Hiking in Hermosa

I found a stick yesterday. A stick - one minus the bark with squiggly little engravings probably squiggled by some little woodivore. It's curved, allowing for a preferable weight distribution. I brought it home.

Yesterday, Liz and I went a few miles outside of town to Hermosa to hike. We twisted and turned up a dirt road to the trail head and hiked about 9 miles to somewhere around 9000 ft. The Hermosa Creek trail is a heavily used outing for hikers, bikers and those disgusting dirtbikes that leave trails of dust and exhaust. Aspens are abundant in the forests here and their white bark makes it seem like winter when you come upon a clearing of a couple hundred of them. All the pictures in this post are from the hike.

Every few miles we'd happen upon a narrow trail on the side of a steep hill (I don't mean hill in the Midwest sense of the word either). The tree line would thin out and you could see for miles and look all around at the still snow-capped peaks in the distance.

Did you know scat means poop? Public schools failed terribly - I didn't know that.

I think it's pretty damn cool to live in a place where a legitimate concern while hiking is encountering a bear or mountain lion.

I went to a potluck Saturday night with Liz and met some more friendly Durango(nians?)(ans?)(phers?)(ons?). One of them shared a few bear encounter stories that happened to people she knew. Allow me to paraphrase:

So, her friend was camping in the mountains and had to take care of a little business. He goes off into the trees, finds a nice place where he can lean against a tree and look out to this beautiful view. He starts doing his thing and hears a noise. Turns around and sees a bear. That will definitely get things moving.

Another friend went to go find some water. He took a water purifier and some other bottles and such. Now this guy had been trained on all actions dealing with encountering a big-toothed, blabbering, black, brown, brazen, brave, blood thirsty bear. Guess what? On the way to the water he runs right into a bear, drops all his stuff, and dashes back to camp. Once his courage finally trots back to camp, he goes to collect his things that he'd dropped and get some water. He finds the spot and sees a long track of bear scat going off into the woods. They both scared the shit out of each other.

Referring back to my last post, I got a job. I went into the bookstore, Southwest Book Trader, and, by golly, there was George in all his cantankerous, crotchety glory sitting behind his desk, which is sitting behind a floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall stack of milk crates full of books.

I talk to him and all the while he's moving things for the sake of simply moving them. He stacks books and they fall and re-stacks them. He makes god-awful mucus-rattling, guttural noises and spits in the trash can. He has a long whit ponytail, small glasses, a big belly, and a cowboy hat He asked me about three different times in ten minutes why I was in Durango and supplanted Indiana University with Iowa University, Illinois University, and Indiana State University.

He never really looked at me while I was talking to him. He showed me how they keep track of hours while they work - 3x5 cards. I'm pretty sure pay is under the table. George told me to come in and train today. Hope he remembers that I'm coming.

The store is dusty, dimly lit, has a good front porch, and about a million books - my kinda place.

Did I miss something? Is there something in the water? Am I hypersensitive to the movements of the clock? What the hell is wrong here? Days in the Southwest go by so slowwwwwwwwww.