Hey, Coach! ch. 5

Triple threat position, scan the court for openings and the the open player, jab step to the left,  then quickly dash right with the ball dribbling down to the corner, stutter, dribble directly behind the back, pull back and take the 20 footer.  Swoosh. Nothing but net.  Next move. Top of key, drive down from the top of the elbow, pause, dribble between the legs for misdirection, the pop a six footer, backboard. Textbook.  Scotty couldn't fully believe his eyes.  This was the sort of stuff he'd watch Bronson Keonig do for the Wisconsin Badgers Big 10 basketball team.  His head was always up to and never looked down at where he was dribbling, just like his coaches had said, the ball on a string.  Whoever she was, she had to be an eighth grader because this was their after lunch free rec time.  A couple other boys were on the opposite end of the floor putting up lollipop shots and cussing at misses, acting out plays like hook shots and fingerolls, the kinds of shots that anybody knew weren't good ones for a real game.  The eighth grade girls kept on going about her business, working out pre-set moves, one after the other, not missing.  She had just switched to the other side of the floor, dribbling with her left, crossover, pop, swish.  Two nights later, Scotty volunteered to set up for the eighth grade home girls basketball game so that he could watch this in action.  All of this had to be under secret, of course.  As of the moment, he was no longer playing basketball, but another kid with an instrument and a little brother.  There was no team to speak of because there was no coach.  Nobody seemed to care.  There she was again. As the eighth grade girl walked out onto the court she began to point to the players of the other team and point out who had who on defense.  She set herself outside of the mid court circle and stood at a position that sealed off her defender and as she received the tip off, she held the ball for one second, lifted her head up, took two dribbles, turned and sent down to the end of the court a baseball pass that was caught and laid in by another player.  This was it, Scotty thought, this was what he wanted to do someday himself.  No more out in the backyard stuff.  He had reached his limited with playing against the shadows and the dreams.  A few parents were cheering and all of them had their eyes on the girl, as she set up the team's offense a bit like a general with hands out directing.  One trip down the court, she might call out a one play, beat her defender off of the dribble, then stick a shot with the gooseneck follow through; the next time down the court, a two play, and she would pass to a low post player.  She would spin, fake left, and bank a two footer.  Score 32-4.  She took herself out of the game and sat back down on the bench using her finger to point out plays on the palm of her hand.

Hey, Coach! ch. 4

You always want to head off to school with something to look forward to.  If lunch was subs from Silio's, well, that was something.  If it was badminton instead of indoor archery, this was a good thing as well.  Toby and Randall were fun to play with on wednesdays, Wes and Henry were fun on thursdays because it was art and they were so bad at clay and painting it was like a regular comedy skit on TV.  But to head off to school with the greatest disappointment in your life up this point was something else and the hours already seemed to melt into one another, dragging out until the very end, when Scotty would have to go find Little Brother down in the Spanish room and head into after school.  Basketball sign up was a week away. Scotty was stuck in a room with a bunch of loud kids watching very unusual stuff on their phones and then acting it out, taking pictures of it all, then giggling about that on top of everything.  Most of all the other kids at after school knew Scotty as the basketball player.  There wasn't much he could do about this, he found himself at recess, when the weather was good, out shooting and creating new moves for himself, picturing, as always, defenders much taller than himself trying to guard him.  Inside, he'd carry a ball around, wondering if he could slip over to the Dome to play for a few minutes in between the end of school and pick up.  The other kids didn't exactly make fun of him for this, none of them could really play anything, but they also didn't understand why that's all he did.  Lunch was two chicken tenders and mashed potatoes.  The parent volunteer for the day tried to scoop some mandarin oranges on the little side slot of his throw away tray, but he said no and skipped the cookies too.  As he sat down Scotty could hear the squeaking of shoes from over the side of the rail and heard the familiar sound of the basketball net swoosh, a few dribbles around, another swoosh, then another, no misses.  Must be a high schooler down there at this time of day.  There was kid by the name of Todd Seager who was practically famous city-wide, leading the entire conference with 16 points per game and could dribble like a machine.  Scotty dipped his chicken tender in the ketchup one more time, took his last bite and walked over to the side of the rail overlooking the court.  It wasn't a high school boy down there, that was for sure, it was a girl, and she wasn't in high school.


 

Hey, Coach! ch. 3

It was what became known to Scotty for the rest of his life as Recruitment Day.  Scotty set his alarm for ten minutes early so he could shower and get properly dressed.  He slipped on a favorite pair of khaki pants and a blue collared sports shirt.  He combed his hair with a little care to create a part over on the side just slightly.  Normally mornings were "each man for himself," as dad would put it, his mom, over time, had decided that making an attempt at a pleasant sit down breakfast wasn't really an efficient use of time.  Clothes would be put out for Little Brother, but he could dress himself and head down to the table for a quick bowl of Frosted Flakes where he might try to steal mom's phone to play some kind of subway app game.  Pretty soon the Frosted Flakes became mush and one hand turned to two hands on the phone and little concentrated sounds started to slip out of his mouth.  "I need to leave just a little bit early to school," he said to mom as he picked up the random dishes off the table and started to rinse them for the dishwasher.  "There are a couple of boys in my class that I want to talk to before first recess." He didn't want to reveal too much.  This was, he knew, a secret project, and he wouldn't have any adults messing it all up with a bunch of concerns and questions.  He knew for sure Matt and Tyler would be there as early as he would be.  If he could just get a couple of the guys who were actually good sports players to commit, then he knew the rest of the classmates would follow and they could have their team after all.  He already knew that Matt and Tyler would ask who was going to coach the team.  That part Scotty was going to leave up to chance.  Get the team first, then drop it on them that, well, he would coach the team.  They all knew that none of the parents were in much of a position to do it, so why not him? He had experience coaching Little Brother, no problem.  He would be the youngest player coach in the history of all schools.  He slipped on a fleece coat, packed his lunch that he made the night before into this back pack, then started for the garage door until he could see that mom was a bit slower than usual as though stalling.  "Scotty, there was one thing that I thought I'd say this morning before we left for school though..." This seemed abrupt.  Usually it was all business as usual.  Eat, brush teeth, pack up, get going, the earlier the better.  She leaned over the side of the kitchen island.  Scotty didn't really have his listening ears dialed in, so hoped it was about another plan for another lesson or play time for later that night.  "You know with dad gone as often as he is I have been getting a little restless.  Right? I mean you know that too, don't you." He gave a quick nod to register.  "I have decided to take a part-time job with Gretchen at her place." He couldn't remember exactly what Gretchen did only that she was mom's friend, not her best, necessarily, as she herself admitted, but mom always spoke of her wish to do something similar.  "Well, ok, this is where I will really need your help.  The only time available is in the evenings. Now, I talked to Gretchen, and she said that for sure as soon as one person moved on at the same job, I could fill in during days.  That would be the perfect fit, you know, with you two and all.  But for now, I will need you to take care of Little Brother after school.  I know you can do it, because you already do do it."  Scotty opened his eyes very wide.  Scotty did not jump for joy, or raise a great smile in glee.  What about his Recruitment Day? The team would need a coach.  He was, as he knew, the best player on the team. So this was how it happened: no fifth grade basketball. It fizzled up like a tiny little dream, poof, as quick as that.

