Mesa Trail ch. 18
Draft 2

"Unaware that she was alone, Signe dreamed in the haint blue house. A familiar dream, a memory dream. There she was, tugging at Meggie Marie's arm, begging her to get out of the water, to come back to shore, tugging at her as hard as she could." from Keeper











As though directed by the hand of an invisible conductor, after three days the rain had left. Just as quickly as it came to this arid land, it was replaced, as if in an hour's time, to the bright lights and sounds of the birds in the brush scooting in among the newfound moist vittles of the forest.  Hannah's mother had returned from Fort Collins a day ago carefully by road. Father was in data research mode, "what was this event? How was it different from the great flood of '013?' Hannah knew all about saturation points, that the arid earth does not absorb unexpected blasts of 10 inches of precipitation easily, and that the earth cracks and craters and takes out roads if it must.  A mud wall, shaped like a rolling wave off a great lake, had taken the utility shack of the Garner's just down the street.  The slight tragedy of it all had put her explorations in place.  Wishful thinking can get you far but when it is against the possible loss of others or the earth itself, it seems like nothing more than silliness.  She had reached the Royal Arch for a full panorama after school. It takes two hours, up along the Bluebell Trail, past the Flatirons, all the way up to elevation 7,130, and there it stood, the very symbol of permanance against all else, the great arched stone that looked like any of its segments might cave in and fall at any moment, and as you reached its summit, most of the people scooted quickly underneath it, just in case this was the time.  The rocks themselves, the boulders and the outcroppings, didn't seem affected in the least by the great rain, but she noticed many rivulets had formed in and around the smaller rocks, forming little scouring lines under the lips of rocks and that patterns of smaller rocks had spread out over the ground in dried rivers downward.  She looked out over the western horizon where the continental divide stood like an old man, gray headed, sleeping, still, quiet, but quite alive.  To the east, once again, the city, and here, the Arch but a sort of monument, or a doorway between the two worlds of old magic and people going about their modern lives.  She had wondered what might have happened to the old sluice box against the rising volume of the Bear Creak, so she quietly apprehended the Mesa Trail downward to get a better look, expecting shards of old wood, crooked gadgets, littered rocks tumbling down to bury some of their standing ground.  From the perch of an overhanging boulder, maybe three hundred feet up from the creek, the sun had placed itself directly onto the crease of the valley which usually, they found day by day, only received an hour or two a day, when everyone celebrated, took a rest, got a drink.  The sluice box was still there, like a long chute, steady, just barely submerged at its bottom by cool slow moving water.  As the sun rose across the scene, it penetrated that cold cold water at the bottom, and unless she was completely mistaken, it also glimmered like the kind of twinkle you get off of jewels in the right sunlight.  A quick shock overtook her and shot down into her abdomen.  There was nobody else around.  It was silent. A box of supplies stood tilted across the bank, and it looked open.

Mesa Trail ch. 13
Draft 3

Even if Inuna had now known of the these coins and the maps, she knew full well of the story of Zebulon Pike himself who had been sent by President Jefferson to seek the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red Rivers of Louisiana Territory, still owned by Spanish.  She knew that the expedition did not understand the Colorado Mountains as her own ancestors knew it.  Snow-capped mountains, 14,000 feet high, what was up there?  What the native Americans of old called 'Sun Mountain' and the Arapaho called 'Heey-otoyoo,' or Long Mountain, the summit was never reached by Pike and his men.  Two days without food or water, at the small village of Mt. Rosa, slogging through waist-high snow, they finally turned back to the lowlands, enough of the high country, but not without losing some of the men. What had the gold rush come to but a few mining camps scattered around the front range at Denver City, Boulder City, Saint Charles, and the ghost towns of Central City, Black Hawk, Georgetown and Idaho Springs, where now only the ghost of the thousands live in memory and tumbleweed.

And then she began to think as she looked out onto the spiny red rocks up above Bear Canyon Creek -- how permanent, how ancient they were– about the '59'ers of old, of the old Colorado Gold Rush, of the men who had packed up everything they needed and owned, the wagons, the mules, any off-hand equipment they could get their hands on, not anticipating the various regions of what was then considered the Louisiana Purchase, off across the country for the prospect of getting their hands on gold.  There had been a picture she held onto that always reminded her of the 59'ers, of three men in work clothes, beaten and tired, their hats dusty and floppy at the brim, walking around their home-made sluice box with pick axes and shovels in their hands digging away at the sides of the caved-in gulley seeking the veins of gold.  So many would find only pebbles of free gold and that would keep them going for years longer, but they could not get to the sunken veins for they did not have the mining equipment to strip the rocks clear of the precious metals.

Josh was the gold collector of this operation and had walked down from his stool at the top gate of the sluice box.  He showed it to the group of three girls by holding it up, "exactly the same as yesterday, about half a vial." He shook it up and down, keeping his thumb steady on the cap.  Hannah pulled out her charm. The afternoon sun caught it right off and it dazzled there in her fingers, clearly a more significant amount than what Josh held up.  The gold was what kept the operation running.  There was much more to be learned out there in the Flatirons, that was sure, but none of them could forget that it was the finding of the gold that kept them out there at the Oasis and out of school. It had become a great cooperative project and proceeds went to small charities of all kinds.  "What does yours look like Kitie," she said, her eyes shaped like almonds, wise at the corners and thin stark eyebrows and pointed upwards towards a long head of black hair.  Kitie pulled her own coin out of her pocket, rubbed it with her thumb as if to warm it and handed it to Inuna.  The markings were Spanish, that much was clear, but the tone of the coin was virtually yellow, bright as honey, and almost felt soft in the hand.  "Our father has two maps hidden.  They supposedly mark off where our great grandfather had buried all his own findings from up here in the creeks." Inuna, of course, also knew that there was more gold up in these foothills than the traces they collected each day at the box.  How much more, none of them would know for some time to come.    

Mesa Trail ch. 16
Draft 2

"Keeper knew that the pot would sit on the stove top all day, simmering and stewing, and at the last minute, just before she served it, Signe would drop the crabs into a pot of boiling water, one at a time, and then add them to the gumbo. Fresh crabs. Caught in Dogie's net just hours ago. Blue crabs. Tasty crabs." – Appelt, from Keeper









Oh well, Hannah thought, as she eyed up the kitchen as though it were her workspace, not her home.  What had happened on the mountainside was no longer happening for them.  It had rained for three days straight and they were talking about county wide damage, luckily not to the same extent as the 1,000-year rain in '013, but right up there.  She had wanted to be an up and rising chef before she became a gold miner, but it did not come easy to her.  When boiling the fettucine, she was hasty, and after draining it, it became pasty and stuck together like a new form of paper mache.  When she cooked the pork chops, they became like sandals, and tasted similar too.  In salads all the good stuff sunk to the bottom and Josh would dig back through trying to find the pepperoni discs.  It went on and on.  Cooking wasn't like up in the mountains at all where everything came quickly and naturally.  At the Mermaid grocery store, she hastily filled her basket after school with potatoes, ham, bacon and heavy cream for potato soup.  Once the groceries were set on the center island of the kitchen, before you know it Kitie had slunk up into her room never to be seen again and Josh, when it was not raining, outside you go, lurching around the red rocks like Zebulon Pike himself, staking out claims, and fishing the rocks for dinosaur eggs.  She peeled and cut the potatoes into quarter inch cubes before anything else. She held an onion in her had for dicing but thought better of it, and didn't have the time to chop it properly.  She remembered a video of the proper technique for dicing onions and knew that it got cut in half first, but which way to cut, through the stems or the side? The French chef then skinned the onion and placed three quarter cuts along the dome of the half onion before he began his dice.  So easy for them.  So easy to live alone and cook all day and learn all of these techniques.  What about those of us who are trying to simply get a meal on the table, she thought, and cooked in mild resentment.  She cut the ham as slowly as possible, making sure to keep her knuckles exposed to where the knife sunk into the side of the meat and not the tip of her fingers.  What would happen, she thought to herself, if I just left it all here, for them to do.  When she got like this, she always decided to create a contingency plan for herself, to give herself something else to do while she was doing this, the cooking, and it usually worked: 1) first of all the potato soup would for certain become a masterpiece and would receive such acclaim that it might show up on the front page of the food section next week; 2) some day she would own her own little food hut and if she didn't have the patience now, she never would, so cut, and cut well! 3) some day soon the gold would come back and she would claim the treasures and it would never rain again.  As she thought her three things, the recipe had done itself, the cream had been stirred and butter melted, the pepper sprinkled and the ham and potatoes had begun to soften and the kitchen carried the smell of creamy gently spiced potatoes.  She placed a check on the upper left hand page of the Better Boulder Cookbook, this recipe sent in from Jocelyn Hand.  "Well thank you Jocelyn." She placed three piping hot bowls in order on the dinner table and left the rest of the pot covered at the back burner of the stove for mom and dad.  They would be the votes that count and she hovered over the stew for hours.

