We climbed in Boulder Canyon yesterday, an area rife with granite domes, grassy nooks, ever-lovin’ water.

Just as travelers acquaint with cities by getting lost, we lost ourselves there.

We wandered with infant eyes, scrambling up the canyon’s sides, looking for where we might go.

High, near Light House dome, we spied a fawn, hind full of white furry dots.

Scared still she was, hunkered under a rock, awaiting her move. Slowly, slowly we approached. She quivered, a feathery vibration, staying.

‘til too close we came ~

Then whoosh!

She ran; floated ~ bounce, fly, bounce, fly!

She sprinted the hillside in a single heartbeat.

Later we stood on the rim of Dream Canyon, a side spur of the main canyon. There we watched Naked Yoga Guy perform sun salutations on a flat rock the size of a kitchen area rug. His rough-hewn body flowed, brave, primal.

With any luck, his tan would be even as the day he was born.

Then we pulled out the rope and climbed the vertiginous granite; up, up, up, down, down, down, repeat ‘til tired or the sun sets, one.

We were alone, but I imagined sky-gods watching our currents of fear, our shared joys at faces and cracks opening themselves to our upward moves.

For a handful of hours we existed solely on a jagged crinkle in the earth’s mantle.

And so found our personal granite domes, our hidden grassy nooks, and the ever-lovin’ water of our soul’s core.

[October 2007]