Return To A Canyon Poem by Sally Sandler

Crest Canyon Preserve, San Diego, California

Twenty years ago I walked this path,
edging my way down the sandstone slope.
Now it's scaled by faded redwood steps,
grey and weathered as my hair, the grain
exposed like many veins on my hand.

With the ease of youth, I walked my dog—
an elegant young hound in search of quail,
she sailed over sagebrush like a bird.
Now a smaller dog is at my side,
efficient nose to the ground, low,
briskly sniffing out woodrats and scat.

There is comfort in the unchanged place—
familiar with its glossy toyon leaves
and lemonade berry bushes grey
blanketing the chaparral slopes.
Puddles gleam in the shallow stretches
where tadpoles hatch in the early spring,
and brown sugar sand leads to the sea,
threaded with the tracks of mule deer.

In the city, wilderness survives
and seems indifferent to the time it took
for wooden steps to fade and start to slump,
for parents to get old, and dogs to die,
for children to get married, and grey hair,
for me to fight a war against disease
while just a hill and three blocks away.

Shouldn't I be glad that certain things
carry on well without us …
that really need not lean on us at all,
but continue their unsentimental creep
across a gravel path, a canyon floor …
alongside an ancient sandstone wall?