A Perfect Ride to a Saddle

 Micro-climate or micro-calendar?  What do you call it when a mountain blocks sunrise or sunset?  Think of it as a mercifully early September, the fantasy of a mid-summer sufferer.  

The late sunrise from one of these mountains fooled me one morning.  I should have started my bike ride even earlier because we had some climbing to do before making it to "[redacted] Summit."  It is funny how specialized an outdoorsman can be.  I was hoping for lots of climbing in middle gears, and I got it.  The irrigated fields had tall green hay.  Grasslands are rare and precious in the western mountain states.

Have you ever seen a hatch of "Mormon crickets?"  They are a type of grasshopper, I suppose.  Fat and black.  They cannibalized the smooshed ones.  I tried to avoid smooshing them with my bicycle tires, but it was impossible to avoid them all.  Looking at them more carefully, there also seemed to be a lot of copulation going on.  I'm afraid I smooshed some of them in mid-debauch.

The road surface got crunchy with large gravel, at times.  How does my little dog run on that stuff?  But she never seems to have problems with gravel.

The slope became steeper as we neared the summit.  And it started getting hot.  I was proud of the old boy for grinding away in low gear and making it to the summit.  This kind of experience brings on a certain type of imagination: think of penitents in the Middle Ages on their way to Santiago or Canterbury or Rome.  Instead of being discouraged by hardship, they were turned on by the Noble Suffering they imagined it to be.

We had a good drink at the "summit", actually a saddle or pass.  I was hoping that is what it would be.  You've heard of hikers who are peak baggers.  My little dog and I are saddle-baggers.  I remember being a young peak-bagger.  Was it just about ego?  That was certainly a bigger part of it than it is today.  People under-estimate the liberation that comes in older age when a person is content to renounce their youthful obsession with their own ego and think, instead, of joining the general flow of the human condition.

That is what I had in mind on the descent, with my little dog in the milk crate on the rear of the bike.  As if the descent wasn't sweet and merciful enough, halfway down, my prayers were answered by Santa Sombra for about a half mile.  

If only the creek had actually had a little water in it!  Although the morning was heating up, Santa Brisa also answered my prayers.

Finally Santa Nublada finished off a perfect morning: