[ Two bright yellow dandelion blooms occupy the foreground of the shot; behind it a small stream pours over a waterfall perhaps a foot high. Moss covers the other bank. ]
After dropping Jasper & Remy off at the airport (& failing to sleep again; if Jasper needs dropped off at the airport at 3am again, I am Not. It), I stopped at a little park in Monument, because I knew it had nice public bathrooms.
What I didn’t know was that there’s a lovely little stream running through the trees down at the back of the park, the which I discovered after following Loiosh down that way. I love running water a WHOLE LOT & really miss not having any nearby where we are, so I spent a while just sitting & listening, then stuck my feet in & washed everything from the knees & elbows down. TBH if it’d been earlier in the day I probably woulda flung clothing everywhere & just had at, but it was, like, noon, there were kids over on the soccer field, chances of bathus interruptus WAY too high, you know how it goes. But even just getting the appendages clean was VERY NICE.
Also. The sound of the water.
[ Ten seconds of video of the same spot as the first picture, complete with the pleasant burbling of running water. ]
I sat there & listened to it for a WHILE.
They’ve just let the stream do what it wants through this part of the park, which means that, of course, it’s doing a bit of wandering.
[A narrow stream, perhaps a foot wide, winds back through scattered trees before disappearing under a bridge in the distance; in the foregreound it widens and shallows til it’s perhaps three feet wide and a couple inches deep. ]
Eventually Loiosh got bored & wandered off; I followed while he sniffed around, ate a bunch of grass, & ran up a couple trees. He REALLY was having a good time. Eventually we found our way over to some BIG cottonwoods, parts of which were covered in very pleasing lichens.
[ A wide strip of lichens runs up the bark of a cottonwood tree. Most of it is a deep forest green, but some is yellow-green and some is straight-up yellow. ]
I love lichens, they’re so cool.
I also love trees with holes in em, cos there might be something cool in the hole.
[ A cottonwood tree, broad at the base and dividing into two narrower trunks further up, sports a hole in the lefthand trunk, clearly where a third trunk had split off and then perished. The bottom of the hole is covered in rich-looking soil; the rest is lined in weathered wood, though there’s something vaguely blue-purpleish partway up the inside. ]
Enhance … enhance … okay fine, I just stepped closer …
[ A view of the hole from slightly above. A few brave seedling plants are sprouting in the soil at its bottom. The bark around the hole is sparsely covered in scattered lichens, and there, embedded in the wood at the back of the hole, is a roughly squared-off purplish thing. ]
… is that what I think it is.
[ Closer still. That squared-off purplish thing is, in fact, a rock embedded in the wood. ]
It’s a very good rock! I wonder how long ago THAT got stuck in a much younger cottonwood …
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