My first hike since surgery

Saturday, we hiked an old roadbed to the top of a nameless mountain that I will simply list as Sec17 Twn20S Rng01E Willamette Meridian. The last 150 vertical feet were too rough for my knee, so I waited in an abandoned quarry while Peggy and the dogs summited. Andesitic rocks of blue, green, brown, black, gray, and lavender, lay beneath a gun metal sky and within a circle of snowy mountains, making this, my first trip into the woods since January, a precious event. I spotted my old friend the snowbrush—Ceanothus velutinus.