The ride home always seems faster than the ride there.

One and a half?

Less than two.

It only takes a couple of hours at most to get there. Once we're there, it’s always ten, fifteen, or sometimes twenty degrees cooler than it is at home.

8668 feet. I looked it up.

That’s why it’s so much cooler?

I mean, I guess so. Almost five thousand feet higher than what we’re used to when we’re up there in the forest.

The last time we were there we took a different trail and when we found a spot to sit and take in the view from on top of the mountain overlooking the treetops and beyond the desert of white sands, you said you wanted to build a house right there so you could see that view every day.

I said there didn’t seem to be enough room to build a house because I couldn’t imagine destroying or building over anything that we were around at the moment. Besides that, I said, this is federal property.

I want to live here! You said it like you were only half joking, and you knew I was being facetious anyway, or you knew that I was already stressing about how I was going to afford to build us a mountain getaway because maybe you were only half joking, and you know how I am.

It was just beyond this bend that we were unable to see around and that happened a few times on this new trail and one time a huge elk passed in front of us about 50 yards away, and we all got nervous about its size and what else might cross the path unexpectedly.

We took pictures with our phones, and some were better than others.

And there were enough hummingbirds and Stellar’s jays and other birds that we couldn’t identify to keep us busy enough to not say out loud that we were thinking about a bear or a mountain lion coming out of the brush and making us forget how beautiful it all was, at least that’s what I was thinking. And I didn’t say it out loud.

I picked up a pretty good-sized tree branch, I guess it was more of a stick that I found lying on the ground by the side of the trail and I used it as a walking stick and kept turning it in my hand to grip it in different ways to get used to my weapon before I had to use it.

And then we made it back to the parking lot, and I hadn’t used it for much of anything, so I propped the branch against a tree trunk upright so that someone else passing by later could use it if they wanted to.

The air was still so cool, and it was time to leave because it would take us a couple of hours to get back home.

And for some reason the ride home always seems faster than the ride there.

🕊️💛