We got a start still early enough to experience something that should not be interesting, but was: when walking into the morning sun, all of the flying insects were highlighted. They zinged across the glaring field of view, like fast and busy motion on a video game.
But they didn't all flutter off or zing away. A small, orange butterfly remained on a rock in the middle of the road. Maybe it was too frightened to move, or was just sunning. Then the little dog quite amazed me by slowly lowering his muzzle to the butterfly, until he and La Mariposa shared a gentle nose kiss.
On the way up to the lake we saw scenery like this:
Believe it or not, this kind of scenery doesn't interest me all that much because it's hard to relate to personal experience, history, or the human condition, in general. If this sounds outrageous, please remember that someone who has been full time RVing for ten years is not a weekend tourist.
And so this postcard scenery just sits there, looking no more interesting to me than a sticky confection in one of the sweet shops that the tourists head to, when they disembark from the Durango-Silverton train.
Please don't misunderstand--I was enjoying myself immensely. But the pleasure was coming from the exercise, not from the eye candy, itself. But postcards like this might be fun for readers who don't see things like this every day.
When we got to the alpine lake I was disappointed that I could go no further. The switchbacks seen on the mountain bike ride of last post were just above us. Seen from a distance, they scaled the mountain in a way that was most beguiling. But now I could see that the "road" was pure rubble and too sharp and unpleasant to walk. Was it the detritus of mining or a volcano?
Something about that dalliance between dog and butterfly was completely charming. It was as if we were in an old myth, and the butterfly was a forest nymph or sprite, in disguise. She was whispering some mischievous suggestion to my unsuspecting dog. Or maybe she was infatuated with him and wanted to trap him into being her boy-toy slave, like Circe did with Odysseus.
At any rate, a year from now I won't remember how "breathtakingly beautiful" the San Juan scenery and weather were, this day. I will remember the strange dalliance of dog and butterfly for the rest of my life.
