In August of 2003, I brought Will Alexander’s 37-page poem, “The Stratospheric Canticles,” with me for eight days of backpacking, bicycling, and mountain climbing along the International Appalachian Trail in Maine. My idea was that Alexander’s linguistic and formal innovations, as well as his predilection for nature imagery evident throughout his published works—poetry as well as prose—made his writing an ideal starting point for an exploration of what linguistically innovative African American poetry and ecocriticism might have to say to one another. I grappled along the trail with this core question and its variations: “What can ecocritical narrative scholarship recognize in … okay, I’ll call it ‘wild poetry’…generally, ‘The Stratospheric Canticles’ in particular?” “What, in turn, does Will Alexander’s poetry have to say to ecocriticism; what in his work—or potentially, that of other linguistically innovative Black poets--is within the reach of ecocriticism’s concerns?” And “How does using an ‘out-here-in-the-natural-world’ narrative scholarship approach help me find answers to these questions?” This essay narrates my explorations of these questions, while drawing on a range of ecocritical perspectives.