Hey, Coach! ch. 2

It wasn't that there weren't any other kids around in the neighborhood. On these nights when Scotty owned his little court out there in the backyard and started teaching fundamentals to Little Brother, he had visions of big games, maybe a crowd watching, some cheers.  But to get kids to come around wasn't easy and just didn't happen.  Scotty knew that Wes had indoor soccer every other night.  Lane was at voice for his sister until seven, at least.  Will and Trent, they were at their basement playing 'games' until somebody told them differently.  How many times had he been invited over to their house and when he got there he might not even see them, they might not even say anything, just expect you come on down and find a spot on the couch and grab a handheld and start shooting a zombie or some other war hero.  It was very unusual, he knew, but it was quite possible that there was nothing more boring in the entire world than sitting around in other people's basements with a plastic stick in your hand clicking away one simple finger.  He might get the hang of it all soon enough, but before he knew it, his mind started to wander off to his court and he could smell the wet rubber of his basketball in the rain, and he could hear the sloppy splash of his shot slip down through nothing but net and hit the wet court.  Now Little Brother was entirely different story.  The inside joke was that Will and Trent wanted Scotty to come over only if he brought Little Brother.  He would hunker down on the bean bag at the corner of the couch and he looked like he was born with that stick in his hands, his eyes would light up and from there on out, they would brag about scores and how many killed.  Scotty would sneak back up the stairs, say goodbye to Mrs. Levitt and head back home to plot his next plays out on the court.  All of this was the standard routine at home.  Parents gone or busy. Kids in the basement shooting at things.  Waiting for the next car ride.  School the next day.  It was through this his own dream took shape, unexplainable at that age, but it seeped up through the cracks of it all. Last year there weren't enough players for St. Dominic to field a basketball team.  Three of the fifth graders played up on the sixth grade team and that was a mess.  None of the dad's he knew of had played basketball, most of them were in their own basements or overseas.  Scotty sat down and made out a list of all possible players from his grade.  Tomorrow, he decided, was recruitment day. There was no reason that he could think of why he couldn't coach the team!

Hey, Coach! ch. 1

For Scotty fifth grade had been all saxophone, 12 new friends, after school program and rides in the car across town to some such new lesson or practice or meeting nearly every hour on the hour.  A little brother who was so annoying that that mom finally let Scotty start to sit up front in the SUV, even though it might have been a year too early, nobody would tell.  When they finally got home at night, mom disappeared into the kitchen and rushed around the counter clinking dishes. Little brother watched some such new cartoon app on his own personal iPad, one that had become so greasy in fingerprints on the screen that you couldn't help but wonder if he ate right on top of it.  Dad travelled twice a month out of the country, some places with unusual names in Mexico and even South America.  When he first started for the battery company, it was the very thing that allowed Scotty and Little Brother to go to private school, and those places way down there in other parts of the world sounded warm and full of big palm trees.  Scotty often daydreamed of his dad sitting in shaded porches of big buildings sipping strange and colorful drinks and automatically wanted to be an international businessman someday. Mother, though, no longer cooked, she didn't lay out any clothes in the morning, in winter, not much shoveling got done and all kinds of new workers had showed up to take care of all those little things that Dad used to do like second nature.  Scotty could hear them talk sometimes late at night.  Things are fine here, things are fine there.  Wish you were here, wish you were there.  Lots of wishes, Scotty thought, maybe he should have some of his own.  At night, after dinners, whatever they might be, Scotty pulled out his old outdoor basketball.  He'd inspect it to see if there were any new bald spots or wear marks.  He'd pump it up to get it easy to bounce and then, finally, he was somewhere he wanted to be, outside on his hoop and flat court his dad laid a couple of years ago, played some for awhile, then it all faded. Scotty had looked through some books on very fancy dribbling skills way back when he was in third grade.  How could he forget it? It was a book he pulled out in the LMC, and it had a picture of some random basketball player on the front.  Scotty wondered if he ever be able to dribble in between his legs like the pictures they showed.  The cross-over was deadly.  Behind the back serves a great purpose to reverse direction and avoid the steal.  Why didn't math make this much sense?  Once outside, the backyard became the stadium, lights shining down on him, a big loudspeaker in the background calling out his name and the names of his teammates in school.  He would shoot at least 200 shots every night.  He would not stop shooting from the baseline until he made two in a row, then it was alright to move to the next.  He watched the rotation on the ball even when his fingers got cold.  That was the hardest part for a kid, he decided, to hoist that ball all the way up there, 10 feet, and somehow keep a rotation.  Plays began to form his head as he shot and he might tell Wes to loop around his down screen, flash to the ball, I'll pass and we will give and go.  In these little court dreams, the rest of his teammates knew the plays as well and the offense worked to a rhythm hardly ever seen in any school, ever! The dream was usually broken when his mother's voice sounded from the back porch and before you knew it, there came Little Brother, bundled up, and dashing out to the court to "play some bakit ball."  One night, Scotty decided to stop ignoring Little Brother, he gave him a little ball that they had for a long time, and began to show him how to dribble.  Wouldn't it be more fun if he had someone to play with?

Mesa Trail ch. 40
The End
Draft 2

"The world is full of mystery, isn't it? How do the stingrays know when to migrate to the sandbar in the time for the moon to light their way into the Cut and then back out again? When does a star decide it's done with burning and fall to the earth? Why do the manatees swim with mermaids?" – Keeper









It was Josh who held onto the stories that made up that first summer and beyond.  He was young, impressionable, and remembered all the things that happened, all the things that he had seen, with a bright light and little bit of imagination.  It was Josh who, years later, put it down into words as best as he could.  He wanted to tell the story of his determined sister who turned a life that could have been little less than the standard child, home, school, story and told the one that was more true: that she had contained inside of her a special sort of spirit and it was that very built-in spirit that allowed her see the vision of creating a world by herself and with a lot of helps from her friends and the great backcountry creatures.

She understood the backcountry, she respected it, and the creatures themselves, dare he say, were her friends.  It was Josh who knew much better than to cast Bunkledon as an enemy.  Josh himself, that day up there spent inside the spirit cave, the gold sun cave of the Bear Dance, that came to understand the workings of the magic that was Man's understandings of the world around him.  He gave Bunkledon even more credit than Bunkledon would have given himself, for it was him who looked within himself, finally, and saw that something was not missing, but always there and, like the first kernel of a small flame, just needed lighting.  He was never sure just how to put down the lives of the back country creatures, though.

Was it Biggalow who, from the beginning, made his secretive way down from the back country cliffs to help Hannah haul the gold up and down the sluice? Or was that merely how it was remembered, wished? The land up here was littered with bear boulders and they moved among the shadows of the day and night.  Was it Biggalow that teetered along the edge of the ridge to show Bunkledon a way out of the cold wet canyon? More importantly, so much more importantly, was it the ancient bear spirit that spoke to Bunkledon that day, so that he might trust to follow him? Really, who could know? Josh liked to listen to the stories that Biggalow was in charge of the whole operation and met with his clan at the cave to perform something that once in a lifetime.  Lifetime?  How's about once in generations? Josh decided that after that day Biggalow had in fact moved deeper into the back country, had several cubs, and taught them, day in, day out, the ways of the ancient spirit bears, and rarely lost track of them.  Never trample off toward the city and take the easy food, he might have taught them.  People can be a very kind creature, but if you come around too often to eat near them, they will not be so kind again.  He might have begun to teach the ritual of the sundance again to as many of the clan as would listen, but it had been so long, and many might have looked at it with a downward glaring glance and wondered for what reason?  What is to learn from such a dance, the stars are already ours here in the backcountry, the streams are free, and the caves are open.  Biggalow likely knew the difference from his own days spent around the hundreds of human creatures, but he went on teaching and one day, as with Bunkledon, broke through, finally.  Biggalow's spirit now lives on inside the mind of the cubs, inside the forest floors and the night shadows.