Mesa Trail ch. 15
Draft 2

"It can start with virtually nothing here where we live.  Where the plateau meets the foothills then turns to upslope, anything is possible. Always keep an eye out for coming weather. Don't wait for the news." Her father had watched the great flood of 2013 very carefully.  To know what might cause over 17 inches of rainfall in eight days was of great worth.  The usual standard annual rainfall for the area was about 17 inches.  Much of the terrain here was semi-arid, she remembered that term because she didn't think it was possible. The first time she visited Boulder she arrived from Denver not from the east and didn't see what the dray flats of the near border looked like.  There was little life out there in the scrub and dry soil.  Cattle grazing on wisps of grass, oil rigs dipping down into the flatmud lazily and wind that might penetrate right through the skin if not covered.  She watched the horizon every day in the mountains and spoke like a meterologist, saying 'inversion' and low pressures and high latitudes.  She kept it to herself, mostly, but she had always been tempted to talk sun spots, her father's specialty, and what brought him to the Atmospheric Research Center, which she could just now see a small portion of the building off on Mesa Drive.  "When the corona of the sun pulses or does not pulse, it affects everything on earth.  The Little Ice Age was a period of little known activity in the Corona and the earth got colder." Her back chilled to a downdrafting wind that scooted along the Flatirons and sunk through the creases of the rocks. Sometimes temperature might drop 15-20 degrees in a matter of hours.  But rarely rarely in the morning. How could she have known that it would rain for three days straight, that the creeks would swell from a leisurely 50 cubic feet per minute up into the hundreds? The sluice box crossed her mind only briefly.  The great flood years earlier brought damage and destruction throughout Boulder.  A wall of mud at one point, during the worst day, 9 inches in 24 hours, came rushing right down off of Flagstaff Mountain onto the steps of the Pearl Street Walkway.  Hotels evacuated customers.  Roads disintegrated and cars fell.  No, this had only been a dream up until this morning.  Who might have guessed that a group of fifteen year olds might have sustained a mining operation anyway...? The rain came and it came hard.  The turtle, Diver, found his rock on high ground at the bottom of the mountain and pulled his head inside his shell.  Biggalow holed up in the cave alongside Dinosaur Mountain. Inuna wandered from house to house to help and Hannah stayed home to weather the storm.

Mesa Trail ch. 14
Draft 2

"It's hard to say, but as the night wore on, more and more and more would gather through the hours. A conflagration, a congregation, a jubilation of stingrays! Come to lay their eggs in the light of July's blue moon. Mermaid's purses." – Appelt, From Keeper









The morning of the day that would become to be known as 'Mother Lode Day' from that point forward, Hannah had packed her back pack with her art supplies and took the same route along Mesa Trail to Bear Creek.  Full circle now, the trail had become so familiar to her since that first night, alone, no light, when every little scruffle of the underbrush must have been a rattler, every black boulder a bear in waiting, and every clump of leaves left in the limbs a mountain lion ready to pounce.

This time there was easy conversation with the chipmunks who would scuttle across the face of the landborn boulders and became little silhouttes against the faint light of the rising sun in front of them.  The sapsuckers stirred in ritual, flitting about, waking up and so she asked them what it was they might wish for today although she knew the answer.  Biggalow would no doubt already be there waiting at the site and Diver, bless him, what courage, what endurance, would swim back upstream because of course she did not want to miss a single thing. That was how these things went, Hannah, remarked to herself, as she pulled out her sketch pad and black pen.  There was a sense of things to come.  The sluice box was gathering in production.  They were getting good at filtering through the granules.  They all felt for weeks that anyday it could come, the great rushing river of gold and they would be there, hands and pans and buckets ready to haul. She could see the face of the teller at the bank when they brought it all and all the assistants in complete disbelief when they said they had a list of places all the proceeds would go: the school absolutely needed new cafeteria chairs and at least two tables; Ms. Sanders, the Queen of Pearl Street, had lost a wheel last week on her motorized bag cart...well, not for long. Trail funding, rust on the kiddie pool at the city park, native american research center and, quietly, Hannah held out the prospect for a down payment on what had now become her kid-run cafe, not bistro, Element 79.  She sat along the bank of Bear Canyon and quickly sketched out the valley below in black pen, not thinking much for detail.  Great swipes of the pen became the swirls of the creek and those lines connected with the hillocks east where the research center sat now under warming sun which she then connected to the sky and the piney tops of the trees, her hand never raising up once, but connected it all in one continuous flow and pattern.  As she began to color the creek gold, she looked behind at the towering mountains that created a kind of hood and could hear the beginning soft trickle of rain drops slap off the canopy of the trees.

Mesa Trail ch. 13
Draft 2

Later that day, Hannah had assembled all of the ingredients for her next recipe on the kitchen table and couldn't seem to get the image of the turtle that Inuna released into the Bear Canyon Creek out of her mind.  What an expedition for any creature, to be picked out of one familiar place, walked up the side of an unknown mountain, then released into new waters all alone, left to navigate little obstacles along the way.  The turtle, who she was calling Diver, after the fact that it seemed to dive right from the hands of Inuna when she placed it at the swiftly moving shoreline, might now have stopped somewhere along the way in some remote quiet area of the forest or had he bounced along the rocks gulping where he needed all to the bottom of the mountain at the same resevoir where he was found in the first place.  She had already designated Kitie and Josh for their dinner time posts – Josh already skinning the red potatoes and carefully mandolining them into thin slices, add a pinch of salt and olive oil, "we will then bake them until crisp then splash with pesto." Hannah was always a little bit careful not to be too commanding when cooking, but she also knew that no direction meant no food. "Pesto," Josh had garbled back, "isn't that the green slimy stuff?"

