Sunday, July 6, 2008

dog mountain

happily sore, the only regret for today is having not been accompanied by my camera to the top of dog mountain. apparently it turns out to be extremely calming to run through a full cycle of feelings in four hours of time: motivation, curiosity, pain, doubt, disappointment, awe, accomplishment, worry, curiosity again, pride, slight boredom, satisfaction, exhaustion.

the canopy above the trail was eventually ripped open; thimble berry and wild flowers, bracing insects, bracing hikers, a sweeping view much, much higher than i had expected. and the wind, which swept and pushed and blew. the colors: greens and whites and yellows, with pinpricks of orange and scattered mounds of purple and fuschias. the sky and water below a variety of blues and greys, no surprise there. a difficult descent atop orange crumbles and rocks, back into a hug of deeper greens, brown affected one hundred different ways by bugs and birds, and those ghostly white-stemmed flowers that grow at the base of trees.