Sunday Hike

Hiked up the Pipe Line trail with RTGFKAR, friend M.E., and Gustavo The Wonder Dog yesterday morn. To get there you have to drive up a snaky mountain road requiring frequent gear changes and then traverse a short stretch of bumpy four-wheeling, rutted, lame excuse for a road that leads to a parking area at the base of the trail. No problem, really, for Nikita our sporty little KIA, but I do admit to a wince when we scraped bottom on a particularly rocky stretch of pseudo-road. (I also worry that KIA is usually thought to be an acronym for killed-in-action, but then, as I've noted before, I am a worrier. Not about inconsequential things, mind you, like world peace and all that, but rather the things of greater import like why did my wife look at me like that just now and can Brandon Stokley help the Broncos?

A two foot tall Indian boy asking for "plata", which literally means silver, but in this case refers to coins, appeared from the weeds as we parked. Gus took a run at him and the boy disappeared back into the bushes screaming like a banshee. Gus looked at me with either a "what's the matter with him, doesn't he want to play?" look or it might have been "alrighty, I ran that rascal off". It's hard to tell. He then shot up the trail with a look that I do know and it says "follow me."

After that there was a lot of oohing and ahing and discussions of this plant and that flower by M.E. and RTGFKAR as we walked slowly up the gradually ascending trail. We were in dense, green, mountain jungle, but the path was well worn and easy to follow. By we, I mean the people. Our canine trekker was in doggie heaven. He was in and out every trail side opening and splashing happily in every stream. When we would stop to admire a close up vermiliad or a distant vista, Gus would run back to us and impatiently display another of his recognizable looks, this one saying "come on come on come on, what's holding you up?" Something about making my dog happy makes me happy, so we were both feeling giddy and goofy enough to make the Dali Lama proud. RTGFKAR and M.E. seemed to be enjoying the hike as well, snapping photos of this and that and making plans to cut shoots from assorted plants on the return trip. Their agenda seemed to be something about taking in the wonders of close up nature while I was there for the exercise and just being fully present in the woods.
Nice.

One of the things that makes this trail a particularly pleasant place to walk is that it is mostly shrouded by tall trees that provide shade and thus cooler temps for hikers. Yesterday there was a gentle breeze as a cooling bonus and as they say in the beer commercials, it doesn't get any better than this. Of course in the beer commercials they have beer. We only had water.

So...we hiked up to an agreed turn around spot and then hiked back. It was all very beautiful and if you don't believe me insert here marvelous description from a really good writer. Poetry would be good too. For me the best visual was of my dog Gus who, at trails end, looked like he was covered in green moss. He had millions of tiny lime colored seedlike stickers dotting his own dogself like some kind of bizarre fungus. It was going to take me a long time to brush those out. Fortunately, he and I like that part too.