"Trust me, it will be added to the potatoes. They are dull otherwise. Besides, its fun."  She rolled a couple of potatoes in her hand under running water. The sun had already ducked out of sight below the red rocks outside. Before Hannah had decided to be a gold miner and treasure hunter in the foothills of Rockies, she had apprenticed, somewhat unknowingly, in an up and coming bistro off the Wharf in Seattle, where dad was getting his final degree in environmental sciences and mom was teaching night courses at Seattle Tech.  The strange and earthy smells of the Luminous Lemon Bistro was run by a fifty-five year old woman who had finally given up her job as a stay at home mother to cook all day and let those sweet smells of the northwest finagle the noses along the streets into the Bistro.  It was Hannah's job to go around to the fresh producers of the city and gather ingredients and bring them back to Claire at the Luminous, where they would together talk over the menu.  It was Claire's intention to add lemon to every dish that they offered customers, whether they knew it or not, and hence idea of Luminous, as in bright, tangy, wishful.  The pesto on the potatoes, Hannah thought, could use one last squirt of lemon at the end, but that would come later.  Mom and dad would both be working well into the night tonight.  Hannah had a written plan.  Clean the house, cook, clean the house again, homework, plan out tomorrow's mining operation and consider, as she did those things, the menu for the next night.  In a flash she could see her own restaurant someday located right down the street from their house at Settler's Park. It would be called Element 79, and her own luminous contribution – like Claire's lemons – would be flecks of gold in the plates and the glasses.  She could only hope nobody would steal all the dinnerware.  "Kitie, you are in charge of the plates and silverware tonight.  Be careful with them, we don't have any to spare." Somewhere out there under the wild blue sky Diver curled up under the protection of a fallen aspen limb overhanging the bank of the creek, his green shell glittering with gold flakes.

Mesa Trail ch. 12
Draft 3

What would become known as the Mesa Trail Oasis started as a day trip. Hannah and Inuna received a day pass from school for independent study. The day pass turned to class trip. Class trip turned into the class itself, what Mrs. Diaz decided to call simply Social Studies. Who hadn't heard of the class by now? You didn't even have to meet inside a classroom, but outside the school, and the twenty-some students walked up the Chautauqua to Bear Canyon Creek where Hannah and Inuna had fully running, small outfit, sluice box gold mining operation! Who had ever heard of such a thing? Some teachers no doubt wondered about the academic rigor of the trips, but more than not they began to implement projects for their own classes and before you knew it there were multiple classes at a time joining in at the mountain sight as a collaborative studies project.  They had built a small shack for protection from the sun and very occasional rain. Besides the shack, three picnic benches where students sat down with their notebooks and pulled geography and natural history books about the Flatirons out of their backpacks.  Students were sometimes asked to teach the classes themselves.

Today was the day for a history lesson, Inuna decided. Inuna was of Arapaho descent, one of the last remaining of her tribe who lived here in the city and attended traditional high school. Without Inuna, there never could have been the Oasis because she was the one knew most about what it meant to spend your days out in the mountains, that the mountain is a classroom, and the lessons need only observation and reflection, some sense for history and ancestors, some sense for the future and preservation.  Inuna had already laid claim to her title as Flatiron Ambassador and would be found any moment helping along her mighty band of turtles at the end of the sluice box or initiating short hikes up into the rock history of the world.

"It is very difficult to show the world anything of our great ways if you are stuck behind walls." Inuna was the kindest person, they all agreed, on earth, but she was fierce in her opinions of the ancestral mountains.  She took long treks into the foothills in a black button up suit and a small black hat.  She brought no water or food but looked to the woods around her for sustenance.  It came naturally to her.  She would return to classes on monday morning and as the other childrens' attention spans dashed and dived in three thousand directions and wanted nothing more than to get out of school to play more video games in their basements, Inuna came to class to describe her expeditions up on Ute Trail at the top of the mountians. "The continental divide was very frosty yesterday morning.  Clouds of the ancestors were sleeping in among the giants of the great valleys."

At the mine site, Inuna seemed to always know immediately what to do in and around the creek.  Her people had watched the miners of old hastily reach these same heights and scratch and pick and even at times dynamite rock to crack it open for the glittery rocks.  Her people also respected stones and so could partially understand the cravings and decorative aspects of the great stones.  Before they reached the trailhead, near the city, where the Bear Creek had twisted in with Boulder Creek, she would find her 'friends' the turtles and bring them along for the day's dig.  "Our people were born by the turtle along with Man as the legacy goes." She was sitting now at the end of the picnic bench. Hannah could over hear her from the Oasis shack where she was preparing lunch for the three class. Inuna read from a small handwritten book, "our world had become water and Man had need to find land, so he sent Grebes, waterfowl, Beavers to dive down to the bottom of the great ocean for land.  So many attempts did not work.  Finally it was the duck and the turtle who successfully found the patches of earth and they brought it back up into the sky where Man dried it and cast it out into the wind of the four directions." Anybody listening wondered where such a soul came from. To be thinking these thoughts? She picked up the turtle and let it make its way onto the shallow shoreline as it made its slow way into the water.

The sluice box was now a fully functioning machine.  Mr. Pruitt had come up weeks before and tightened or replaced the hinges and re-attached some boards.  Inuna walked over to Josh and Kitie, who had permission to come along on the class project. "Look at this," Josh said, as he lifted up the gate board temporarily, then redirected the chute. Water began rush into the neck and he filled the first stage quickly with fresh very cold water. Unless their eyes completely deceived them, there was floating peppery flakes of glittery gold settling right down to the bottom. Josh stuck his finger along the side of the chute and pushed a flake with his finger and brought up along the side of the board.  He smiled. Inuna smiled and her eyes twinkled.  "Have you ever heard of the Ojibwe tribe?" Josh nodded that he had heard the word before anyway.  "The women of the tribe had many many responsibilities and duties in their societies.  "At the end of winter, women would leave their camp for a place called sugarbush village in order to make maple sugar.  They were in charge of collecting sap in the birchbark troughs and boiling it down to sugar. From their they would pour the syrup into carved wooden molds or birchbark cones. By summer, they would dissolve these in water for cool, sweet drinks or mixed with medicines for children. It was known that there would be a great celebration and feast for the first fruits of summer.  Maybe we should have our celebration for the first cups of gold!"

Hannah had by then walked over to the gate box and overheard some of the story.  The rush of the creek behind them could just about lull any of the workers to sleep.  The sun had coated the entirety of the camp by now and a very light breeze barely flicked at the stiff ponderosa pine limbs.  Hannah had been thinking about turning the shack into something more like a eatery for a few days now.  This seemed like a great invite to create a menu. "Like burgers and fries," Josh yelled out, now off of his step ladder and back down onto dry land.  Kitie was standing mid stream down in the middle section of the sluice box, noticeably cold, and walked up them with her arms split over her shoulders for warmth.  "What about Great Grandpa's gold? Isn't that up here also?" Kitie couldn't see as much as Josh or Hannah the great purpose of finding such little flakes, could take forever.  "I mean, didn't he hide like big boxes up in these trails somewhere?"  Inuna had never heard of this story, but knew of many such miners from generations past staking out claims as the Arapaho went about their business in these mountains.  Kitie was younger than Hannah but easily four inches taller.  She slender, like their mother, and not built very well for standing in cold water.  The sun beat down on her long neck.  The kids from her class were a little upset that they too didn't get permission to come to the Oasis for 'Social Studies.' She would prefer to find the real stuff.

Mesa Trail ch. 11
Draft 2

"Possession of a fallen star would raise his stature in the gull community. As far as he knew, none of the other gulls on this strip of beach had an object as lovely as this one." – Appelt, from Keeper










Nobody ever said it would be easy for a black bear.. well..to be a black bear up in the Boulder trails, more importantly a bear who wanted to help the kids mine for gold.  Biggalow (Biggalow was the name that Josh and Kitie came up with because, let's face it, this young fellow was in fact big and low), knew from the get go that yes, his size and fierce demeanor (sometimes you just gotta be tough if you'd like to chase down the mouse!) might send some of the mining party running down the thickets of Chokecherry and Shrubby Cinquefoil lining trails to either side.  He never wanted this, never, never.  Biggalow was sensitive to the ways of these skinny two-leggers, and would sometimes even self-consciously ease his way down from the hibernation cave sight, sort of sideways, with his nose bobbing gently up toward the sky so that anybody he might encounter would see his profile at such an angle that looked like a smile not snarl.  Sometimes he'd powder his head with soft dandelion dust to lighten the mood a little bit.  Now, how Hannah and her project leaders came to the point where they somehow felt comfortable slapping a horse sack over the back of Biggalow in order to use his great strength and ability to carry loads up the hills, was something very few would ever want to talk about.  There had to have been a moment where things were awkward, where an eye to eye meeting would have resulted in some kind of bear paw shake – the bear, thankfully, did not digest the kid, and the kid, for her own, did not try to trap or hunt the bear.  There must have been a man / beaste detente and then somebody, some brave soul, would then have to have been quite assuming (pushing the envelope really, but that what kids are good at), and placed a pack over the haunches of Biggalow's massive furry back.

