2 Days, 3 Hikes

I spent most of this weekend in hiking boots, carrying either a backpack or Noni. My sister was in town for a quick visit, which was threatened on the first day when Lucy came down with the stomach flu and the weather report predicted thunderstorms all weekend. Fortunately, Lucy was playing soccer twelve hours after getting sick and the thunderstorms never happened. Mollie and I hiked Green Mountain together on Saturday and then Mt. Sanitas with my family on Sunday, but my favorite hike was one we didn't even intend to do.

On Saturday evening, the clouds cleared from the sky and at 6 pm Mollie suggested we go for a walk around the neighborhood. My legs were already tired from our hike that day, but we planned on a quick walk. Our neighborhood, however, backs right up against the Foothills and we soon found ourselves walking along Mt. Sanitas Valley trail. I never realized it, but the evening is one of the best times to hike. The low sun made the colors of the wildflowers pop and the valley was covered in budding purple and yellow flowers. Behind us, the clouds were lifting from Green Mountain and it looked like something from Lord of The Rings. Actually, we weren't thinking of Lord of The Rings, but rather of Twilight when a man walked by with black hair and piercing white-blue eyes. When he passed, Mollie whispered that we may have just seen a vampire.

When we hiked up to get a view of Boulder, we could see a rainbow in the distance. The hike already felt magical when we looked down and saw a black creature zig zagging up the hill. Hiking in the early evening has some potential drawbacks - like that the mountain lions are just waking up and probably hungry. At first I felt a stab of fear, thinking it was a bear, but the animal moved too quickly. Mollie determined that it must be a dog, but as it headed toward us, we realized that it was a black fox. It ran across the trail right in front of us and then sat up on a rock, about twenty feet above us. I wish I had my camera at that moment, but I will never forget his gray-black face looking down at us. We joked that it was probably the vampire we had just seen, transformed into his animal form. Unlikely. But either way, it felt like a magical evening.