The Reward

There is that spot where the trail winds between yuccas; in years past, those yuccas were small, easy to ignore, if they were noticed at all. Those dagger leaves are so much bigger now. Threatening, dangerous, maybe even sinister. But for all that, they are obvious. It is the plain stuff you've got to watch for, the dried stalks of hemlock, mustard, grasses. The eyes, the mind, they do not register those with the same sense of concern, wariness. Forcing a way through that stuff, that is where the cuts and gashes come from when finally you emerge on the other side. Your reward - standing in the cut of the old road where it cut down through a ridge of rock, slicing off the finger tip, that brittle nail of rock crowned by a trio of spruce. There, the toyon have not all be picked clean by the winged, its berries wrapping a red wreath across the brow. There, standing on the edge where the mountainside falls away to a pool dark in alder shade. There, the eyes continue to wander further up canyon past the still yellow-orange leaves of January sycamores to where Joat's rocky shoulders cleave into the sky. 

It had been a while since last I traveled up canyon on these two wheels. Too long. The first weekend of a new year seemed a good time to return to the quiet of the canyons fastness, humbled but knowing that few others contest the endeavor. No other wheeled tracks marred the sandy surface of trail, none others left a trace of water in the creekside leaf litter.

heading up the switchbacks beside the dam - the dead eucalypts have been cut down

the way is clear at this point...

but not so much now

the interesting thing is not the bit of water flowing (from Evey Canyon),

but that some young alders have managed to take hold along side the stream

rust of buckwheat

up canyon where you can just make out Spruce Rock where ridges on either side come down to the canyon bottom

now you see it clearly

toyon

further up canyon beyond the cut at spruce rock

dark water below

spruce rock, where there are more yuccas than spruce trees

tracks

bones with...

pock marked trails of wood peckers

canyon view in black and white

a multitudinous reward for a day's adventure