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.