Did they then use honey as bribery to indicate direction to walk with the haul? Whatever the process, it had been working, and at any given day, you might approach the great mining project and see Williamson sapsucker flitting about the ponderosa canopy above singing very specific songs for the entertainment of the workers, and also a wild bear willingly walking up and down, fearlessly of course, the bottom of the chute back upwards, laying down the packs by simply bending over, much like a camel might, as the rock pack slid slowly down the stubby neck and onto the ground.  "You are a good man Biggalow, despite all that is said about you," Josh might say, who was now a supervisor -- and quite stern mind you for a 10 year old. There was really only one way that this might continue on as it was...no parents?  Hannah had already trained Biggalow for a parent sighting in which case, he was to quickly release the rocks in the pack to the ground, then quickly duck back behind the Ponderosa stand and take a nap so that he wouldn't be tempted to move around and make noise.  It was all figured out. The sluice box had taken in upwards of three thousand dollars in the first few days.  They had received school permission.  The creatures of the region were contributing.  Something, Hannah knew, had to give, but what?

Mesa Trail ch. 10
Draft 2

How many know that gold's atomic number is 79? That it is thought to have been produced in a supernova nucleosynthesis?  Nuclei whose this? That it formed as a result of the collision of neutron stars and that because at this time of the heavy bombardment 4 billion years ago of the earth's surface by so many asteroids that this particular type of glittery dust boiled down into the earth crust's planetory core then hardened to form a mantle? As the miners of old, the Gold Rushers at Pike's Peak, or the Rushers out to the west coast at San Fransisco, saw that a nugget dug up not only looked precious but knew other things as well: the mind liked the look and feel of the stuff...it looked better than other metals, more pure, and was workable into other objects.  They knew that other civilizations had used this as a base of trade, that the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Romans, so many others, might spend entire decades and centuries scouring the earth for the settlement of veins of the pretty glittery rocks.  Pirates sailed the seven seas so to capture the great locked boxes full of the bullion and that bankers back east would always pay out raw cash in its stead.  Water that gathered at the top of the Flatiron mountains in narrow creases turned to creeks and gravity swished and swashed away the granite and dolomite for so many eons that it might expose the cosmic dust turned atomic number 79 so that flakes might drag down to the bottom of the gulleys, some settling more, but some, some, if the miner was lucky, could be trapped inside a wooden contraption and filtered through a screen and onto a pan for examination. Hannah's great grandfather might have indeed bitten the flakes to see if it was the real stuff or quartz of some other element.  He might collect it in a vial and watch it fill up to the cap until he knew that when full it was worth to him hundreds and hundreds. Great grandfather already had plenty for himself.  With the help of his trusty mule Lucy, he scampered around the foothills looking for landmarks to remember his buried treasures by.  These notes were scrawled in cryptic language, barely legible, with coordinates like the third fur tree off the south fork of the Castle Rock Creek.  Look for the twisted pine at the horizon of the old Ute. His own dogs sniffed and snorted, dancing around these burial sights as though treasure hunters themselves.  Whoever got their hands on these maps would someday find herself in possession of a mountain treasure!

Mesa Trail ch. 9
Draft 3

"Just ahead of The Scamper, the falling tide streamed out of the Cut and into the gulf, rushing toward the sandbar. There the stingrays hovered on the strong currents. How many were there? Hundreds? Thousands?" – Appelt, from Keeper











Right next door to Bear Canyon Creek valley lay Skunk Canyon, an old rockfall which trailed all the way down to the base of the Chautauqua.  Was it ancient glaciation that left those enormous, smoothed-over boulders laying in the rising meadow grass like enormous eggs in among the ponderosa pines?  Those trunks rose up in craggly limbs, so dry, shaped like the arid climate itself, and seemed to sprout out of rocks ready to fight for their sunshine.

Up and down this valley was where the Williamson Sapsuckers flitted about the hard birch bark in search of grubs and sap.  Not just one, not just two, but for this day, this time around, how many, how many holes could be counted?  None of the city traffic could be heard here.  There were no hikers because there were no trails back and forth, just raw outright woods and rocks, so that every time their irredescent black faces with striped white eyes sucked for sap, the click to the wood was amplified and bounced around the valley like a mis-timed drum session.  They were not thinking of their music.  They had sunshine on their black bodies and were warm, and the air was clean, and field was bright green.  There was sap and bugs in there some where, just let me at it! Their little heads twitched in excitement, then the little feet scampered to the next hole, clickity click, and then, as if savoring the find, you might see a grub lay at the tip of the beak, held there for a moment before the last lightening quick gulp and another flit of the wings in satisfaction. The sapsucker would fly off, leaving a series of flute holes in its tree.

The past few sunrises brought to the attention of the sapsuckers far more than the temptations that lay within the birches.  Up over the crest of Skunk Canyon, looking over onto the next crease in the mountain, activity of the upright two-legs had increased.  There used to be nothing there more than the constant buzzing of the creek. To the sapsuckers this meant the place of the bird baths which  formed at the edges of stones. It meant the easiest of drinks, or the occasional two-leg quietly walking past, over the small rock trail planted in the creek, then out of sight again.  Yet lately small structures had been built, the two-legs stayed all day in and around the same place, often pointing at the creek itself.  Strange smells came rising up over the ridge of their homeland valley and wafted in among the birch limbs. The sapsucker might raise its little beak quickly to taste the air, then dive right back into breakfast or lunch.  Today they gathered at the top of the rockfall to consider a new location.  Many of the white trees had already been picked clean.  There was a secret language among the sapsuckers, not just sounds, but the quickening of their actions, the beak peck, the wing flit, that was code for let's wait and see. They rose up to the top tier of the Ponderosa and sat still momentarily to watch the new camp at Bear Canyon Creek.

Mesa Trail ch. 8
Draft 3

"At the sound of his name, BD thumped his tail against the bottom of the boat. BD, short for Best Dog. He felt Keeper rub the soft fur behind his ears. In return, he gave her a slurpy kiss." – Keeper


What Hannah may or may not have found in that sluice box that night, just as the sun was rising up over the eastern horizon, still remains to be known for sure because Hannah didn't know if it was gold just yet.  Only old Nevada could have known the full truth, but then again, as we said before, the Husky is one of the world's great companions. The Husky, as far as we know anyway, keeps her secrets, she doesn't chat much in among dog groups, or make a lot of noise upon exciting circumstances.

The Husky is more than happy to share its excitement with big licks and a lot of uncontrollable dashing off into the dark, seeking even more friends from the wild backcountry, but you'll never ever find her taking snapshots, nope, secrets are kept with a good companion like that. Hannah called out to Nevada.  "What do you think about us doing some mining this summer?" She felt the contours of her charm once again. It was there still, solid as ever, and maybe, just maybe, throbbed a little as Hannah started to use that planning mind of hers, full speed. Nevada swung her tail but this time didn't yelp.