Josh knew the new pod of turtles had found their new home, a waterslide in fact, and would bang and crackle their shells all day long in the summer months in the high country.  It felt oddly like a home they had never yet encountered.  Once in awhile a turtle or two might wiggle off the creek and up into the red rocks and find something that looked an awful lot like themselves embedded into the rocks.  Who would have thought such a thing? They thought they were all just sea-level creatures, for goodness sakes, but their forefathers and mothers, what brave little divers! Turtle Island, the great turtle spirit of the serpent world, right there to see!  Josh knew it was the flitty eyes and quiet song of the sapsucker that told the stories on the other side to the creatures of the backcountry.  The sapsucker went along on its business with seeming to notice a thing, so in tune, so earnest, all the while secretly watching everything.  They knew every little creature in the forest from up there on their perches in the Ponderosas.  They too had a few things to work on, like the young Josh. To tell the true story of the back country had lost its place in the way of things.  To learn it back again, well, sometimes you had to get out there, flap your wings a little, or stand inside the golden cave of a mountain.

Mesa Trail ch. 39
Draft 2

By the end of it all, looking back, Hannah had known since the very first day that Josh had brought her that vial full of those gold flakes from the Bear Canyon Creek mine, that she would need an accountant.  There were plenty of things that she liked to do if she was honest with herself, and she often found herself going over the list:

She liked to cook (even though she wasn't particularly good at it, she worked hard at it, and someday her potato soup would in fact become famous in the town of Boulder)

She liked taking care of her brother and sister (she could never admit to this to anybody but herself, but she was good at it. She liked to keep tabs on them, help with homework, cook them dinner, oh my!)

She liked to take care of the house and the outpost. She became the youngest store owner on Pearl Street.

She liked to be inside the woods as often as possible.  Listen to the day pass.  Watch the sun coat the Flatirons.  

She liked making a living giving a living, as she would say.

But she would tell you in a minute that she didn't really like to count the money, weigh it all up, put it in on a scale, pack it, bring it into the bank. No sir-ree, there wasn't much fun for her in that. But she had found out that to put all that work into collecting it, you don't want it to go to waste, that was just as bad as anything else! So that day when she found Bunkledon at the cave high up there on the summit of Flagstaff, after he had "seen a ghost," his eyes so wide open, so seemingly gleeful, smiling, giddy, she knew she had her help.  He had asked her right on the spot about her business proposition again.  All those little dreams that he had concocted for himself, to come back up into these rocks and mine for himself, to find that big old mother lode, well, something happened to all that. He wanted to put all those counting skills to good use.  "You mine it, and I'll take it in to the bank and make sure it comes out as money to spend on all those causes you talked about." And so it did.  The creek mine turned into a western attraction, a case study, for goodness sakes.

Who were these kids up there on the side of the mountain working all day long under the sunshine, running a non-profit business?  People came to volunteer from around the country. The gold kept coming, if slowly, surely.  The original outpost, Element 79, got a face lift, and became the gourmet shack it always wanted to be, the one with a great view of the rushing stream, and there was Hannah, dressed in a cook's outfit, seasoning the Biggalow mushroom burgers on demand for the passing hikers.  At night they lit the trail with lanterns.  As you walked up from the Mesa Trail trailhead, you could, in one brief peak, see the city of Boulder behind you wrapped inside its half dome of mountains, dark and mysterious.  Up ahead, a bonfire burning outside of the outpost.  The flicker of flames shot shadows out under the boulders.  On some nights, those rocks became moving dinosaurs every agreed. On others, it looked like bears dancing to the moonlight.

Mesa Trail ch. 38
Draft 2

"To climb these coming crests one word to you, to
you and your children:
stay together
learn the flowers
go light"
– Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island








What do you do when you witness an ancient sundance exactly?

Well, Bunkledon sure found out a few things at the very moment he reached the crest of the spiny ridge up there on the summit of Flagstaff.  Bunkledon saw the crease to the cave. The sun had just started to trace its rays along the surfaces of the jagged rocks.  What Bunkledon saw was something that not even his own mind had fathomed before.  And, as we remember, he had worked inside the chambers of the coins before. He had his hands on the stuff, all day long some times, and liked to feel it and count it and think about better places for it.

Bunkledon saw the girl, Inuna, and the boy, Josh up there inside the cave and the ancient hand print on the side, illuminated right now, with that flash of sun that had made its way through the sliver of the opening.  When he had looked back out, he felt something of a sinking feeling at first, those bears, four of them now, moving in unison, each up on two feet. Because the bears did not give them a single second look, the three of them moved out the entrance and stood still as though, yes, watching a movie, but a movie that was so much more than a screen, so much more than actors or fake setting.  Bunkledon didn't hardly want to ask if the other two were seeing the same thing.  Josh whispered "what are they doing?" Josh and Inuna had dried by now but Bunkledon was soaked. The core of his shiver was still there.  Inuna handed him a wrap that she carried with her everywhere she went up here in the mountains for just such a reason. "Nobody in the modern world has ever seen it," she said, crouching closer. "Only the ancients.  The sun dance is a celebration of a successful offspring. It is the celebration of the offspring on sun mountain." Bunkledon had forgotten about the mother lode that surrounded him.  The colors of the aqua sky and the deep green of the ponderosa and the jagged glistening gray of the rock around him all awash was mesmerizing.

He asked himself what do I want, and nothing came to him, nothing at all for the first time that he could ever remember in his life, except for that moment, long ago, in the forest, with his aunt and uncle, before he was startled by the presence of the great deer with enormous horns and eyes that looked right through him as if it were he, himself, invisible, part of the forest.  That scared him then, to be part of it, not separate, and he ran never to return.  It was something much more he knew.  The bears chose here, chose them, at the entrance of the great sun cave as hope.  He wondered if the bears were real and thought his thoughts, wondering, wondering, could they hear? I will not come back to the cave.  I will tell no one, he said to himself. The bears settled back down onto all fours.  As quickly as they had appeared onto that little meadow, they disappeared, black ghosts. Behind them, four cubs, flashing paws at each other, tackling and making high pitched cries at each other.  Flashing across this little scene, from one ponderosa pine limb to another, chirping just a little little bit, a sapsucker, eyeing up the luscious bark of a ripe white birch.

Mesa Trail ch. 37
Draft 2

"The cold of the charm against her face gave Keeper a start. She blinked her eyes and looked right at the golden disk. Her lucky charm. It was still strung on the snapped pink ribbon." – Keeper











How the next few hours played out up there above the Mesa Trail, way up there, near the summit of Flagstaff mountain well over 7,000 feet up into the sky, is still debated among the backcountry creatures of the Flatiron Forest.  None of the backcountry creatures could remember anything quite like it, only heard of such things from the old ancestors, and even them, they had only been stories of such things.  The backcountry creatures had lost touch with each other it seemed for a long time. All those people coming up to walk around the cleared paths of the forest, they were fine, just fine, but so many of them, not like it used to be.  It was hard to get together in the same way you used to, said the bear clan; the mountain lion clan, well, they moved deeper and deeper into the woods, and just didn't see each other in same way they used to either.  Less creature community is what many of them claimed, just didn't really know what each other was doing.  And there weren't many who witnessed it anyway.  Who could trust the sapsucker?  It was he who saw it all play out before his little sapsucker eyes.  What was he doing all the way up there at the side of the mountain anyway?  Sapsuckers were notoriously talented at sticking to one spot on the side of a ponderosa pecking away his holes and using that funny tongue to gather sap and insects, but one thing they were not known for was flying.  Sapsucker parents hardly even trained the young for long distances, why would they? Sure, they had long wings, but the rhythm was off, flitting about from limb to limb.  Well, not this sapsucker this day.  He had dodged the globules of rain that morning all the way up the side of the mountain following the human, peeking down here and there to see this new route that she was taking right up the side of the mountain so quickly the sapsucker could hardly keep up.  The human had slowed down, wiped her brow, and touched something that was dangling around her neck.  It shone a bright color that the sapsucker had seen a few times before along the creeks of the mountains where he might stop at a small bath for a drink.  He might peck at the flakes of the bright color, but it didn't taste particularly good so he would spit it back out.  Was this one of hers for good luck, or bad...who could tell? He had better stay close by, out of curiosity, and watch out.

