1/6/11 - Flagstaff Mountain Boy Scout Trail

The ponderosa pines smell like a warm gingerbread rotten rancid sawdust smell and the winds are howling around us in all directions. It doesn’t sound so much like a shout as a weeping wail. The wind has uncovered a fascinating ice formation. The frequent thaw and freeze that takes place atop this mountain created these crispy shelves of icy snow that crunch under foot. The powder has been blown off to reveal crevices and hardness to the water – some of its unknown revealed. No longer powdery and flaky but seemingly solid and therefore treacherous. You never know when it will crack. This snow has an energy of water that has repeatedly been frozen, and then melted enough to move just a bit before being stopped and frozen again. This stop and go quality reminds me of what uncertainty caused by anxiety over movement and flow in life might look like. With such uncertain progress, you cannot rely on any solidity or flow. It is flaky and unreliable. If life occurred to me this way, I’d be afraid to move forward in life and would be exhausted, or resigned.

The bark splinters and crackles as I peel it off the tree. It flakes off like dried layers of skin. Parched, no water, rigid, hard, hollow, lifeless and shallow in sound. As the sun hits the side of the pine tree, the odor is intensified - it is warmed and expands into the nose. The dry dead bark is given some momentary life as the warm acrid oils penetrate the upper nostril.

I saw a long-needled pine tree and I noticed that all of its needles were pointed up towards the heavens. Its linear, directed growth shooting in one direction. The tree creaked at me, laughing like an old crony. The laugh occurred as sarcasm – a pessimistic knowing of the futility of something – as if it is laughing at me judgmentally.

We passed four students walking to the Flatirons amphitheatre. They gave us a brisk and cold “hey” as if we were intruding upon their endeavor by our presence. One girl walked in pajamas and slippers amidst the snow, clutching at her wet and old fur-piped coat. The legs were blue and her feet bright red. She looked like she was freezing, yet she persevered with a hard and set jaw towards her destination – a look of determination and no glance in our direction. I felt dismissed and somewhat feared. After smelling the pot wafting off their jackets, I understood their paranoia.

As the sun sets behind the mountains, the shape of the mountain loomed over Boulder. The gray black shadow covered the plain with its darkness and grayness as the sunlight was consumed by the moving gray. The Yin became ominous and overbearing. The warmth faded from my heart and I began to worry about the impending dark. This feeling was reminiscent of the foreboding coldness that can set in after warmth of an encounter or a party ends. All parties must come to an end.

The sunset behind the mountains created a gradient in the eastern sky – from a rosy peach into a baby powder blue. The gentle meeting of fire and water – of yang being consumed or interchanged into yin. The shades of the sky were reminiscent of facial colors that I have seen. In the middle where the red and blue meet there is a ruddy purplish gray reminiscent of colors I have seen on Water CF clients. As I watched the sun set, the eastern gradient grew in width and the intensity as both colors changed to gray blue – the ash forming in the sky from the burning embers of the day.