For my birthday some family hiked up Rock Canyon (Provo UT). Beautiful. We chattered about various things including rock climbing/hiking/mountaineering: I need these things in my life – they are absent, and what a void for them.
We saw a bow in the cloud: I was moved at the sight because of recent discoveries in my religion’s scripture indicating that the bow in the cloud is also a sign that when the sons of Noah are righteous, they will look up, Zion (the translated city of Enoch) will look down, the heavens will shake, and Zion will descend. Halleluhah! I’m speechless at the thought.
I also thought the cliffs of the canyon being steeply negatively inclined, so that they strangely face straight at you, might look like something I imagine the parted Red Sea looking like to the Israelites: impossibly suspended. I love this idea in combination with the Provo Temple at the mouth of the canyon, designed to look like a cloud and pillar.
Then at home we had guacomole with bacon in wheat tortilla wraps (at my inordinately long preparation) and crossoinwhiches with cheese and turkey. Mmm.
I forgot to pull out the ice cream.
My cell phone cut out in the canyon so I couldn’t tell a friend arriving at our house we’d be late: they waited a long time I imagine and anyway they had to leave before we were back. 🙁
Then my sister-in-law and her kids came and we explored up to a house that had been run through by a six-foot boulder. This sight was indescribable. Moreover it was very strange: I had passed this house on a hike once and mused that it was at the very corner of civilization here. And nature struck right at the corner of this house at the corner of civilization.
We tracked the boulder’s track marks up the steep foothil towards the mountain base. I tracked it’s path up past a half-buried boulder it demolished just before bouncing into the house, up to a cut it made in a buried boulder, up a long steep hill, through a demolished scrub oak grove (at least 4 trees severed at the base), and stopped there. It came between two lower orange rock outcroppings on it’s way down, and up much much higher, into the mountain, there was grey rock, and this boulder was gray. I think it came down from very high in the mountain. This thing practically flew, looking at the gouges it made on the way down.
I got great exercise. I’d love to track the boulder path higher another day.