hill-walking….
I had never planned on doing a post with these images of lone hikers, runners, or walkers doing their paces along the ridge-lines or crests of the hills that constitute the area north of Salt Lake City, Utah…but one of the images crossed the monitor as it was running through its screen-saver slide-show and the idea suddenly came to me. I had snapped the photos on what was actually my last hike in the area and I had hoped that capturing the solitary figures would give at least a minimal representation of what the scale was like out there…how we humans were so small in our surroundings…
…and how we chose in our similar mindsets to be out there alone, or with a companion who shared our thoughts or relished being out there in that grandness…that awesomeness of the outdoors with the warm sun on our bodies and the chilled air filling our lungs…and calming our spirits.
While the scenery was somewhat drab with its winter brown grass and bare trees along the way, the views were incredible and full of knowing how the hills would transform into an explosion of green in just a few months as Spring would be waking the wild grasses and scrub oak bushes…and wildflowers would be spotting the hills again and filling the breezes with their heady perfume…
That bit of blue at the top of the below photo is the southern end of The Great Salt Lake…
…and that chain of mountains to the right of the peak in the below photo are the Oquirrh Mountains, the western geographic boundary for the Salt Lake Valley.
I’m not certain, but I believe this next photo is of the drainage just east of City Creek Canyon…another grass and scrub covered bunch of hills and exposed sandy rock.
And lastly, there is a mountain-biker heading west on the trail that will take us back to the trail-head at the north end of City Creek Canyon.
Ah…the stuff of memories…I can almost smell it up there…feel the trail under my feet…yep…almost….