From the very tip top of that old Ponderosa he could see across the meadow, where the tall human was following Biggalow up to the old caves where the sapsucker had been told never to enter.  At this moment, the very same moment they reached the entrance, the sun had begun to shoot out over the contours of the mountain turning it instantly into a crystallized landscape.  It was all aglitter, he would later say, and he couldn't perfectly make out the figures any longer, so bright.  Three of Biggalow's clan walked up and over to the ridge from the other side of the hill.  This was the part that nobody had ever seen, never, only stories, unbelievable, but here it was, and the sapsucker's eyes bulged right out of their sockets.  I mean, you never know with bears, of course, they are big enough to do what they like, but the four of them rose up onto two feet each and they indeed clasped front paws and began a little dance around in a circle.  This kept on for a few minutes.  It was like it had been rehearsed but who could know?  The tall human was up against the face of the opening of the cave and was joined there by a middle sized and small human.  They didn't move, couldn't.  Was there harm to come? What was this?  The sun had laid down over the black of the bears like a sheen.  They didn't chant or hum, just a slow round dance, more like a gala.  That's what it was, a gala.

Mesa Trail ch 36
Draft 2

Hannah knew better, and knew she knew better, which made it all worse.  She knew these trails north and south as though they had become her own backyard.  So close, in fact, she looked each day for little signs of change in the landscape, watched for where the swarms of bumblebees skipped across the pedals of Indian Paint for nectar, tufts in the sedgegrass along the meadows where mule deer laid down to bed for the night, and certainly the rise and fall of the waterline on her very own creek.  But not west toward the Great Divide, not really, where those Flatirons rose up from their stems, and up above that, Green Mountain, Realization Point, and not Flagstaff where, from its backside, on Ute Trail, she had heard anyway from her mother, you can see the great spine of one of the great mountain rift.  One long extended rock from the coast up in Alaska down to the very southern tip of South America.  It was like a great wall, but natural, not put there; and even if she had never been up there, she had imagined walking the length of it some day, just get up and go.

Maybe she would start her small fund so she could some day get all the proper supplies together, and put in the research. All dreams, all mountain dreams.  For now, though, the dreams had turned from something that was supposed to be light, bright, and fresh, full of the good kinds of ghosts, to this heavy rain, gray air and the hush that comes over a forest under seige.  She should have gotten ahold of her mother before she headed upwards for Josh.  He's with Inuna, so of course they know where they are, but anything can happen, nobody could be perfect up here along these rocks.  She'd gotten off trail and had decided to shoot straight up the sides of patches of forest that looked at least passable. Sooner or later the criss cross of some trail would show up and she could follow that, but for now straight up.  For anybody who has ever tried the straight up approach to a mountain face, knows it looks easier than it is.  Hannah's legs felt like dead timber.  Nothing familiar here.  She had a poncho, that was a good move, at least. The rain came down so hard now on the top of the hood that she could hardly hear herself think.  She went on like this for half an hour, stumbling over broken rocks, leaning under tangles and thickets.  She reached a small clearing that opened to yet another false horizon and stood for a minute to catch her breath.  What she didn't know, couldn't have, is that up over the next boulder ridge, split apart, offering a wide view, was a bear and a man walking three hundred feet from one another, gradually up the side of Flagstaff mountain, to Ute itself, where the ancient golden cave, the legendary mother lode, sat in near silence as it housed two children, safe, but one afraid, one prepared to hold out for as long as the storm roared over the spiney peaks of front range.

Mesa Trail ch. 35
Draft 2

It was only Bunkledon't father's voice that he heard right now. Never follow such an intutition, only danger, only pitfalls, there is no such thing as spirit in the wild, for goodness sakes.  Bunkledon would carry this knowledge along with him and teach himself the solidity of things, things you can put in your hand, money that can be counted.  His first job, still his favorite, was as a beginning teller in a busy bank, all that money he could feel in his hands, now that is worth something. Yet something stirred within him, what was this, father never told him of this, a stirring that somehow knew that that bear standing up there at the top of the ridge was pacing back and forth with him, Bunkledon, in mind.

Must be the high altitude, he said to himself, thinking such silliness.  The rain had increased and, without a hat, his hair was now completely wet.  Rocks around him began to seep and drizzle, forming little unknown creeks which then fed back into the main one.  Still that buzzing sound of the rush of the creek echoing now through the small canyoun as if it were an auditorium.  Off in the distance the screech of a hawk, above it all, seeing everything, lucky thing.  He made his way toward the pacing bear, oh my, oh me.  What has this come to...blind faith, this isn't something I can touch taste or even really see.  He remembered the feeling he experienced once from his childhood.  He had become lost back behind a simple camping space where his aunt and uncle used to park an RV, where he trailed off in a dense wood where suddenly, he could still remember this, the interstate noise had become sheltered off  and away and had disappeared.  There was a wide eyed glance throughout his body, so hard to explain.  He knew where his parents were, right back there, not far away, he knew there were a hundred, a thousand cars passing only within shouting distance, yet he was attracted somehow to the quiet depth of the trees, like companions, he trusted.  He rembered stopping for a moment then, when he was a child, and looking up could see that he was being watched by a large deer with horns, all by itself, and hadn't moved a single inch since Bunkledon had been standing there.  It scared him.  He ran through the trees, never to tell anyone of the harmless deer that scared him out of his skin.  He stayed inside the RV all night, embarrassed, attracted, longing, regretting, only to never venture out again in the forest for fear of such fear and shame.

Bunkledon was not necessarily a deep thinker, but back inside there he knew secretely that this gravitation toward the bear was a peace offering to himself, once and for all.  A sort of kindness came over him.  In that kindness, there was an understanding of all that surrounded him.  You mean no harm to things, they mean no harm to you.  The invisible stuff.  Let's just hope it pays off, he thought, as he cast aside small rocks along the footpath on his way up to the bear Biggalow.

Mesa Trail ch. 34
Draft 2

"The water was still low, but he knew that soon it would rush back through the channel and fill it up. He stood there not knowing exactly what he was supposed to see. He had the distinct feeling that something was missing, but what?" – from Keeper









Bunkledon was one of those who did not know where he was, he lost track as he tried to find something like a trail among the rocks that lead up along the rushing creek.  Bunkledon was one of those who did not have a compass, and even so, could he use it?  Which way was the city, exactly? On the side of one of these foothills, without being able to see out front or out back, how could you tell, all started to look the same, very quiet, except for the stream itself, rushing, rushing along violently, which, for anybody who has ever been in the presence of a wild rushing stream, it is not comforting when you are lost.  He lost his footing several times, and wished he had better boots to grip, the water much colder than he thought, and part of his left foot had sumberged under the water and was now cold.  It had started to rain and the splatter over the leaves of the trees and in through the thick thick spines of the ponderosas was loud, it was not comforting any longer.

