Rock hounding comes naturally where I live. All varieties and sizes and colors and shapes and compositions abound. I’m neither a geologist nor a mineralogist, but I like rocks. It is the colors that attract me. This morning I took a heavy-duty shoulder bag with me and wandered off along the terrace that forms the bench running along the top of the treed slope that rises from the small town where I live. It was plenty of up and down, sometimes over slippery rock surfaces, while ducking beneath the low, protruding limbs of pinyon pines and junipers.

There are ATV trails weaving all about this area but I eschew these noisy vehicles. We’re probably the only family in town without an ATV. I prefer to walk, not just for the exercise but for the purity of the experience, as well as the quiet that surrounds me once I get far enough away from town.

Winter is a memory and our predicted high today is 87. I was sweating good, though not like I would if there was much humidity (today will be 17%). I started finding some good specimens and my bag began filling up. I had to bypass a few attractive but overlarge rocks. But I came home with lots of color: peach, purple, beige, red, salmon, & umber.

After washing them off with the hose, I enjoyed placing them into my rock garden. Then I sat back and took it all in as I finished off the bottle of water I’d carried with me. It was worth the effort. I’ve been carting rocks back to this spot for years and never tire of ogling them all.