The Crater at Khorgo

Khorgo is an extinct volcano with a textbook crater, a red-black bowl you can walk the rim of, larches growing from the cinders like the mountain's second thoughts. The climb is short and the wind at the top is a fact you lean into.

Below, the lava field runs to the White Lake, frozen mid-flow eight thousand years ago, all ropes and slabs and caves. Old fire country, long cooled, still legible.

I stood at the rim and looked into the bowl and had the thought I always have at craters: the earth keeps its drafts. This is a crossed-out sentence in basalt. The lake below is what got written instead, and it is better.