 A Strange Occurrence on Mount Zirkel
By Richard F. Fleck - As close to Wyoming as could be,
I rambled through the Park Range
forests at the base of Mount Zirkel
and began to climb some rocky ledges
until the pines began to thin and I paused
to stare into the limitless rolling plains of
the big North Park fringed with snowy
Never Summer peaks to the cloudy east.
 Hagues Peak - A Case of Altitude Sickness
By Richard F. Fleck - Only twice in fifty years have I come down
with altitude sickness, once in the Wind Rivers
and once here on the flanks of Hagues Peak
A bit after we peered far down to Crystal Lake
and a little before our final scramble
up the last three hundred feet. Perhaps I hadn’t
eaten quite enough at breakfast or perhaps it
was coming across a dead Clark’s Nutcracker
flat on a rock, but my head began to pound ...
 A Snowy Night in Northern Montana
By Richard F. Fleck - On a very snowy night camped at MacDonald Lake,
we shiver in our sagging tent as winds snap aspen
branches overhead and we wonder just why we chose
early June and not July to camp in Glacier Park where
early summer is nothing more than a late-winter.
 Three Front Range Haiku
By Richard F. Fleck - Twin Sisters - Through golden aspen
We climb to top to see high
Gray block of Longs Peak.
Squaw Peak -
Winding past lodgepoles,
We quickly ascend loose slabs
To summit in space. Devil’s Head -
We slip on dark ice
In slanting woods until steps
Take us up highest ridge.
 View from Togwotee Pass
By Richard F. Fleck - There
you stand
and stare but your
mind cannot even start
to decipher what raw vision
reveals. Huge slabs of granite
protrude like fingers poking the sky
through layers of snow so high in space,
so high above the sagebrush and glacial kettle holes
and larger blue lakes sparkling in sun reflecting upside-
down images giving your mind twice as much to absorb.
 Snowy Range Sundown
By Richard F. Fleck - Nothing better than to be
Walking a trail above the trees
And looking out across the way
To distant mountains and other
Northern snow-patched peaks
At the end of the day
When an orange-gold sun
Sinks beneath the tundra
 A Medicine Bow Peak Ritual
By Richard F. Fleck - Each Labor Day for ten years straight
my family and I would climb to the sky
from Lewis Lake following a winding
trail through patches of willows hiding
gurgling streams with clear and icy water
feeding roots of marsh marigolds and
patches of bright and shining glacier lilies.
 Heavy Summer Snow Atop the San Francisco Peaks
By Richard F. Fleck - Two German climbers signed out on
the log writing that the snow was too
deep and they finally had to turn around.
“But that was yesterday,” remarked one of
my friends as we shouldered our packs
hit the trail where we rapidly gained a
view of the entire Snow Bowl with lesser
crests of the ancient volcano comprising
the sacred San Francisco Peaks that rose
forever skyward in glistening whiteness.
 Deep Down the Kaibab Trail
By Richard F. Fleck - Deep within the spruce and fir,
I make my camp along the North Rim,
but before I eat my supper, I walk
over to the nighttime edge of the
Grand Canyon to peer three or four
thousand feet down to see a tiny
flickering campfire way below that
will lure me down very early the next
day from a chilly forty degrees into
heat of mid-summer and then some—
from Canadian forest to Mexican
desert with shoulder-high prickly pears
and Spanish bayonets
 Arizona High
By Richard F. Fleck - Thin gray cirrus clouds
streak the sky as we amble
through a meadow of purple
lupine and black-eyed susans
with dark and pyramidic
Humphreys Peak rising
upward another 3000 feet.
We enter sweet pine forest
floors springing forth with
mushrooms of every shape
and color, white columbines
and purple penstemon.
 Atop Kings Peak
By Richard F. Fleck - Once on the summit
of King’s Peak, highest
in Utah, we notice
a scarcity of flowers
but a richness in diversity
of rocks from granites
to shales to quartzites
and sandstones, all of
reddish-brown hue.
 Haystack Ramble
By Richard F. Fleck - From Geyser Pass through the woods,
we emerge into a bright green meadow
covered with all sorts of alpine flowers
high in the La Sal Mountains of Utah.