She had options. It doesn't take long for all of the components of a great class project to take shape in one's mind! The next day was a school day, so Hannah listed them as fast as she could out loud, as though pleading her case to the first best school administrator that would listen, "don't forget you have the red rocks to start, I mean they look like dinosaurs, and so they are fun to learn about how they erupted up through the earth's crust. Kids of every age love dinosaurs.  Imagine the exercise every day and for a good reason.  Mesa Trail is not dangerous at all and we could hike to Bear Canyon Creek in no time flat.  The parents would love their kids getting outside every day under the sun.  We could learn about the vegetation, how a desert lives up in these mountains, I mean this is really fascinating." Mr. Macintyre would look at Hannah at this first lobbying effort with eyes that were not totally shocked; in fact, these were the very same reasons he himself chose to teach here in the Boulder schools. If it were up to Mr. Macintyre, how's about skipping the standard classroom stuff altogether, he would live up at Flagstaff House, way up on top, and work from the fine dining room table overlooking vast sweep of mountains.  "Hannah, I totally get it," he would say later, not fully understanding why today the revelation. I grew up in Fort Collins, too, like your dad. My parents could barely keep me out of my  tree house. I used to build them in neighbor's backyards.  That was what I was going to do for a living. I spent a summer traveling the country on a crew of treehousers. If you ever come up with a plan to get us out, let me in on it."

This was why Hannah started here, with Mr. Macintyre, she knew there was a chance.  They would forever applaud her for being the voice of "out of class, into the world," or some such catchphrase that she would make up later. Mr. Macintrye looked back at her, "but," he said, " even here in Boulder Colorado, nature capital of the world, it might be a tough sell I'm afraid."
 
"And there is gold." Hannah could no longer hide her secret.  Who wasn't interested in gold? The Gold Rush of Bear Canyon Creek, founded by the sophomore class of Boulder High.  All proceeds go to school resources, feeding the hungry...she could go on and on.  It was at the that moment that Mr. Macintyre's eyes lit up like two Spanish medallions that it all began.  They would have to concoct such a variety of permission slips and educational underpinnings that the paperwork would challenge even the mightiest of local law firms. Once the gold was found, and Hannah already knew it was there, whose claim was it, exactly? The mountains told the story for them, the greatest of storytellers.
Along the way, with a little help of Nevada's peculiarly sensitive nose, they might just find a box or two dug into the ground, holding those treasures great grandfather hid along these trails all those years ago.

Mesa Trail ch. 7
Draft 3

"I got bodily into the apple barrel, and found there was scarce an apple left; but sitting down there in the dark, what with the sound of the waters and the rocking movement of the ship, I had either fallen asleep or was on the point of doing so when a heavy man sat down with rather a clash close by." – Stevenson, from Treasure Island


Some of the greatest adventures begin with fear or the poorest luck imaginable.  Imagine Jim Hawkins of Treasure Island having to put up with the old Sea Dog at the Admiral Benbow for all of those months. Sea Dog's demands, his serious instructions to Jim and his mother, menacing the place until Black Dog came along, that old and scary blind man. Long John Silver, who was he? Friend or foe? How could Jim know? Too young to understand the intricacies of greed or pressure.  All of them aboard the Hispaniola ship on its way to the Treasure Island itself where secrets and treachery began to rule the progress of the voyage.  Treasures have that way about them -- they loom there in the imagination, maybe not so much as something that can be used practically, but that are desired and that can be found. Can be found. That is the very motivation for the sailing of the seas, for the swashbuckling, for the finding of the 'X' s that mark the spots along the great trails of a wild unknown hidden beach.

That night it was Nevada that sparked the partnership for such an adventure. With a companion, the search was shared and the adventure confirmed, one more friend among the darkness, no secrets to tell, yet.  If the Mesa Trail could be conquered at night, what else could stop them?  As Hannah and Nevada reached Bear Canyon, the wind had picked up and blew straight through the thick jack pines above. If the trail was followed below them along the side of the 6500 foot high mountain, the adventurer would be able to see the continental divide, snow capped and out of reach, a bit like a hazy dream rising like a halo. Nevada didn't bark at the sounds slicing through the woods. Huskies were a lot of things but barker not one of them. Need a sled to be pulled? Find yourself a Husky. Need a loyal companion? Find yourself a Husky. Need yourself a fellow adventurer? Find yourself a Husky. "Good girl Nevada," said Hannah as she would quickly return from the fringes of the woods sniffing out any backcountry creatures and wag her tail at the innocent findings.   Contingency plans be darned. Who needs them when you've got a friend on the trail. Nevada shook her fluffy curled tail and most certainly was thinking the very same thing.

There it was, Bear Creek, the very one that was described, Hannah believed, in her great grandfather's old descriptions that were passed down by word of mouth entirely and that had been sniffed out by own two faithful dogs.  It looked like nothing more than a hidden trickle far above, but as it reached the flatter ground at the curve that then led down into the foothills, it too rushed, then deadened for a short stretch to a pool where the old sluice box sat like some kind of ancient jutting arm in a big wooden sleeve. Nevada had already sniffed her way right up to the edge of the rushing creek.  Husky's didn't particularly like water either, but who would blame them, especially at night, when the creek is loud and you can't see through it.

Hannah didn't know a good wood structure from one falling apart at the seams, but she quickly took her shoes off and waded into what she hoped to be shallow water.  If she could have screamed and gotten away with it, she would have.  She was back to contingency plans. Icicles began to form in her veins and her skin crawled with prickly goosebumps. Night water was colder than she thought it would be.  Nevada seemed to hold her paws to her eyes in disbelief. She edged her nose in toward the shallow bank. "Don't come in here Nevada. You might turn into a Huskysicle." Nevada belted out a slow whine, swiped her curled tail up toward the sky and stood still, watching.  She examined the top end of the box where a chute had been left open and a box with an old screen looked still something in tact.  There full stretches of the runners had pulled apart from the base of the sluice, but otherwise it was not falling over -- the legs still as sturdy as ever, dug into the stream who knows how deep.  "If they built it here then, that means there was a reason, Nevada," she said out loud, examing the flexibility of the rusted hinges.  As she stood there, the sun had now just made its very first upward wink behind them, out beyond the city of Boulder, where the horizon was flat, and it lent a few rays like a flashlight up along the rising of the chute.  Buried deep into the creases, underneath where the sides had come apart from the base, glimmered a short track of the finest of speckles.  "Nevada, don't tell anybody else we found gold here, ok?" she smiled and began to peal away the top layer of old wood. "Roof, roof," said Nevada.  "Shhhhh, be quiet girl," Hannah murmured under her breath.

Mesa Trail ch. 6
Draft 3

"Only sand and palm trees and water. In Iowa, Signe had felt as locked in as the landscape, but not here, not on Oyster Ridge Road, a world onto itself." from Kathi Appelt's Keeper


Hannah was born, she always felt, with a lot of plans built right into her brain.  If 'A' does not happen then it will be 'B.' But Hannah had not only the A's and B's covered, but C's, sometimes all the way down to D's, E's, heck even F's when the time came.

It was at this moment, though, on this deep dark night walking along a secluded semi-arid Alpine trail, so utterly quiet in certain pockets you might as well be underwater, she had already used up her first couple of plans. The first one was the most obvious, but it was too late: turn back when it got spooky out here on the trail 2) wouldn't it be nice to find three friends somewhere about half way along this long trail. 3) How's about just "wake up" from this dream of the fear of the night altogether and find yourself inside a very soft new blanket in bed.

