Thoughts on the Rockies While in My 12th Hour on a Train

These forests are massive and the pines strain up so tall and straight.
They cling with an awe-some tenacity to the barest lichen-covered rocks, dangling mere inches from the rolling, boiling river beneath them.
Arching in grotesque angles these trees desperatly grab for sunshine and moisture.
Some have not succeeded.
There lay strewn around the brown needle floor, withered, bare, emaciated remnants.
Though looking like mere toothpicks, most are beyond my grasp's span.
Stripped branches trail into the water, but there are no whole trees in it rush, for that has long since swept them away.
All around shards of multifaceted rocks and boulders of infinite sizes and shapes coat the mountainsides.
Whole lumps of mountain jut out from the lichin, moss, and needle-layered bed.
There is an audacity in their broad, even smooth shapes in the midst of so much striving and life.
Then -- with sudden bursts rarely heard or seen -- the smooth-faced stability shatters into rumbling, roiling shifts.
More trees have clattered down, and now lean wearily against survivors.
Over all this chaotic, eerie beauty a silent, still loon floats in a calm, twisting weave in the peace of a small pond where the sun is breaking through the trees and casting soft shadows on the sheen of the water.