Sending a cool mountain brook running through a verdant meadow of moss and wind-stunted grass. A 10” speckled trout rises warily to a mayfly struggling on the surface with sodden wings.

Sun piercing thin mountain air provides radiant warmth which disguises ambient cool flowing from beneath an approaching afternoon cumulus shadow. Scant patches of remnant spring snow clinging to clefts deep in northeast couloirs feed the trickles high above the chatty brook.

A well worn pair of boots, worn well over many miles of mountain trail, lie tumbled next to a great granite block placed during play by the glacier gods and left ever since as a stool on which the grateful wanderer may sit, contemplating warm granite sand between blistered toes.

Above, a peregrine calls, her piercing screech cleaving the crystal mountain silence.

Be well, my friend, and soon walk here again