I had been planning on revisiting the high ridges along US-89 in Utah for the first time in several years, and then heading to Colorado for the rest of the summer. But this plan might be unraveling. Although Utah has some high forest camping, its cities and towns aren't that high. Maybe I'll just run a diagonal to southwestern Colorado right from Flagstaff.
The other night I took the dogs out for their ritual of crepusculence when Coffee Girl (my young Australian cattle dog) spotted a small herd of deer. I couldn't believe how fast she ran across the grass-veneered, volcanic mesa. It's not easy running. It made me think of the border collies chasing the sheep in that wonderful Australian-made animal movie, Babe.
So I watched the DVD that night. There was a second reason for that. Flagstaff was having a Sheep and Wool Festival the next day. I love to watch yarn being spun. How nice it is not to take something like this for granted.
If you were a neolithic woman and had never seen this before, it would astonish ewe. I once read that as recently as the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the main application of steam power was the weaving industry.
Just think how stupid and sheeplike most members of our species can be, most of the time. As long as an occasional innovation takes place, the rest of us only need to imitate it.
The crowd pleaser was seeing a sheep shorn. The adults liked it almost as much as the kids.
But I don't want to ruin my reputation as a curmudgeon and old billy goat by showing pictures of cute little girls. Let's get back to the dog thread in this post. The festival didn't have any sheep dog trials, but one collie was herding ducks, of all things. Notice the two colors of ducks are kept separate. This is turning into a twisted yarn.