Cellphones didn't like being in between mountains much either. No reception.  Plus, who was he going to call, exactly? He wasn't hurt, not yet anyway, he thought.  "Hey I'm up here somewhere, not sure, looking for gold?" No, I don't think so, he thought.  Keep going, that's all you really got to do.  Somewhere soon, you might find those kids along the side of their hill, maybe they would help. Maybe.  He walked up along the rocky precipice until he reached one last flat mark then straight up, straight up the side of a hill that was surrounded on either side by large cliffs.  This was uncharted territory for Bunkledon.  When he was young, he and his brother might climb the one, single, enormous rock at Rocky Arbor Park.  There was a trail up that one too and it stopped at a flat point where you could look out over the lake.  So serene, so easy, you could see people walking along a well carved trail snaking along the forest canopy toward the great Ishnala Restaurant where they used to go for early dinner after a nice walk through the woods.

The rain had soaked him now to his undershirt.  No hat either. No water. Back here in this shady portion of the ravine which led to who knows where it had gotten many degrees cooler, he knew that.  He sat, pulled his shirt up closer around the back of his neck. As he sat there, starting to shiver -- shivering starts so subtly, no slow, so deep -- he realized he thought he saw something move up and over from the ridge on the other side from where he sat.  He looked again, quickly, at then it stood, and blended in just like another rock, big, almost no color at all right now as the clouds had taken ahold of the sky. But then it looked to move again.  What was it going to be? A rock, something else?

Besides the rushing of the creek and the small falls, and the eery silence of the ravine, he had a hard time keeping it all straight, what was what?  Finally, the large figure began distinctly to move back and forth at the very top of that ridge.  He would pause for a moment looking out over the horizon, then as quickly pace back in toward the mountain, then point again to the end of the cliff.  A pointer?  It was a bear, at least that much Bunkledon knew, but since he was already in the middle of what felt like so many perils it didn't seem to scare him as much as it might otherwise.  In fact, there was some kind of very unusual comfort. What, exactly, was that? He had never felt comfortable in the woods before, and now, to a bear?  He rose up, a little wobbly on his low cut feet, then moved toward the only decent looking path in that direction.  He might go and see what the bear had to show him.

Mesa Trail ch. 33
Draft 2

"Now, clinging to the bottom of the boat, Keeper knew. There was no mermaid mama. There never had been. There had only been Meggie Marie, who almost let her down on a star-filled night just like this one, who had told her to ride the wave ponies." – Keeper









The number of folks who have been up inside the maze and labyrinth of these mountains who wished they knew where they were would take all day and all night and into the next day to count.  Happens all the time, even these days, you get off trail and before you know it one rockfall looks like another.  A rock promintory looks like the next and the next.  False horizons keep you guessing.  Sure, creeks run downhill, and you could follow that, but through what rough terrain, where?  Those old miners used to stick close to camp without a compass.  Not that they didn't know the territory, they sure did after awhile, but false leads are not worth a gold nugget.  Compasses come in handy, for anybody.  Pull that up out of your pocket, match up the needle direction to the direction you came from, and voila, you might double back and begin to see some familiar landmarks.  The ancients of the world knew all about being lost and they got tired of it.  You can imagine crossing the seas following nothing but the stars or dead reckoning, zig zagging, losing hundreds of miles on overcast days, waiting, waiting for the sky to open up and the sun and moon and stars to give you a little break.  So, so long ago, way back in the B.C.'s, the Chinese found a funny little stone to help them with all of this, the lodestone, which, unknown before, happened to attract other metals.  Believe it or not, some lodestones look an aweful lot like element 79... gold!  Take a little bit of the lodestone, dangle it freely, maybe from a single thread of silk, and lo and behold it spins slowly toward the earth's magnetic field.  It shouldn't surprise anyone that they called this first known magnetic compass a 'south governor'...and was used mostly to show the user where the divine spirits of the earth resided.  There was an old story from the Dream Pool Essays, the first known written mention of any compass on earth, about the magic of rocks:

In the Zhi-pink reign a man of Zezhou was digging a well in his garden, and unearthed something shaped like a squirming serpent, or dragon. He was so frightened by it that he dared not touch it, but after some time, seeing that it did not move, he examined it and found it to be a stone. The ignorant country people smashed it, but Zhen Boshun, who was magistrate of Jincheng at the time, got hold of a large piece of it on which scale-like markings were to be seen exactly like those on a living creature. Thus a serpent or some kind of marine snake (chhen), had certainly been turned to stone, as happens with the 'stone-crabs.

Serpents in the fossils, serpents are the rocks, serpents high up in these mountains, how did they get here?  Gold veins running through the serpents of the rocks.  Lodestones. How did they get magnetic? The only way known? From the lightening bolt!

Mesa Trail ch. 32
Draft 2

"A large wooden bowl. Large enough for a little girl to sit in... while her mother spun her around on the kitchen floor. A beautiful wooden bowl. Large enough for another little girl to ride in...while her mother set her afloat on the waves of the sea..." – Keeper










Inuna felt completely at home up here in the cave of the ancient sun dance.  This was the top of the world, at least in these parts anyway.  Rarified air, her grandmother used to say.  Quiet, where the spirits are at work.  Even the trees, she used to ask. Yes the trees especially.  Imagine the patience, grandmother used to point out, to know you were going to be in one place for hundreds of years.  The roots travel downward in between breat rocks and become friends with things nobody else knows about.  The earth gods down there rising up in the form of trees.  You imagine the greatest change of scenery for a tree is nothing more than a slight shake created by the brush of the wind god.  In winter some limbs might tighten up or lose leaves.  That's it, and they don't complain about it one spit.  She always said spit instead of bit on purpose, then smiled wide and the creases of old tan skin parted in wisdom.

Then came the golden hawks making their circle around the meadows that pitted the backs of these mountains up at Flagstaff.  If you listened closely enough, Inuna thought, you could hear the wings break the wind. How often could you hear such things down below in the city, all car wheels and construction.  A rustle in the underbrush, a shake of the ponderosa limb, the hawk wing, so much more truth in these motions than all the rest of the babble below.  She knew she was virtually alone in this, and this thought, that her ears could hear the motions of the world, could see the very patterns of the clouds and smell the rich floor of the pine canopy, connected her to the unexplainable, history itself, the same mind's eye of those that came before.  What else was the greatest purpose for the human being than to serve as observers and voice for the voiceless.  Who would hear? Who could really hear anymore?

She knew Hannah had taught herself to listen and was so proud of her, all on her own too, caring for her little parcel of the earth and now she too could see the connection that was Bear Canyon Creek, the rolling rocks, the birches that barely grew out of a crack out of the side of the mossy boulder. It didn't start at the trailhead, it didn't finish at the bottom of the creek, it was continuous, like time itself, so fluid, it had a smell, a taste...it had carved out a part of the mind of people themselves.  Josh was not as comfortable inside the silence just yet.  The glittering gold walls were like something right out of an Indian Jones mystery and he half expected some strange wheel to take shape before his eyes where they would have to replace a bag of gold for weight on some kind of booby trap.  All was fine with that -- what stories to tell his friends in school -- but he felt too far from home and was ready to head back down.  "Rain is on the next peak west," Inuna said, "I can smell it." This was not as comforting to Josh. Time to leave.  He now half expected to see one of those strange shaped rocks to turn to a dinosaur like something out of Jurassic Park.  The movie gods were likewise powerful.  The hawk screech was not the peaceful confirmation of flight but an image of it pouncing down on something, so raw, so vicious. Inuna gathered their things and strung her backpack over her shoulders and took one last look around the golden cave. Must keep this sacred, untouched.  They would dig this cave out of existence. They would dig a hole, before they knew it, around and around and around until they reached the very bedrock a thousand feet below.  They would get the gold, but they would also get the mountain.  So hard to replace a mountain, gone, vanished from time itself, no memory, no spirit left, just diminished by that much.  She walked over the printed handprint in the side of the cave, placed her own hand over, then said something in another language. "Inuna, people of the sun mountain," and headed back out of the cave with Josh when they first heard the booming clap of thunder.

