In the beautiful Lincoln Forest of New Mexico, spring is not introduced by the weatherman or marked by a single date on the calendar. Instead, it's signaled by the gentle falling of the snow from the tree branches, which only stopped the snow's journey to the ground temporarily. Another indication is the ducks swimming in the pond where only weeks ago, kids may have been ice skating over.
Laying inside the Marmot 15 degree sleeping bag in the Lincoln Forest at the Seven Cabins exit, I haven't really looked to see how blue the sky was lately. Back in elementary school, the class was doing an excercise in Mrs. Schmidt's fifth grade class: She asked why the sky was blue, and I thought I cleverly knew the answer- stuff in the air makes it blue. Suddenly, one of the girls answers, "Because it's the reflection of the water!" What a brilliant answer I thought and immediately abandoned my own assumption thinking her answer was correct. But then Mrs. Schmidt remarked, "So is the sky yellow over the desert?" My original thought might still be accurate, but another student suggested it first. The chemicals in the air make the sky blue.
Now I lay here and ponder the color of the sky. I don't care what percentage of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and other chemicals make the sky blue. "The sky is blue because it's the reflection from the water" seemed so much more poetic. I lay here and think, "The sky is blue just because it's blue." Simple.
Sometime in the night I got out the full length therm-a-rest ultralite sleeping pad because my bones were crunching against the hard ground when laying on the side. It was soooo comfortable with the air mattress. It just wasn't right to sleep on the ground with so much solace.
