Blythe and I awakened after, not only our first night, but our first time. We faced the new day..knowing. We didnt want to leave our own Garden of Eden just yet. We needed to bathe, and I knew there was an icy cold stream down at the bottom of the canyon just below us. We dressed and ate a hasty breakfast between giggles. We were in our hiking clothes and made our way down the rather steep hill to the bottom. Yes, the stream was giggling too. Aa the ice had been broken, we undressed, took the soap and wash cloths and waded into the stream. We went to knee deep and then..took a deep breath and knelt down until water level at shoulder high. It took our breath away, and when I stood up, Blythe started laughing at me. My....uhh. was so drawn up, I looked like a new born. "Cold water does that to men" I explained. We worked up a suds of sorts and washed every....nook and cranny. The towelling off felt good, and soon we were in our clothes again and decided what to do next. "Blythe, last night I noticed the full Moon resting on top of that tall tree up on the ridge....It looked so impressive...let's hike up to the top of that ridge and find that tree. I pointed to where it was and we bagan a search of the best way to climb up there. There seemed to be a gulley, of sorts that started at the bottom and went on up as we could tell. The rocky ridges on sides soul serve as a stair case of sorts. It was rather steep. We made our way up quite a ways and stopped to rest. Blythe noticed a little side canyon or large gulley off to one side, and we decided to explore up that to see what we could find. We went only about a hundred feet and ,,,,we stopped, There on the floor of this nook was the sleletal remains of a ..person. It was stlll clothed in rotted clothing...we went up to it and just pondered what we should do. I examined the remains and discovered a broken femur. "He must have fallen from the top and broken his leg in the fall" I said. We went through is back pack and found several tools for hewing rock..no identification papers in bag or on body. I drew a rough map of where we were, as we would report this to authorites. We went back to the main channel to the top and continued climbing. When we reached the summit, we began walking to the tall tree. It was a magnificent view of surrounding area. We looked way down on our camp site..the tent and the car. After awhile, we found the tree. A magnificent old Pine that had survived the howling winds and lightning strikes. We sat down and just contemplated all that had happened so fast. I happened to look to the Northeast and noticed the sillhouttes of the Pines on a distant ridge; the Pines were bending over and there was dust. ""Sorry, Blythe, the Santa Ana is coming" The wind struck our peak with grand announcement. Our Pine also bent over. The canteen that we had brought and had lain on the ground took off and landed somewhere down the side. "Let's go back to our canyon and take shelter" The wind was so strong, even smaller rocks were rolling along the ground. We made it to shelter and just cowered.
We stayed put for several hours until it calmed down. Grit was in our mouths and in our eyes. When we got back to camp, put our tent back up which as blown down. We stayed there another day. Another Full Moon and another camp fire...the wind was gone. We talked about the body and wondered how long it had been there. We went back up to her site and removed all of her camping equip and stored it in her car. It was amazing, in a way, a campground, and nobody was there. The stars were out, but diminshed by the light of the Moon. We looked up at the Tall tree, where we had been. The Moon was getting pretty close to being right behind it....We had a good supper by firelight and decided to turn in early for unknown reasons.....:)
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