Rockfall

We hike up from sand dunes and sagebrush, past gaunt third-growth evergreens and yellow-headed aspen until slabs of conglomerate breach the soil like the spines of sea creatures from a bygone ocean, each cliff in this cirque a petrified wave cresting and crashing at the feet of the mountains we have come to climb. Thunder ripples overhead. Clouds cling to the mountaintops like thick wool as we set up camp amid pine and spruce that are more shrubs than trees. The cliffs ladder into the cloud bank beyond these knurled trees, the stone turning to black, as black as oil-fire smoke.

All day on our hike, the air prickled with moisture, the sky changing from pale blue to clear water, then milky, and finally, leaden grey. Now our full bottles dribble snowmelt as we walk back to camp, our knuckles glinting ghost-white. The rain that trailed us up the valley jumped the mountains and spilled down into the plain