture through the pores calms and cools, bathing away the mundane and ordinary, the heat and stress; Even the most socially aware are loosed from the fixating glare of gadgets and status and fall under its spell, made somehow peaceful, quiet, and more whole; Blessed to discover that here and now in this place, all is beauty

The magic of nature cannot be ignored.