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.