Zuni-Acoma Trail

Thursday's featured hike was a sandy trail that wound through scrub brush and pinons and led up to lava flows that, for all the world look like what's been left behind by scrum of drunk rednecks on fork lifts.  It's hard to believe--almost impossible, in fact--that all that crusty black crud is ancient excess from the center of the earth.

But it is and it was. Strange stuff, almost impossible to walk on.  Yet, years ago--like today--it had to be crossed, and it was--the Zuni-Acoma trail.  From a promontory nicely marked, you can stand up on sandstone cliffs and look way down below into what could easily be mistaken for massive river.  It's not.  It's rock.  Amazing.

Some risked life and limb.

I don't know that it's appropriate out here in Navajo country to use the words "long" and "walk" together, given Navajo history, but let me just say that it was, for some, a goodly hike, out and back.  And the sun was hot.

Once out there, in the wilds--the really, really wilds--a wonderful lecture on what it was we were seeing just then.

The desert environment seems almost merciless, even though occasional ponderosa pines can make you believe that life is really an opportunity.  Still, the shapes and extraordinary, mystical, and, as advertised, enchanting.  

And then, maybe something akin to grace itself, lo and behold something flushed with nothing less than the House of Orange hiding beneath a pinion, unexpected as a miracle.

Breathtaking.  Well, awesome.