CENTENNIAL
EDITION

3 Teserved on the poem “ The‘ RO
t the written consent of the author

All right:
whole or part forbidden withou!

The road runs North. Bast and North at the beginning. -
I've followed it many times

Away from the city of glass and lights and flowers,
Away from the sea and the delta and the flowers _
Into the shining mountains, wreathed with mist,

(This mystery of mist and mountain gives rise to ieesaa.

Men say — those who return have said — that giant footprints
Track the white-walled caverns at the ridge; 3

And when the moon's round in October, strange fires ”
Cone from a crag where no fire should be,

I cannot vouch for this having ventured no trail

Away from the beaten path.) S

At Hope I'd place: a warning. “Traveller, Beware!
Look not too long upon the mountains here

Lest you be drawn to their snow-cowled ser nity
To search for Shangri-La, and find oblivio:

CENTENNIAL
Even in August the heart grows cold remembering that Devorber EDITION
When the plane mounted the prairie skies over the Jewelled city, 5
Flashed holiday farewell, and then flew westward 5
Into the shrouded dark.
Somewhere in the high, impersonal majesty of the:
The plane and all its passengers went down, é
Keeping, as all must keep, the unknown, unschedul
The traveller on the road remembers them.

The road runs North into the cedared canyon.

, Rain-heavy fern lean toward the gorge

And rock, slow-dying, battles the ancient river.

Salmon run here.

Dig the years down to the stone-tipped arrow
Still the indomitable one, noses up stream
Making the unbelievable journey from the sea
Back to the cell-known sands to spawn and die. —

Now the road skirts the canyon roof, edges the cliff
Where Indian traffickers carrying canoes

Clung to sheered rock, swung out on thonged ladders,
And smiled at the white-faced Englishmen who followed:

“The very rocks are worn with footprints S

Where it seems no man could travel,” ‘Fraser wrote,

Then, following his guides, he and his men inched toward the ocean,
Looking up and ahead, not down.

And the young engineers! They built the first road here.
Did they sing as they hacked at granit

Send their shouts echoing against the ee canyon wall
Or curse at the rock and the sullen river and the cold?
Perhaps on some tree nearby a boy from Surrey carved:
(A tree can span a century, outlast a man.

The tree could stand.

Past Hell's Gate now, past long finger gf sand
Where ten thousand miners built their fires,

Ate, drank, brawled, bent to ee sluice box,

Weighed in the day’s bfsnt | Harvest, and at night
Dreamed of the mother 1

(There in the elling dak, a small Chinese
Pig-tailed and alien aug jat the

Gabbled of home and f

“Oh Honorable Son, re:

I have found jade here, pot

But cai

awitson,
Br the mall hint nf the a pine
Tala shallow" etave. Besta , no longer alte

The man-loved Thompson, blug

Loses itself in the old angry|

And the trail splits, one arm)

The road runs North,

Runs through the desert, ed with sage aid cactus,
Ringed with blue hills where/hooded rock

Harbors the rattlers. Coil on coil,

Cold comfort to each other, they wait blind for spring.

Above us, they tell me are marks of the old road.

Could that be it? Grooved by the wheels of stagecoach

And the feet of eight bay horses carrying the mail?

Was it here the desperadoes cached the gold?

Did the cracked hooves of camels stir this dust?

‘Camels! Stable them elsewhere.’ Get them away!

My horse and mules go crazy at their stink!

Keep your cud-chewing abortions of Arabia away!’

So the patient pariahs of the Hast, bearing their packs
Humped North to winter, where they caught cold and died.

The road runs North.
Long needled pine give way to jackpine

And in September the burning poplars bend to the quiet lake.

Idly, the drowsy cattle winnow swamp hay under the thin-leafed willow.
The ‘soft stare of cattle holds some enveloping strangeness,

Bland, benign, that eases the heart. \&
Fortunate too the traveller who for a single intake of the br

Looks deep into the star eyes of a deer

For henceforth he knows that’ time can form crystals

Precise and luminous.

An old stopping house, rebuilt for tourists,

Houses the ghosts of dance-hall girls, laced and beribboned,
Of bearded miners and the wanderers following the trail,
Seeking each one his own adventure or his grail.

Some found the gold. Some died. Some went away.

A few stayed on to raise wheat or cattle

Or.run a flour mill beside a stream,

Leaving their children land beside good w:

Beside the blue Chilcotin or the Fraser or : “yringed lake
Where ducks nest in the tall reeds in April.

The rest are gone now, gone with the old road and the gold
And the years,
Gone now, all, all long gone and yet
Sometimes at evening
When the wind stirs the pine boughs
When the sound of the gaunt, unyielding river
comes up from the canyon,
When wild geese, soft crying each to each
Thrust North in a thin, black arrow
Then they are here again, the travellers,
The motley, brawling, strange
Explorers and the Indians who |
Trader for tars. prospector
Engin bui

enturer, gambler, ar36 ,
The lusty, hungry, i
Touched with the ‘bright b
Their names sound in the Wi

And in the voice of the old river
And the traveller on the road remembers thei

The road runs North.

I followed it first a stranger.

I follow it now remembering those who came this
I follow it now to a small Pool of light

That circles, so briefly, all

ative poem by Gwen Pharis Ringwood, design by
Sonia Cornwall