BRITISH COLUMBIA.(Poem)

No matter if the ruler laid flat across the flat map and compared to the scale in the corner says the trip is 600 km the distance your wheels must turn is four or five times that as the road climbs and climbs and winds and turns this way and that as it zig zags up and zig zags down one mountain range then another and another all of them running from north to south in parallel lines from the top of the province of British Columbia all the way down through the Americas and all the scenery is spectacular in its changes yet unchanging in its spectacle of the vertical the steep pleated stone that got buckled upward in spiky wrinkles when the irresistible tectonic plate of the Pacific rim hit the immovable object of the American continent which would not budge but got crunched and crinkled at the edge by an eons-long slow-motion collision but first of all as you head east through the land of mists and mountains it is just up that you go up from the soggy green coast and into the stony ranges for this is the place where geography is vertical and where the panorama vistas get turned sideways and there is no horizon ever spread out around you just the plummeting depth of a river canyon down there or the sheer neck-ricking height of a cliff face rising here and here is the place they have told you about when they say you can get caught between a rock and a hard place that place is British Columbia and in the rain the rain the grey steady never-ending rain that makes this place so green and grows the cedars and firs so thick and tall the rain that falls because the soft coastal wind carrying cloud water from the Pacific Ocean hits the rocky ranges of BC and drops the lot drops it all in torrents buckets mists and drizzle the road shines like black diamond like hematite like the flat facet fractures of anthracite coal or oil-slicked with rainbows the road shines like peacock ore the magic iridescence of copper sulphates and iron sulphides of chalcopyrite and bornite and galena blending in shimmering mirages of blue gold purple red the rich rocks the trolls' treasure the gnomes' wealth stored in these everywhere rocky mountains that send the perpetual winter snows melting down in numberless threads of silver through fissures in ...