There was no contingency she could come up with for the sound of those footsteps clomping along behind her somewhere back in the woods. Hannah might have had a contingency plan for a moment, like a brief flash of northern lights in her mind, but of course anybody who has ever planned for the unwelcome visitor really just hopes for the best. "I hear you out there," she yelled out loud.  "We also know the sheriff of Boulder County," which was a flat out lie, but one that might work in certain company, and she didn't feel very guilty for it for very long.  Her pace had quickened and her backpack became quite light.  Up ahead, a dark meadow.

Long grass at least head high created an upward moving plain where there stood what looked like a major trailhead sign.  Briefly she could see a flash of a person up along an opposite ridgeline, one that was facing the city below, his head bobbing up and down, likely a night jogger.  She could yell, but wondered if that would help her if what was behind her was nothing more than a heavy chipmunk, wishful thinking.  Her father once said that ninety percent of fear is the fear itself not the thing that is being feared.  She always wondered about the ten percent.  What was that part of it anyway? Before she come to the conclusion of the ten percent or contingency plan F, something rubbed up against the back of her leg and let out the very distinct yelp that only one creature she knew could yelp.

"Nevada! What in the world are you doing here?" Nevada was an adorably adventurous Siberian Husky that also happened to be Hannah's best friend, confidante in all things, fellow house keeper, cooking partner and an all around fishing buddy.  She shone in the dark night like a white knight, virtually glowing, blazing the trail, so to speak, with fluffy swirls of white fur, and a set of eyes so blue, so certain, that last ten percent of fear melted away like warm caramel over a candy apple.

Mesa Trail ch. 5
Draft 3

There it was, thank goodness, that wonderful comforting thing nobody else knew about except for Hannah, right down there at the bottom of her front pocket. She knew to wear her long jeans on hikes – as she found out the very first morning working as a trail hand, that poison ivy was all over the plains and rocks. She felt in her pocket her very very very lucky rock.  The lucky rock was the size of the end of a fifteen year old's thumb.  Sometimes when she had it in her hand, secretly when nobody else could see it, she scratched it with her fingernails. It was the large nugget of gold that her grandfather had given her when she was just a young girl. It was given him by his own father.  She found out the surface was soft enough to leave faint little lines.  Most every night, just before she went to bed, she still pulled her charm out of her pocket, set it onto her night stand and thought of one wish for the next day. She thought of one thing she should have done better for the day.

She had to admit to herself, though, it felt recently like some of the magic was slowly draining from the rock and it began to look like just that, a rock with cuts all over it.  Maybe she had held onto the magic a little too long, she asked herself at night, as she looked over to Kitey and had to wonder what the kids at school might think of Hannah Provo, the magic rock collector.  Usually at that same moment, holding that gold in her hand, and it shining underneath her night lamp, there was something that swept back over her, like a dream, an image of her great grandfather who she had never seen in person, only in pictures, that began to fill her mind and made her sleepy.  Without the magic of the rock, she came to understand, there was only the rock. The story of who gave it to her only a man who lived a strange but sometimes sad life.

It was her grandfather's father who had fished this out of the front range Rockies at the time of the famous Pike's Peak rush.  He had, as the family story goes, lived in the mountains for six years, rarely showing his face.  He became friendly with the local Arapaho Native Americans and asked for friendly permission among the tribespeople to bring his own hand-made equipment into the small rushing streams that littered the Flatirons.  "Your great grandfather didn't really have an official claim. I will tell you, he sure loved to pan, there was no doubt about that, but nobody knew that he was finding his veins of the good stuff up here because he never brought it into town.  As he would find his gold, there was no where for him to put it.  He would wrap up his findings in thin cloth, to let it breath as he would say it, then bury his findings in small wooden boxes." It was the next part that made woke Hannah at night with wild dreams.  It was the part that dragged her out on the trail this very night, like a lure, like a string and hook.  He made a list of directions to locate each of these boxes but he had always feared this list would get into the wrong hands, so he burned them. But not before he showed your grandfather the whereabouts of each one.  He also had two very special friends who lived with him, two Malamute dogs who would go panning with him everyday to keep watch.  It is said that it was the sensitive noses of Bernie and Jessie that were the living will and testament of all his hidden gold.  Whoever could find the dogs might be able to find the buried boxes." He handed Hannah the gold. "This will be your lucky rock, and you can remember that it was those two dogs that found it for you -- they helped me locate this particular box." Hannah had asked her grandfather on the spot how much was in the box and whatever happened to those dogs. She could barely remember the words, so young, so taken by the nugget. "I will tell you that someday you will find out because it will be yours. It will be up to you to find it."

Hannah quickly awoke from the brief day dream of the past and looked up to see that she was approaching the branch of the trail that lead to the caves. The trail rose directly up the side of the mountain and faded into an indescribably black umbrella of forest canopy.  She stayed on the Mesa Trail and then picked up the sound of the soft thumping of footsteps behind her closing in.

Mesa Trail ch. 4
Draft 3

The first night Hannah walked to Bear Creek alone it was midnight and the moon had shriveled under the western horizon to little more than a faint yellow glow behind the Indian Peaks.  The parts of the trail that her mini flashlight picked up were so small she thought that virtually everything was alive and jumping out her -- every fallen limb was most certainly a rattler, every boulder laying out there in the woods rising upward into the deeper unknowable black forest was a soon-to-be hibernating black bear who was not much in the mood for sleeping or for two two-laggers tramping around in the middle of the night on their turf.
Every tuft of fallen leaves stuck in the elbows of the limbs of the jack pines must have been mountain lions.

And yet it was all so silent except the squeaky footsteps made by the stiff soles of her new hiking boots.  "Wrong shoes," she said to herself outloud, shook her head, and purposefully continued the conversation with herself. The advice she had heard anyway was that when you are out in the woods alone you should wear a cowbell, which she did not have, or you should make noise so not startle anything bigger and meaner than her, which was everything except for the crickets exercising their legs underneath the dry brush along the trailside.

Sure she had made this route what seemed like a hundred times in order to help her mom on the trail in the mornings after Kitie and Josh had breakfast, but these long canyons, all crushed rock, rose up into dark creases and it felt like now, in the dark, there was nothing there but trouble.  "What am I doing, what am I doing, what am I doing?" she said out loud, feeling so nearly electric that her whole body through buzzed and tingled.

There had been a point, about halfway to bear creek, where she thought she could make out the famous old stone house nestled in among the fir trees, that she realized that it would be just as bad now turning around to head back home but in that case nothing would get accomplished.  Inside her back pack was a new rock filter screen, two small buckets, a small foldable shovel and little pic.  Over the last few weeks she had begun to assemble her sluicing kit from left over tools laid in the garage from the trail crew.  From all those mornings out on the trail under the sun she had overheard all she needed to know: first and most importantly, there was gold still trickling down that creek, they all knew it.  She knew how to handle rocks and had some understanding how the old sluice box that sat at the shore line of bear creeek might work.  She knew it would take patience.  She knew what she would do with the gold if she found it...

Up until this point in her life, let's face it, the courage to stake out in the night to do such a thing was beyond her, but here she was, and a surge of adrenalin rushed through her, her ears tuned like bat radar.  She might not have admitted or understood the second part, but let's face it, t's hard to do such things without a little help from the prospect of coming fame. She could see herself on postcards down at the Ranger Cottage smiling for the camera with a gold nuggest the size of cupcakes in her hand. "Gold mining extraordinaire Hannah Provo finds forgotten claim and strikes it rich!" What would the kids at school say about her then?  She bucked her pack up off her back to loosen the straps.  At the very instant that she had for even the briefest moment forgotten about the blackout that surrounded her, this time, she was sure, she heard the footsteps of some thing much more substantial than a cricket behind her coming up from the trail, thumpity thump thump, thumpity thump thump.

