The Trail Companion

Union Valley Reservoir, Peavine Ridge

by Crystal Koch

The sun rises, my sister and I strip off late night layers
and dive into home. Lake water glasses bare bodies.

I am molting,
shedding the covering the world has given me.
Cerulean surrounds my new flesh

as I sun on the rocks, scratching dead skin from
my senseful limbs.

She sits unclothed beside me
gnawing at roots, trying to taste her past.

Ants slink over toenails
and rest in the crevices of my feet.

I have been naked in these woods for hundreds of years,
she says,

her bare flesh slipping through the space
between time's cupped fingers.

We were here before Gold Rush nights
when men would kill for minerals,

before Jack, Dick and McConnell named themselves
on the peaks of Crystal Range,

before Hangtown was a tourist attraction
and Moore's Overland Pony Express trail was Safe-
way lit.

She inhales pine and dry granite, exhales dawnlight
and looks across the lake

to the shedded skins we will crawl back into.

     Crystal Koch is a recent graduate of UC Davis, currently working in desktop publishing. Her favorite pastimes include hiking, martial arts, rafting, and skinny dipping - in private of course.

© 1999 by Crystal Koch. Reprinted by permission.

Note from the Literary Editor

Bear Following Birds - Maya Khosla

Circles - Janice Dabney

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