We rest just beneath the rocky slabs
of Haystack Peak and search the tundra
for rayless daisies that are known to grow
 A Mellethin Sunrise
By Richard F. Fleck - I crawl out of my sleeping bag
at Geyser Pass high in the La Sals
just before sunrise to walk out into
the meadow and look across at
Mellenthin Mountain, dark and gray,
but with a tinge of light near its
summit, and as the sun rises,
the mountain’s north face turns
into a fancy’s show box with
 Grandmother Spider Mountain
By Richard F. Fleck - Early in the morning we walk upwards
through a slanted forest of aspen and fir
and take delight in seeing a blue bird flutter
in open meadows quite soft underfoot.
We approach grassy hummocks reminding
me of ever-so-green Ireland along the Irish Sea.
 A Close Encounter in the Manzanos
By Richard F. Fleck - The sky remains cobalt blue
and the pines barely whisper
as I amble along the crest
of the Manzanos overlooking
Albuquerque’s tiny city streets,
but I suddenly stop in my tracks
when I almost stumble across
a crude grave of cottonwood
branches twisted into a circle
 Turning Around on the Chisos Mountain Trail
By Richard F. Fleck - Through berried junipers and dry
Scrub oak, we amble along a steadily
Upward trail toward much higher
Pinnacles with gliding ravens hoarsely
Squawking like spirits of the mountains
Overlooking agave, prickly pear and
Yucca about to bloom, and from the
Branches of pinon pines comes a
Sprite-liken cheeping of white-breasted
Nuthatches as volcanic Casa Grande
Darkens in an approaching storm.
 Ocotillo Sundown
By Richard F. Fleck - We stand in the desert and stare at
the Chisos Mountains reddening
in silence, each little rocky crag
and slit given emphasis with
nearby prickly pears brilliantly lit,
but perhaps the most striking thing
proves to be the way the setting sun
illuminates spiked ocotillo plants
with tiny red buds looking much like
spirits emerging from thorny shells
silhouetted by such ghostly mountains.
 Electric Peak
By Richard F. Fleck - I cannot resist staring
at distant Electric Peak
from the top of Mount Washburn
as I am drawn to its dazzling white
snowfields attracting stands of clouds
no doubt the build-up of a summer thunderstorm
such as the one Henry Gannett felt in 1872 when his
entire body painfully tingled
 Spider Rock
By Richard F. Fleck - With what intensity the
Anasazi must have had
when they looked straight
up from their ancient dwellings
astride the base of Spider Rock
rising eight hundred feet
in massive redness above
the valley floor in the
midst of Canyon de Chelly.
 Meditations at 10,000 feet
By Richard F. Fleck - I slowly amble toward the Beartooth
Range looming above ten thousand feet
and gaze at gray gigantic granitic uplifts
carved with glaciated and snowy cirques,
when I begin to feel a kind of syncline
elevating my mind ever upwards to the
highest summit bearing the name of
Granite Peak that rises to 12,799 feet
 Guadalupe Peak - High Above the Mesquite
By Richard F. Fleck - Our trail ascends the way past waxy leaves
of Madrone trees with smooth and reddish
trunks and on up past some blooming cholla
in a cold March wind, and higher toward a
limestone ledge washed with desert varnish
looming above a pinon forest lending voice to
the constant gusty winds of western Texas.
 Keeping Up With Mini While Climbing Mount Wheeler
By Richard F. Fleck - We camped in Taos Valley on a cold
September night while Mini, my blond
cocker spaniel, danced around the tent
as we tried to get some needed sleep
before our tiring climb of Wheeler Peak.
 Watermelon Peak
By Richard F. Fleck - On a pleasantly warm February day down
Albuquerque way where plum blossoms
scent the air, I look through my window at Sandia Crest sprinkled with a fresh
morning layer of sugar snow and I know I must arise and go to the mountain's edge where prickly pear cactus and yuccas grow.
 Specimen Mountain
By Richard F. Fleck - In my ranger days, it was my duty
to lead a group of ten or twelve
straight up the slopes of volcanic
Specimen Mountain above Milner Pass.
 Laramie Peak
By Richard F. Fleck - Bouncing along in a jeep
toward distant Laramie Peak
on the high plains of Wyoming,
I think I must be some sort
of charging bison stampeded
by my own desire to climb
a mountain of such a perfect
pyramid shape standing
so purple on the horizon.
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