Lost in a very good dream...

gooseberries

Coming home from the mountains last week, I didn't have the usual thoughts of "That was lovely, but I have lots of things to do at home now and I can't wait to get started." No, this time I was mostly sad to say good-bye, and also couldn't find good words to go with my pictures.

But one of our guests up there managed in her thank-you note yesterday to take away my sadness with her response to the few higher-elevation days we shared. I'm making her my guest blogger today. (Her thoughts in brown.)

Mountain time is a time-out from time, 

like the timelessness of being 

lost in a very good dream.

little lupine plants

When we came down from Gumdrop Dome the ground under the forest was scattered everywhere with tiny lupine plants. I wonder what month I would need to be there to see the slopes covered with tiny purple spikes?

... the dilated twinkle of 100 billion stars in the night sky (which reductionistically would take 3,000 yrs. to count.)

Of our three nights at over 8,000 feet elevation, we had only one night's opening in the clouds to see the star glory. We missed most of the meteor shower -- still, we saw a few shooting stars. And we gawked at the Milky Way, and were happy that the air was unbelievably warm all during our stay, day and night, so that we could gawk longer.

overlooking a canyon

All the sweet consolations of fragrant fresh mountain air, delicious soft water, 

warm sleepy nights... 

...laughter, storytelling, hiking and/or trying to chase Mr. Glad up Gumdrop Dome (in a loony-tune cartoon, some of us could take a running start up a sheer vertical rock face, hauling a low center of big gravity, our momentum so great that we actually overshoot the summit –beating him to the base – but unfortunately, not in one piece).

swooping in to join the fray

...the terrible joy 

of ecstatic hummingbirds 

a-feeding.