WEBVTT

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So I'd like to share a few more
points from my recent book,

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by most recently
published book of poetry--

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Danger and Peace.

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And I don't think most
of you have heard these.

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I don't think I've read
them in public much,

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certainly not down here.

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Exploring some
other possibilities.

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Danger and Peace is built
around Mount St. Helens

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up in the southern part
of the Washington Cascades

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which erupted in 1980 in
May and shortened itself

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by about 1,200 feet.

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It blew off about 1,200 feet
of hummus, gravel, sand, rock--

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what they call tephra--

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and all sorts of things.

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Actually, a rather modest
eruption by some standards,

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but it certainly got everybody's
attention in the area.

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And, finally, in the year
2000, I went back up there

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to look at it--

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that was already
20 years later--

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and see what had
become of the mountain.

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It was very dear to me
because Mount St. Helens

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was the mountain I first climbed
in my mountaineering life

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when I was 15 years old.

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I climbed it from the north side
and spent several summers up

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around Spirit Lake
and Mount St. Helens.

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And, strictly speaking, I
don't call it Mount St. Helens.

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Like many of us in the
Northwest, we call it "Loowit"

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or Lawetlat'la which is
the INAUDIBLE name of it--

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the Native name of it.

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And that's part of a
program that some of us

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have-- and, you know, more
goddamn political correctness

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by giving Native American names
to all the mountains, which

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we're working toward bit by
bit, at least on the West Coast.

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Shasta is already a native name.

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That one has been solved.

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Mount Hood In Oregon is Wy'east
Mount St. Helens is "Loowit"

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or Lawetlat'la Mount Adams
is Klickitat Mount Rainier is

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Tahoma.

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You hear that sometimes.

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Mount Shuksan is a native name.

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But Mount Baker-- boy,
what's the name for that?

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I don't remember.

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Anyway, we're working on it.

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It'll take decades.

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Oh, and Denali is
actually working out.

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Mount McKinley is no
longer on lots of maps.

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It's now Denali.

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So that can be done.

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The state of Alaska
actually adopted a guideline

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that said no more
non-native place

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names in the state of
Alaska on the maps.

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And that's a good
thing because there

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are huge swaths of Alaska that
have no names on the maps yet.

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And yet Jim Carey,
who's in the linguistics

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and Native languages
study program

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at the University of
Alaska at Fairbanks,

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and this is really his field--

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Jim says, I've been
out there talking

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to the Inuit, the Inupiaq,
the Yupik, and then

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the Athabaskans, the
Puyallup, and so forth.

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Everything on the landscape
they've got a name for it

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if you ask them about it.

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Every corner of the
river, practically.

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And he says there are all kind
of stories about what happened

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there, what people saw there.

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And none of them are ever named
after some faraway girlfriend

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or a president.

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So I was very touched to
get back to Mount St. Helens

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and to discover that although
it had really been blasted

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and all of the trees for miles
around had been laid flat.

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And they'd been they'd
all been laid flat

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going the same direction--
the direction of the blast.

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But it was coming
back very nicely

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with a little silver
fir, about this high,

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and pearly everlasting bushes--

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big white wildflowers,
which you probably

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know because they're
not uncommon.

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But they had sort of
taken over the hillsides--

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the pearly everlastings
and the silver fir.

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So I wrote a poem about that
called "Pearly Everlasting."

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It's about the flowers
that came back,

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and it's about all the dead
bodies of the trees that

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were laid out on the ground
because when the young Prince

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Shakyamuni was thinking
of going into the forest

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and becoming a yogan and
working on understanding

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his own consciousness, his
father was disturbed by that

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and thought that was really not
a good direction for his son

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to go.

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So his father made
a special move

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toward hiring many musicians
and many attractive young women

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dancers and young men
who liked to party

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and bring them all
into the palace

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and telling them to party like
mad and play music like mad

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to take his son's mind
off of spirituality.

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And so they were doing
that in a big way.

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This is the story
that's told in Sanskrit.

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And then, one night,
they had all the music

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and all the dancing
and everything

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and drinking whatever
they drank then.

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And they all got tired and
fell down asleep on the floor.

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It was warm, they didn't
have to go to bed.

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They were all crushed up.

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Only the young Shakyamuni
was still there.

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And he looked
around, and then he

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walked around and looked at all
of the boys and girls snoring

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and sort of sprawled this
way, sprawled that way.

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And he says, is this
what it all comes to?

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And so he went down
to the stables,

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got his favorite horse out,
rode off into the jungle,

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dismounted, whacked his
horse with the reins

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and said go home, cut his
hair off, and disappeared--

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became a yogan.

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So that is in this poem.

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See if you can hear it.

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"Walk a trail down
to the Spirit Lake.

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Mountain ash and elderberries
red and old growth log bodies

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blown about, whacked down,
tumbled in the new ash wadis.

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Root-mats tipped up, veiled
in tall straight fireweed.

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Fields of prone logs laid by
the blast in line north-south,

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down in silvery limbless
sparklers poles.

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Clear up to the
alpine ridge top,

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all you see is
toothpicks of dead trees.

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Thousands of summers.

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Detritus cycle rest.

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Hard and dry in the sun, the
long life of the downed tree

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yet to go, bedded
in bushes of pearly

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everlasting dense
white flowers, saplings

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of bushy vibrant silver fir.

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And the Creek here, once
called harmony falls, now gone.

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The pristine mountain,
just a little battered now.

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That smooth dome
gone, ragged crown.

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The lake was shady yin.

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Now, blinding water
mirror of the sky.

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Remembering days of
fir and hemlock and sit

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on a clean down log at the
lake's edge, water dark as tea.

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I had asked Mount St. Helens
for help the day I climbed it.

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Asked her, help me in this life.

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So seemed she did.

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The trees all lying flat like
after that big party Siddhartha

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went to on the night he
left the house for good,

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crowd of young friends
swept from sexy dancing.

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Dozens crashed out on the floor.

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Angelic boys and girls sleeping
off a palace orgy of the gods.

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But what we see
is the blast zone,

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sprinkled with
clustered white flowers.

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Do not be tricked by
human-centered views,

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says Dogen. And
Siddhartha looks it over,

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slips away for another
forest to really get

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right down on life and death.

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If you ask for help,
it comes but not

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in any way you'd ever know."

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Thank you.

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Loowit, Lawetlat'la

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