Mesa Trail ch. 31
Draft 2

Reports came early and fast this time around -- big storm coming our way, from the Divide.  Hannah's father spent his days watching gauges, watching screens, testing numbers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.  If there was so much as a sunburst out there in the Milky Way, if there was a gust of low pressure wind swooping off the Pacific, a molecule out of place, then  that was the job of the department of the Mesoscale & Microscale Meterology Laboratory. Hannah's father's job was often to send up weather balloons to gather data in the formation of those nasty front range thunderstorms.

Hannah began to pull the tarps down over the open walls of the outpost.  Wasn't much here, most everything brought up day by day, two coolers full of ice and well packed menu items for lunch.  Two teachers were on sight today, Mrs Hix from history and Mr. Joel from Phy. Ed. They began to pack up small picks and place their gloves in their back packs.  Kitie lifted up the entrance chute to the sluice box and placed it over on the dry bank. Most importantly, she walked over to the two mason jars of gold they had collected in just over three hours work.  Since last storm, nobody wanted to say anything out loud, but the creek was lined in gold.  There had been times when Josh might skip the panning altogether and simply dip the jar down there near the bottom and scoop up the residue, splash the water back through his fingers tipping the jar upside down and what was left over was the good stuff.  But where was Josh and Inuna? A side dig? High up at Flagstaff? That was where they usually would end up.  It took a good hour and a half to get up there walking.  There was no way Hannah or anybody else could follow them up there and warn them of the coming storm -- if they didn's see it already -- in time.

Inuna would know what to do, to take cover, to stay as dry as possible and certainly not try to walk out in the open during the flash of the storm, but what about Josh? Josh did not like storms, everybody knew that.  He had terrible dreams of storms and deep water, always had.  It might have been from the stories they heard passed down from great grandfather, of days or nights spent in rain soaked clothes waiting for the rain to pass, always worrying about hypothermia, not something anybody wants to get, but that could happen even in the summer months.  The miner always has to be ready for cover up here in the mountains, he would say.  You work all day under the sun.  You sweat like a fish.  The storm comes, just like that.  He would click his fingers and snap. Then before you know it, it's cold and if you don't have a change of shirt with you, you freeze right there on the spot.  They knew he was exaggerating some because great grandpa was as tough as they got and he was still standing back then.

But some of this stories weren't quite as funny.  Men who tried to summit peaks in the winter trudging through hip high snow then freezing in place.  People would find them a day later, stick straight, and call to them only to find out they were froze.  Men caught in washouts along what seemed like small streams that turned to rushing rivers.  Never try to walk across a creek in a storm.  It gains speed and starts to roar. It will take you out, I've seen it.

Mesa Trail ch. 30
Draft 2

What a little taste of gold will do to most any man.  An entire nation making a mass movement from east to west.  Give up your home, hearth, your mule.  Tough it out over vast plains, fight off native peoples so you can clamber up into those no name hills that might have some of it laced in among the great rocks.  How quickly Bunkledon became a backwoods explorer.  He had found a peculiar creek along Crown Rock Trail. Even he realized that there would be hundreds of little creeks lined up and down these mountain sides.  All that rain and moisture has to go down hill.  He understood that.  Some of them, though, were nothing more than cuts through the fern, maybe a brief cascade over the roots of some overturned mammoth oak.  He stirred up the courage to follow one in particular that looked a lot more rocky, like it had been there for a long time, and had carved out and scoured curves and scooped in and out of side walls forever and ever.  He might have had a pan with him, why not?  He had a map in hand with x's marking spots and places to go.  Somewhere up there at the top was a mother lode. It was time to find out for himself.  He crouched down over a very shallow patch of the creek that was sweeping over a rock bed.  The sun had not yet spilled over the other side of the Flatirons so he could see the clarity of the water.  How tempting to take a sip.

As he dipped his little pan down into the chopped up bits and particles of the sand in between the larger rocks, he realized he wasn't thinking a smidge about the woods around him. He might as well be directly down on Pearl Street below, right outside his office, for all cared.  He pictured his own little outfit right here, nobody else would ever know, and would come up here on week nights, weekends and slowly, carefully fill up his jars with gold. He pictured how he would walk directly up to his boss, Ms. Lana Shore, -- oh how he didn't like her ways -- and simply stoop over and show her his new rocks, then say good bye "forever!" Folks, he hadn't even found a morsel of gold yet! He'd given up everything he owned to make this thing work, and one day, one day, as sure as the sun rises in the west and sets in the east...or was it rise in the east and set in the west...well, whichever it was, as sure as that happened, he would someday find that secret Flatiron mother lode that the native legends talked about.  So he did dip that pan into the sandy bottom, and he slooshed that pile around until the excess water had spilled over the side and if he didn't find, right down there at the bottom of the regular rock, little specks that shone out from all the rest like the yellow sun itself! Something stirred in his belly, a rising up of the blood and it went right to his eyes and they seemed to burn with visions.  He looked up at the passage of the creek as far as he could see it.  It came off a wide sheet of flat bedrock above and a slight falls.  Churning up the gold just for him, he thought, and made his way along the banks.  Biggalow, unknown to any other creature in the area, had been posing as a big black boulder, still as a rock itself, watching to see if this lone little creature was going to be silly enough to try to climb these loose wet rocks.

Mesa Trail ch. 29
Draft 2

Biggalow's Mushroom Burger
Divers Scallops 
Sapsucker Delight
Bunkledon's Potato Soup
Inuna's Forage Salad


Hannah had just finished handwriting the day's menu on chalkboard and made an attempt to draw little pictures alongside each of the options in symbols.  Biggalow's Mushroom Burger was followed by the outline of a standing bear. Everybody knew Biggalow by now, how helpful he had been in the mining operation.  They knew -- at least they all hoped -- that Biggalow was a vegetarian and might often be found sniffing up underneath the old oaks, all mossy underneath, for wild mushrooms. When he found them he might very well savor them for a little while, that earthy, pungent smell of a morel, it was like a bear treat.  Drizzled with a slight butter sauce, Hannah found this to be the most popular on the menu.  The hard part was always trying to find a consistent batch of the elusive mushroom.

Divers Scallops was followed by a drawing of three outlines of green turtles.  There was no way that Hannah was going to be able to get scallops into her little outpost on the side of a hot hill every day, but how could she resist the word play? Divers Scallops, it turned out, was a specially seasoned chicken tender (sorry sapsucker, the chicken a member of your own winged breed!).  A pinch of curry made them yellow and woowwweee, dipped in a ranch sauce, homemade, the hikers would pile up come noon time for Divers.

