The dry bones of countless trees are a constant reminder of the impermanence of life as I tread lightly across the eastern ***** of Rattlesnake Mountain. The game trail I follow is mostly imagined, but I take heart in the occasional week-old boot track of another soul that was also driven up this rugged *****.  Were they compelled by the deep-seated need to see what's over the next hill, around the next bend, beyond the next horizon, like I am? The ghosts left behind in the form of empty footprints are no more or less real than those inhabiting the skeletons of long-dead junipers, and they all haunt my climb to the next ridge.

An impossibly blue sky adorned with feathering mists forms a cathedral overhead as I watch cloud shadows parade across the valley floor miles below as they perform their north-to-south ritual under the paternal gaze of the mid-afternoon sun.  A gentle feeling of being here descends and centers on my soul, and I know that I am where I should be, and have been all along.