Mesa Trail ch. 3
Draft 3

"What makes a ten-year old girl think she can go out in a boat alone, at night, with only her dog for a sailing mate? Well...muscles. Exactly!"
–Kathi Appelt, from Keeper


How many know that gold's atomic number is 79? That it is thought to have been produced in a supernova nucleosynthesis?  Nuclea-whose this? That it formed as a result of the collision of neutron stars and that because at this time of the heavy bombardment 4 billion years ago of the earth's surface by so many asteroids that this particular type of glittery dust boiled deep down into the earth's crust's planetary core then hardened to form a mantle? Those miners of old, the Gold Rushers at Pike's Peak, or the Rushers out to the west coast at San Fransisco, saw that a nugget dug up not only looked precious but knew other things as well: the mind liked the look and feel of this stuff! ... it looked better than other metals, that was for sure, more pure, and was workable into other objects.  They knew that other civilizations had used this as a base of trade, that the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Romans, so many others, might spend entire decades and centuries scouring the earth for the settlement of veins of the pretty glittery rocks.  Pirates sailed the seven seas so to capture the great locked boxes full of the bullion and that bankers back east would always pay out raw cash in exchange.  Water that gathered at the top of the Flatiron mountains in narrow creases turned to creeks and gravity swished and swashed away the granite and dolomite for so many eons that it might expose the cosmic dust turned 'atomic element number 79' so that flakes might drag down to the bottom of the gulleys, some settling more, but some, some, if the miner was lucky, could be trapped inside a wooden contraption and filtered through a screen and onto a pan for examination. The miner might have indeed bitten the flakes to see if it was the real stuff or quartz of some other element.  He might collect it in a vial and watch it fill up to the cap until he knew that when full it was worth to him a hundred dollars. It looked just like a night in a fancy hotel room with a bottle of his favorite whiskey (yuck!) and good grub.

Mesa Trail ch.2
Draft 3

Did somebody say dinosaurs? Not like the ones you see in the movies.  No no, those are so real that they couldn't be real, not really.  Try instead to picture the real ones now, right now, in your living room, out on the great Front Range thumping about their big horned feet along the dry gulches and crunching  small rocks steaming hungry.  What would that be like? An animal the size of the redstone rocks. The size of a yacht coming at you.  You might want to be invisible while they passed by. Or just settle with your imagination, a much safer bet.

It was no more than a mile as the crow flies from their house near Settler's Park, across that vast Chautauqua Park mountainside Trailhead, just past the last of those three famous Flatiron granite boulders jutting up into the sky like silver tongues, that Hannah's mother had planted herself that morning, earlier in the summer, in the middle of one of the new trails to be built off the south Mesa Trail branch. She stood very tall inside that early morning patch of sun, the shadows of her limbs as long as long as windmills.

Hannah's mom had been a famous volleyball player in her day. The joke was that she could spike a ball over the net from her knees. Out on the trail she was almost always the tallest person on the crew and was often be asked to reach for things in the branches of trees.  How was it, she wondered, that even though she was the big boss, she was the one who was looping the cables around the trunks of trees?

Hannah's mother was the only person anybody knew who had been a semi-professional volleyball player (beach volleyball circuit right out of college), trained as a paleontologist (a fossil finder) but who became a textbook writer as her first real job... not exactly your standard match-up of skills as a trail builder. But she did take great comfort in the fact that she knew everything there was to know about 10th, 11th, and 12th grade textbook world history. For years she kidded with her fellow mothers that she had never yet met or read about another mother of three who was also an aspiring bone digger. She spent all those years raising the kids secretly preparing and preparing, taking Hannah, Kitey and Josh on long walks pointing out the glaciation of the limestone ridges that lined the Mississippi River Valley back in the midwest.

Today she plucked at the long metal cord the trail crew used for hauling pouches of tools and dirt several hundred feet straight up the side of the mountain to another waiting crew member. "Ok, tug!" she yelped out, and Jayse, crew supervisor, pulled down on the cord behind the pulley attached to a pine tree below.  The cord and pulley system was not exactly a precise contraption.  Sometimes it sagged a little halfway up the hill, other times the loop that was pulled around the tree at the bottom might begin to loosen and whatever was in the pouch would come close to dragging along the ground. Luckily this was a pretty tight loop, Hannah's mom made sure. The bag full of hand tools flopped along suspended 10 feet over the trail.  Two hikers were coming their way down the Mesa. "Ok, stop." She put her two long arms way up in the air. They both knew the only thing important in this pouch was Jayce's lunch, a fish sandwich he had made the night before and set on ice to keep fresh (never never pack a fresh fish sandwich on ice for a lunch in the sun!). She crossed her arms signaling, again. As the hikers passed by underneath, the fish sandwich dangled right up above their heads.  Jayce was a line cook down at Mountan Sun at night and would bring whatever happened to be left over from the night before.

When Hannah's dad landed an interview with the famed Atmospheric Research Center in Boulder, Hannah's mom saw herself, in a blink of an eye, out of that office of hers, out of the house, out of 12th grade history books, and into the mountains, back with her rocks and bones. "They need me," she would say, and the rest of the family would give her a look like she was the crazy seven-footer who should have stuck with volleyball! Now that they were here, she was always looking at the trails  and would yelp out at random moments "we're walking inside history people.  "It's like a museum of stone." She asked every morning that all the workers "dig lightly." And so this became one of her esteemed nicknames up on the trail, 'Mrs. Diglightly.' "Delightfully, Mrs. Diglightly" she would say mockingly in the mornings as the trail team set off to work. If somebody on the crew was found spearing too hard into the earth, it was "watch out, Diglightly is watching, or Diglightly will track you.  If she catches you, you will have to 'haul the pails' for the rest of the day."

Mesa Trail Ch.1
Draft 3

"Every landscape has its magical beings. The ancient forests of the pacific northwest have Sasquatch. The piney woods of Alabama have Bigfoot. The Texas coast has Jacques de Mer." – from Kathi Appelt's Keeper














Preface

When Hannah had her vision of opening Element 79 some day, some day down in the valley, along some side street off of the Pearl walkway that was cozy and cobblestoned, where she would bake her famous "Mountain of Velvet Cakes" and serve Chocolate Cliff Coffee," she did not ever think it would happen the way it had.

It wasn't until mid morning that the entire crew had arrived – Inuna at the bottom of the sluice box with her band of swimming turtles, Josh up at the head gate of the sluice box managing the water supply, Mr. Kliefen, 10 th grade Sociology teacher, hauling away gravel, Mrs. Diaz, 10th grade Health Sciences, sifting – when she found herself standing underneath the roof of the roughly constructed wood shack preparing lunches on the counter and realized that this was it.

She reached behind her and tore off a piece of cardboard from a box and wrote in big golden glittery letters Element 79 onto it, taped a stick onto the back and planted it into the hard ground out front along the trail.  She saw that there were rocks naturally in place to either side, they would work just fine for warm seats under the afternoon sunshine.  Inuna called up from the banks of the creek asking if Hannah needed help in the kitchen.  Mr. Bunkledon was arriving supposedly in just an hour and the entire sight had to be what was promised: a fully working gold mining operation. He needed to see that this 'Outpost' could be counted on, and that this was not just some crazy kids' dream scheme.

She put Inuna to work on cold wraps and quinoa bowls.  "I just lay them out to start in a stack then use the scoop for the black bean rice and lime mix." She squeezed the handles together and a perfect scoop dropped onto the maize wraps. "Voila, just like that." Hannah tried another one, dropping it from a bit farther up in the air, and it splooshed down and crumbled a little. "Sometimes you gotta have a little fun, too."

