Uncompahgre Plateau, Colorado
My Journeys
with Myla, pt. 2
Note: This is the second of
a sequence of blog entries concerning my travels with Myla, a superb dog of
uncertain breed (we think she’s half rat terrier and half dachshund) who was found
barely surviving on the streets of Grand Junction and rescued by a group called
Grand Rivers Humane. We adopted her in the autumn of 2013, and she has been a
beloved part of our family ever since.
I am midway up a winding, narrow sandstone canyon
on the northern reaches of the Uncompahgre Plateau. This canyon is new to me,
which is a situation that is always special – I have never before seen these
cliff walls with their bands of salmon and ivory, wind-carved caves, spherical
swallow nests, and scattered junipers, pinions, and sage. The sand on the canyon
floor is smooth and damp, and small ovals of water still collect in the carved
stone basins. They provide water for Myla to drink, and this saves on the water
in my steel bottle, its shining cylinder bright in the high sun. An occasional
orange and brown butterfly drifts in the still air, the first of the season. I
sit on a granite slab that centuries of massive storms have tumbled down canyon
from the mysterious heights above. From there I watch the waning crescent moon,
a smile-shaped rim of white world so pale it nearly vanishes into the pure blue
sky. It is setting, and the high walls of the plateau, like the prow of a great
ship, will soon receive it, well before the fall of night. I am tired from the
climb up to the canyon’s mouth from the basin floor, and I am content to rest
on the granite block. But Myla is still filled with energy, and hunts lizards,
digs at the undersides of rock, explores the ledges, and even flushes a rabbit
– a brown streak of fur vanishing into a tangle of brush and dead juniper, well
ahead of Myla’s open jaws.
The new canyon, the moon, the butterflies, the
excited dog – it all becomes a moment of pure joy, a simple but wondrous
experience in the American Southwest.
