Thursday, August 7, 2014

Time to move

For decades this has been the playground for the extraction industry, the shooters, the party hypnotized youth. It has been seen as a wasteland, a lost fortress of rock, mud, little else save a few salt brush, sage, yucca, and juniper trees. The land rises like a giant wave, ridge like ripples cascade like bony fingers reaching back to the civilization that spreads out filling the low valley as far as I can see in both directions. There are signs everywhere of the recent flash flooding that has pounded this strip of land in Western Colorado. The road is washed out, a jumble of mud and boulders. Deep damp washes crease the land twisting and turning ever seeking the lowland yet with their meandering never seeming to get there. I know each trickle to rushing torrent makes it's way to the mighty Colorado river but their path is lost to my eye from this vantage point.

I sit with my back to a stony buttress with no easy path around. My dogs and I have hiked to either side but only soft loose slots of crumbling sandstone and bentonite lead upward. So I sit listening to the low rumble of industry emitting from the fertile corridor of Grand Junction, startled by the occasional pop of a marksman unseen around the bend. The breeze is still damp and cool as the sun slowly eats away at my shade. It flickers in the corner of my left eye, rising ever higher promising a day of light and warmth.



Time to move.
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