Blue and Orange

Blue Skies by Irving Berlin (1926)

Blue skies smiling on me
Nothing but blue skies do I see
Blue birds singing a song
Nothing but blue skies from now on

I never saw the sun shining so bright
When you're in love, every thing's right

Watching all the days hurrying by
When you're in love, my how they fly

Those blue days, all of them gone
Nothing but blue skies from now on

No skies are bluer than October skies in Colorado.  Here is a photograph taken of the sky directly overhead this afternoon. 

Sadly, the rest of the song didn't apply today.  I didn't hear any blue birds or fall in love.

I was hiking along the Hogback and stopped to see the fossilized sandstone remains of an ancient seabed on the side of the hill.  The wiggly lines were purportedly made by water currents on the sea floor.

The sign says:  "Ripple marks are one of the most graphic features in the Dakota sandstones.  The ripples were mad by gentle currents and waves in the quiet intertidal zone along the Western Interior Seaway.  The ripple marks may have been preserved by filamentous algal mats that grew over the rippled surface."

After my hike I returned to town and came across this striking orange tree. As blue and orange are the team colors for the Denver Broncos football team, this is truly a Broncos weekend.

At the Reservoir

Today I needed a break from transcribing Karen Horney's The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (there's no better way to get an inside look at neurotic behavior than by compulsively typing passages from a 1937 neo-Freudian psychology book) and took a brief stroll to the nearby reservoir.

By the time I arrived in late afternoon most of the sailors were wrapping up their boating for the day.  Two men were rolling up the sail for their Hobie Cat.  To avoid appearing nosy, I took this photograph from a secluded spot under a tree.

I viewed some dinosaur footprints on my last Hogback hike.  Today I saw geese footprints along the beach.  What would future archeologists make of these?
 

October Thoughts

This afternoon I took photographs of my neighborhood trees. 

Now that I am in the October of my life, the beautiful autumn scenery is a reminder to be cheerful and show my true colors in the days left to me. The time will come when I fade and shrivel.

Universal Trail Sign

I was hiking on my favorite trail, the Mount Galbraith loop, today.  Halfway around the mountain, beside an especially rocky and indistinct section of the trail, I saw several small rocks stacked on each other.  I assumed that this was the universal sign marking the correct way to go.

However, in retrospect, I have begun to distrust my assumption.  After all, my knowledge of trail craft is skimpy. The stacked rocks could have signified any number of things, such as:

• Beware of moose!
• Wrong way!
• Pick up after your dog!

Shortly after seeing this sign, I ran into a middle-aged couple who warned me that they had spotted a rattlesnake beside the trail ahead.  Perhaps the stacked rocks are the universal sign for Rattlesnake Crossing.