She called in Kitie for freshly squeezed lemonade.  Kitie was an eight grader. No, her name wasn't a mistake on the birth certificate, being mistaken with a Katie.  It was what mom and dad told everybody was a compromise name.  "What is a compromise name," the question would always come back. "He wanted a Katie, and I wanted Kite.  I've always loved kites, how they seek out the wind high above, duck and weave, like a hawk.  So we compromised to Kitie." Kitie, of course, like every other kid in the history of the world, didn't like her name.  She insisted that most everybody she knew just started calling her Kite anyway, so why not just stick with that.  Although, come to think of it, I don't really like Kite either. "How about Cutie, then, dad would say, and usually that would end that.  Kitie, by the way, in her most secret moments, loved kites herself. When she was first pulled onto the gold mine, the first thing she asked Hannah was whether they might try to use kites for some of their work.  "How exactly are you going to do that," Hannah wondered, but was open to any suggestion that anybody ever had.  They were working in a gold mine during school hours, for goodness sakes. If we can use a kite, let's use a kite!  "I just think they are pretty. I was also thinking that we could use them to send things to each other from the trails." Hannah had to give her a good long look at that one. "Kites don't fly themselves you know. Somebody has to hold onto the ropes." Kitie, was, well, a little Kitie.  Hannah looked at her and they both silently agreed that Kitie's name, as it turned out, was perfect.


Josh was a different story. Josh was younger brother, a 5th grader who could tinker with the best of them. It had been Josh's job to handle the sluice gate, clean the screens and set the rocks along in mindful piles, tagging them. He didn't think much about the sky and the hawks or kites.  His eyes were usually on moving parts. The way water moved down that last curl up above the mine sight was fascinating because it was such "high volume per cubic inch," that kind of thing.  Josh was the one who rebuilt the hinges on the opening gate.  They had been rusted by years of disuse. Standing in cold water ankle deep, he bent over with his pocket utility screwdriver and replaced hinges he got with the help of dad down at Kroner's hardware.  Josh didn't like ghosts and he didn't like "hot hot heat," as he would call it, the kind that came down at noon up here in Flatirons and would force any sane gold mine worker to dip into the cold creek for relief.


Before Hannah knew it, Mr. Kliefen and Mrs. Diaz were talking to others who had gathered where the Mesa Trail crosses Bear Canyon Creek and Hannah could see them pointing upwards to the shack, otherwise now known as Element 79 she told herself proudly, and a plan sparked in her mind as it always did: 1) this is the grand opening for the Mesa Trail Oasis; 2) we will invite all hikers in for fresh food and water; 3) if they would like to help haul, filter screen, weigh, they are invited.  Whatever they find directly in gold, they can dedicate to their own favorite cause down below in the city.  Hannah felt the old charm around her neck and wondered if this was what her great grandfather had in mind when he said, all those years ago, "some day you will find yourself at a cross roads. You may see two ways to go. Take the one that follows the bright sky. Always follow where the water flows."  At that time, she had no idea about cross roads or following the bright sky, but she could sure see it now, out there in the rushing blue water, the swirling blue sky, here family, the coming gold.


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1.

...The very first nights that Hannah and her family lived up there at the top edge of the city of Boulder right along Settler's Park – the very same place where the city had been founded two hundred years ago – were so dark that you dare not walk outside without a flashlight.  It was so dark behind the great red rocks that their father, in the beginning, would not even let them go with a flashlight.  "The rattlesnakes underneath the boulders are sleeping.  They have had to put up with people all over their homes all day long, maybe we should let them rest for the night."

Dad had grown up not far from here, in Fort Collins, and told little stories of he and his brother, who they called Ace because he was always into little disasters, getting nipped at the sides of their tall-necked boots their mother made them wear out in the brush.  "It is not a happy sight at all, let me tell you, when the stick laying across the trail isn't a stick.  It starts moving.  Sometimes it coils up, then you know what's next.  The shake rattle and roll." He happened to have a salt shaker in his hands as he was telling this, and shook it for effect.  "People panic.  They get stuck way up high in the mountains. Never hike high altitude alone, that's all I'm saying."

Hannah knew this was parental code for fear what is out there. The red rocks in the dark, from the back windows anyway, no matter how much safe light inside, were not rocks at all the three kids had decided. These were living, breathing, spiny, winged, rip roaring dinosaurs. Goodness only knows what they do when nobody is looking out there deep into the night. For awhile it was only Kitie who knew they moved. Then it was Josh who one morning woke up to run out into the kitchen and make the wild statement that last night he "most certainly saw the very top of the closest spine of boulders raise its head up to the sky, and peak right into the house. Like he was watching me." If any of them stayed up long enough, the howling from the west, on the back side of Flatirons, way up there at Flagstaff, began at midnight. Of course it echoed up and down the canyon to stir up the silence of everything else.  Bears! Mountain Lions! Dinosaurs! What else?

What's in Boulder?

Nov. 9


The trailhead for Mt. Sanitas is very close to the outskirts of the city of Boulder, just up the range, and even politely -- at least on the east side approach -- gently allows the city walker to casually stroll

up a wide ranging meadow up towards Indian Peaks where, by the time the summit is approached, you can see the city to one side and the snow capped continentle divide on the other.  This efficient ability to go from civilization up into the raw and craggy peaks and ridges of the rockies is one of the

great and obvious draws of hiking in Boulder.  If the approach to Mt. Sanitas from the east is casual, the approach from the west, along Mt. Sanitas Trail, is rigorous to say the least.  The very meaning of Sanitas, soundness of body of mind, makes entire sense on the ascent for, without both firmly in tune,

the summit is not going to be had.  The trail up is really nothing more than a 2,000 foot stair climber, all elaborately and beautifully put together by trail-tenders, which weaves in a out of a complex ridgeline full of enormous...boulders.  Ponderosa pines cover the backs of the Flagstaff mountainside of into the west, revealing a true and inner circle of wilderness (later in the day I drove to the summit of

Flagstaff, located 7,000 feet and walked a bit of the Ute and Tenderfoot trails into the kind of silent nature you only get high up in valleys not facing the sounds of the city).  Sanitas trail hikers, when you find them along the trail, no matter how good of shape, are huffing and puffing deeply.  Some are able to run down this portion of the trail, but nobody have I yet seen capable of running up the 2,000 foot stairs.  Once up on top of the rocky summit, it is the front range that is revealed, and the dynamic

flats along with the unseeable highs that make this part of the state very engaging for those who like diverse landscape.  The guide books offer a few ways back down – head right back down the stairs, or curl around to loop back down into the valley more casually, at an easier drop, and then the East Ridge trail which the writers mentioned that the hiker must pay attention to the direction of the trail because of several rock crossings that of course don't wear the same as dirt and are often lost.  The East Ridge descent was nothing short of rock climbing.  The trail was empty except for a few experimenters.  The trail dissapeared at times under caves that then ended at a promitory of boulders. There you had stand and look directly down into the loose bedrock for signs of usage.  Some worn curls in the ground was enough to go by, that and a view, here and there, down into the valley where the casual meadow trail stood like an easy treasure.  At one point, a bottom slide down a boulder into the dark shaded cover of a river of fallen rock was the trail.  The valley here do quiet you could hear a pin drop and that you hoped that pin was not a claw or rattle shaking.  Eventually looking back up the steep side of the east ridge, you are reminded of what the human body is capable of doing, knowing, especially, that along this very auditorium of rocky cliffs, climbers are right now fingering crevices in the great rock walls with no ropes.  Every hike along steep territory is a relative challenge.  As you breath deeply in and watch the loose trail straight up, you know the next mountain inward, toward the contental divide, gets longer and steeper and more technical.  The city hike seems just enough.