It turned out that he wasn't a camper; he was a local photographer who was setting up to capture a nice sunset from the mountain pass I was boondocking on. Actually it was flattering to have a serious photographer validate my choice of real estate.
The Peripatetic Poodle and I hiked up the small "mountain" behind the trailer, in the photo above. There was no real trail. We kept traversing the slope so it wouldn't be too steep.
Eventually we found a game trail to follow. Sometimes you wonder if you really are on a trail at all, and then you see a hoof print or droppings. It is remarkable how, under the muse of endorphines and dopamine, this tenuous hold on a trail can seem so interesting to a hiker.
We found this large spherical mushroom, with a crack. It made me thick of that scene in "Jurassic Park" when they watch the dinosaur egg hatching. It might be more fun reading about Dinosaur national Monument in my Colorado geology book if I think of this "egg."
There are hunters out and about these days, so I was dressed with some high visibility accessories. Unlike a lot of hikers I have no hangups about hunting. I leave that to a certain cultural stereotype.
My concern was of a different nature: consider that an entire generation of hunters has grown up playing video games or clicking the remote controls for their boob toobs every couple seconds. Trigger happy...hmm?
The little "mountain" was not tall and we were soon at the top. It proved to be quite flat on top--maybe just a little tipped or domed. Geologists would call this a "laccolith," formed by igneous material intercalating sedimentary stratifications, followed by...
...You can see why reading geology books is about as much fun as conjugating verbs in Latin. What the geologists would say if someone taught them English is that hot lava under pressure squeezes between flattish layers of sandstone or shale, doming the top layer a little. Then the top layer of sandstone erodes away over the ages, leaving the volcanic rock as an erosion-resistant, flattish, caprock. But just imagine the pressure that was needed to split the layers of sandstone!
Our little mountain was a miniature poodle sized version of the laccolith, which occurs frequently in the area and most magnificently in the Grand Mesa, itself, just easy of Grand Junction, CO.
There was a nice stand of grass and aspen on top. I expected to see a herd of elk or deer up here. Although there was no eye-candy to brag about, it was pleasant and soothing to walk lazily over the flattish glade. It was only as wide as a large lawn, in town, and felt quite personal. And because it was separate from and neglected by the rest of the world, it seemed intimate.
Let's see, wasn't it Shakespeare who said that the eyes are the windows of the soul? Maybe he should have said feet.