Sapsuckers Delight...well, let's just say this was the sweet to the savory of the Scallops.  Hannah would some day drain a maple tree for her own syrup and make these much more original, but instead she used local honey as the sap, tossed a set of mini-French Toast slices in egg and powdered sugar, then, when browned, drizzled with honey.  Bees from around the county swarmed to the sight.  Sapsuckers from up and down the Flatirons buzzed overhead with as wide of eyes as they could muster in total jealousy.  Katie once found a hummingbird licking the side of a plate of the Sapsucker Delight.

As for Bunkledon's Pototo Soup? Well this one took some thought. But Hannah decided that the size she cut her potatos into, sharp little cubes, soaked and stewed in butter and bacon, finished looking a lot like what would be considered a perfect gold nugget.  We knew Bunkledon was just as interested in finding the lode as anyone.  Here it was, warm, soft, smelled across the town of Boulder, a pot of gold stew.  Inuna knew the ways of the forest.  She could classify mosses as well as barks and wild flowers.  She had been taught the edibles and the non edibles.  She often asked the simple question in jest: why do we even need grocery stores?  Inuna would take her initial walk through the woods in the morning, gather as many greens, stems, and flowers as she could and then educate Hannah on how to prepare.  The menu was now full.  Hannah had lost track of the machinery of the sluice box.  Who was running that?  She had felt this all before she knew, as a drop of rain came tumbling down out of what looked like a blue sky and dropped right at the center of the menu, creating a small river of mixed chalk colors.  If a storm was to hit, everybody under the roof. We will eat as the thunderstorm hits.

Mesa Trail ch. 28
Draft 2

"As Signe slept, the cooling night wind slipped through her window and nestled next to her on the pillows. She pulled her sheet up under her chin. She could not feel a faint tap-tap-tap on her shoulder, if there even was one. After all, who can feel a haint?" – Keeper











Once in awhile it's a good idea to stop for just a moment, take in the scene, and see what's around you.  Especially up here in the front range mountains.  All that dry hot air circling up towards the mountains from Nebraska, even the colorado plains themselves.  When it hits that light cold air high up there at 5-6,000 feet, you might catch a glimpse of a great gray wave coming your way so quickly that you're better off just finding a good soft place to sit under a well limbed tree and ride it out.  Sometimes a clap of thunder rocks on through the valleys and shakes off the spider webs, so to speak.  There's no better place to take your quick breath than right down at the Ranger Station at Chautauqua Park, a great little place, so safe, full of all the trail information you need.  From its windows you can look out onto the great Mesa Meadow where, just now at the moment, Bunkledon is making his way up the most rigorous, steep climb of all the trails, Flagstaff.  That trail weaves in and out of many many a creek, all of them switching patterns, running their banks, doing what creeks do best, finding their way downhill in the best way possible.

Biggalow's up there, our bear totem, our real bear...what is he, exactly? Would you follow such a bear if you saw him up there, stalking the wild slowly, lolligagging, sure, but big.  Wouldn't want to see old Biggalow standing up, that's for sure.  Yet maybe he is the guide to something else, some kind of secret guide, out there as a sign for your very future.  Bears are wisdom, bears are... the symbol of mother.  If you brought your binoculars, well, even then you wouldn't see Inuna and Josh, way up there, up near Ute Trail, they found that slender crease making its way into an open cave that very few, including the ancients, ever entered.  Inuna's ancestors knew of the cave made of gold, and they kept it secret for any number of reasons.  They believed in the great sun god, and here was a place of sun inside the mountain! Here is where a secret sun dance might be delivered.  Here is where allegedly both man and bear might stand and dance to the appreciation of all the life surrounding.  It was sacred, and best to keep it out of the hands of strangers who might try to dig out every last ounce.  Follow a particular creek here or there – on this side of the mountain they all come together sooner or later – down to Bear Canyon, and there was the outpost where Hannah that very morning brought a batch of her favorite potato soup and kept it warm on a small little burner, adding a pinch of parsely here and there, or a drop of milk to keep it fresh and tender. It smelled like bacon around her little shack and the workers knew it.  Diver and his bunch of turtles were smelling out the rippling banks for the flecks that everybody else got so excited about.  There were worse things to do with your day if you were a turtle, let me tell you.  The sun was at high noon blazing clarity through the surface of the creek, so that if you were the sapsucker flitting about directly above this scene, sure enough, you would see 42 turtles tracing around the rocks of the creek bed below and you might just chirp out if that was your kind of thing.

Mesa Trail ch. 27
Draft 2

"Bear lifted me up so I could see all the earth. He said I may jump high among the cliffs, and live forever." (Crow)











Now, any creature out there in those mountains knew Biggalow, and also knew he was no average bear.  Biggalow was a notorious scooter of moss.  He might be found on any given day right out in the open under maybe a ponderosa or two scooting with this snout across the moss that had laid over fallen wood or even the canopy floor.  Some bears, all the creatures knew, didn't mind a little funky sun dance here and there -- they had all seen that, and certainly kept their distance.  You might all of a sudden stumble upon an opening in the high timber where, just at the right time at high noon, with all that sun burning right down on the rocky patch, a clan of bears would gather together, seemingly nod in unison like they were in a band or something, then stand and reach up to the sky while shaking those massive hips.  This was something for the chipmunks to behold, believe me, because, let's face it, nobody usually gets quite this close to bears.  Sure, the chimpmunks always thought (always taught, too!), those bears looked pretty casual just going after brambleberries hooked onto those rocks and such, but if they turned on you, they were way faster than you ever thought.  And they had long tongues, so if you were a chipmunk in a real pinch, like stuck just under a boulder or in a crease, the bear could give a long slippery lick and get you just the same.  Don't even want to think what it would be like if they stomped on you in a chase.  The rest of the woodland creatures had similar views on things: those bears were a confusing bunch, so casual looking (and the best mothers too), but I really wouldn't want to cross paths with one very badly, especially with cub in toe.

Sister mountain lion once raised her paw to reveal her memory.  It was a day when one of Biggalow's old buddies, Chase, was lolligagging in among the brambles and hollowed out pines licking for ants, when she decided, for the first time, to hang out by Chase, asking him a bunch of questions like why ants, when you can get, like berries, or mice, or even the big stuff, like me. She licked her lips, hoping he didn't get the wrong idea.  Chase was willing to reveal that really the problem with bears was that although they could fight anything in the world if they had to, they were a pretty lazy crew and didn't want to have to move around so much with this big black fur coat on all the time, including summer! Sister Mt. Lion felt a newfound confidence and slinkily walked over near Chase only to be growled at as the big bear rose up on two hind legs and dwarfed her by ten feet.  We also like to be alone, didn't you hear that too in our totem? Biggalow was a contrarian in all senses of the word though.  He was the only male bear that ever took care of all the cubs himself.  He was secretly the best bear sparrer of his age group (grandma bear always said so), but the least likely of all to inflict a big growl or a nasty swipe of the claw against anything. He spent many of his days studying the stars and trying to think of ways to help out the forest.  In this way, he always supposed, he maybe was not a contrarian at all, but a throwback to the old magical realm, when the bear was the guide for all wisdom.  He got no more kick out of anything than showing those two footed characters, the humans, a few different things in the woods and ways to get to them.  He had been helping the most recent group of them down by the river carry very light weights on his back, and this 'two legs,' just now walking up the trail, he looked a little out of place.  Maybe he could show him the way high among the cliffs.

