Rampart Ridge Philosopher

Baby, it's COLD outside!

I suppose I ought to get some more pictures of this place with the weather hanging low, so to speak. It is softly dramatic. But I'm going to wait until it stops raining. The precipitation started a couple of hours ago, but I sit under my little compact stand of trees and am not touched by a single droplet. And I am content.

How can I express my joy of the mountains to others? How can I even begin to tell of the wholeness I feel within myself when I am up here?

I tried to show these things in my photos. And some of them are pretty good.  Others are but a poor sample of the whole reality. You just have to be here – smell the scents of earth, snow and rain, and hear the wind and feel it trying to force its way down your collar. You can taste the biting cold in the snow melt water, feel the numbness in your hands when you immerse your water bottle into the stream.

I am the only human being up here now. My two dogs and I are the only interlopers. I wonder if the mountains resent our presence in some way. I try to be careful and respectful. I know this place has a soul and spirit of its own. I do not wish to offend them.

I am not totally isolated from humanity. At least twice a day I hear the roar of a jet as it passes overhead, filled with people on their way to somewhere else. They may look down from their soft warm seats by the windows as they sip there drinks and eat their hot meals.  They do not know (and probably wouldn’t care if they did know) that three little beings are down here. I pity them more than us.

We changed out mind. We want back in.

Mica chooses this moment to interject, ‘I pity me! I am hungry! When are you going to see me?’ Micki doesn't say anything, but she is nodding in agreement.

– Continue reading.