Mesa Trail ch. 26
Draft 2

"Long John's eyes burned in his head as he took the chart, but by the fresh look of the paper I knew he was doomed to disappointment. This was not the map we found in Billy Bones's chest, but an accurate copy – complete in all things – names and heights and soundings – with the single exception of the red crosses and the written notes." Stevenson, from Treasure Island









Bunkledon had never thought of himself as a map holder per se – don't get me wrong, he thought – the idea of gold on the front range was not a dream, not really.  Folks from all around the country, heck from around the world, might bring a random pan and pack up here for a weekend excursion.  They might chisel out a nugget or two, usually the size of a pinky nail, and sometimes the banking crew back in town would catch wind of the action.  No, for Bunkledon, there just wasn't any desire to walk up there himself, through the treacherous thickets of woods and big old piles of stones laying around all over out of order.

It was hot out on these hikes.  Even as a kid, growing in the much flatter regions of the midwest, it always felt hot out there in the back waters and marshes where his dad might persuade him to come along on an mid afternoon run.  Despite all this, there it was, a Colorado gold map firmly clasped in his left hand, a gallon jug of water in his right hand.  He had driven as close to the trailhead as he could, up near Bluebell Mesa, parked, then looked up the side of the foothill which was dry grass and the occasional ancient Ponderosa.  Looked hot.  Sky wide open, blue as a robin's egg.  He didn't really have any idea just how long it might take to get all the way up to the caves.  That was where the map said all the good stuff was.  Now, if he could get to that, the source of it, he could wrap up this little fiasco that was called an outpost, get those kids off the side of the hill, off the creek, and get them all back into school for goodness sake.

He was nearly shocked and more than a little dismayed that so many parents and school administrators had allowed for such an operation for so long.  How could this go on?  Bunkledon himself, of course, did not have any children, nor did really ever want any, but if he did, let me tell you, he thought to himself, they wouldn't be spending it out among the trees and rivers! What, precisely, was a kid to learn out here? How to sweat and how to struggle to make do with no cooking utensils. Where was the bathroom, exactly? Bunkledon had old steel toed carpenter boots on, the only pair of boots he owned, and they were so hard that as he walked over every rock it felt like he was skating.  If somebody else was watching from farther up in the woods, say from the overhang off the plank of a cave opening, it would like he was surfing, two arms out to either side, one with a flailing map, another with a jug of spilling water.  There would be the occasional muttering of cuss words at the approach of the famous stepping stones that lined so many of these Boulder trails.  Bunkledon sat down for a minute to spread out his map.  It looked professional enough, he thought, all those rings of perfect lines with the little numbers.  He had X'ed off Bear Canyon Creek. Here is where he would skirt up along Crown Rock Trail to get to Flagstaff summit.  Hot, yes, but no problem.  These legs were made for work, he thought, made for it.

He took a quick sip of water, felt for something to eat in his pockets, but realized there was nothing there.  He curled his lip upwards, no big deal, then re-folded his map so that just the panel for Flagstaff was visible.  He was learning this hiking game quickly he thought.  Down the nearly silent canyon to his left a sap sucker or two begin pounding away at the bark of some hollowed out tree.  What is that, he said outloud to himself.  Behind him he could hear something scamper through the pine forest bed.  Ahead, – and he would not find this out for awhile yet – was Biggalow, our old friend the Bear and Arapaho symbol of wisdom and solitary domain. He might be nosing through a rotted log fallen over the Crown Rock trail seeking ants for a mid-day snack.

Mesa Trail ch. 25
Draft 2

"And in that moment, the moon as bright as could be, Sinbad, with his one brillian eye, looked toward the bountiful sea." – Keeper











"Now there has been only three of us that we know of who have ever walked into this place," said Inuna, now holding a second flashlight and scurrying its shiny beam around walls that continued to expand. "My grandmother used to take me here when I was very very young.  Not even my mother or father knew that I had been here.  To them, it was nothing more than one more tale of the mountains, and they did not have much time for that.  They knew of the things of immediate survival, but grandmother knew that this was the ancient place where the magic begins to stir and, as she would say, pour out of the mountain on certain days. You have to promise that you will not show anybody this place. I am simply here to find something that had been missing now for some time.  That is why I have been sent to the Mesa Trail, to see if I can find the missing piece." Josh walked around the contours of the cave as if the walls were made of chocolate but that he could not touch or taste.  What to do with all of this? The walls were entirely golden. Certain portions of the walls had crumbled and left small piles of fallen gold nuggets, but it looked as if it had been sitting in the same place undisturbed forever. "How come nobody has dug this out?" Josh asked, slipping his index finger over the surface of a pure gold wall.  "Have you seen real underground gold mines," she asked, "they begin digging on the surface and continue to dig in layers that are wide enough for the bulldozers until they continue to chop and level off more and more roadways to a bottom.  They become a pit and the mountain is gone. We have set many a watchman here over the years to do what we can to send diggers off the trail.  There has been only one other person that we know of who has been in here, but they did not claim it, and they did not dig it out.  Instead they took with them a family stone that we had lodged over there," she said, pointing to what looked like nothing more than the rest of the inside of the cave, a deep, dark gold, nearly changing color as the flashlight settled on it.  I brought you here to see if you could help me find it."  Josh looked up to Inuna, "me?"
"Yes," she said, "you are on the Bear Creek site every day. The outpost sees all sorts of things for trade.  You could ask about such a piece without anybody thinking anything." Inuna had dark brown eyes, large as the largest almonds, and they now pleaded with Josh. He was too young to necessarily ask for anything in return, so she offered something before it ever came up.

Mesa Trail ch. 24
Draft 2

Inuna knew that what she had found on one of her digs, Josh along in tow for training, of course, would more than likely change everything.  Because of this she did not tell Hannah at first, but instead, slowly, gradually began to bring some of her findings down to the outpost and sat them out for visitors to handle but always put back.  They had taken the Bluebell up beyond Green Mountain, and continued to climb another thousand feet to the very top of Flagstaff mountain.  Here the road climbing the mountain zig zagged like a giant snake and left some turns completely exposed to the side of the mountain.  Bikers daredevilishly zoomed down the snake of the road as if it were nothing and once in a while, at certain rock overlooks, they could just catch the road at the corner of their eyes.  There was little traffic up this high, only a few places to park, and so as they reached every higher trailhead, it became quieter and quieter until, once they reached the summit at Flagstaff, all there was was the tinkering of the breeze in the trees and, if very lucky, the smallest of creatures like the chipmunks or the occasional high terrain bird flitting in the ragged scrub pines.  This is exactly as the tribes of all years back would have seen, and the tribes before them.  The same scene.  The cold spine of the great sun mountains in the distance.

Josh was not used to this sort of trail walking.  City dwellers get used to sharing the Mesa with many others, many dogs, and pairs of climbers trying to ascend the Flatirons.  This was the real stuff, he thought, and, if he was asked by somebody who got the real truth, a little bit scary.  The phantoms of wild creatures seemed to linger around every narrow bend of side ridges.  Every flap of the wing of a crow was a signal of something coming their way.  "There is one place ahead," Inuna said abruptly, that only my people have known of over the great earth's eons. The scientists have not gotten to it yet." The trail blurred to old rock flow that looked like an avalanche and they came to a break in two enormous stones, seeming cut to two blocks, and they moved slowly around a foot wide clearing behind a cover of rising birch and scrub and walked into what seemed like nothing more than a slight slit in the rock.  This, however, opened to something considerably bigger very quickly and the ceiling of it began to spur off left and right.  Half way in, she handed Josh a flashlight and she herself flicked a light on.  She started her flash across the ground, along soft sand, but then as quickly said "now, watch this" and scanned the walls quickly to Josh's amazement.