Embudo Canyon, blue and white, after the blizzard

I longed to see blue and white today, and my wish came true.

The non-color of the winter Embudo Canyon desert lay buried under a blanket of snow. White below, blue above. Cacti the only interruption, sage green in the slant light, some bedecked with a slab of snow or sheaf of ice.

We stumbled on ice – I went down hard on a knee – and postholed where others had clearly postholed before us. The snow lay four to six inches deep in places, squeaking under our boots. Calf muscles I’d never felt powered me up slopes piled deep with snow.

The mouth of the canyon stretched wide, sun on white waves of snowdrifts. We’d reached the lower Embudo parking lot easily, but when we passed the upper parking lot and its access road, we saw a sheet of ice.

We climbed further, stacked rock of canyon walls narrowing, shadow falling across the trail. We stopped where the canyon became an obstacle course of boulders. Not in the snow.

The sun dropped just below the canyon wall as we walked back, backlighting a filigree of ice-covered juniper high above.

At a junction in the trail, a penguin sculpted of snow served the purpose of a cairn. We spotted more penguins ahead. I was charmed, until we reached a pass where the young men who’d made the penguins stood on either side of the trail.

One mentioned that the steep section of path right behind us was really slippery. I immediately turned around and started walking back to the previous junction. It felt like they were taking up all the space on the trail and I’d be damned if I let them see me slip and slide down that chute.

The alternate route brought new levels of postholing. At some points we scooted through hip-high craters in the snow.

I groused about the penguin-makers. My husband didn’t understand my irritation. He’d stopped to talk with them and thought they were nice.

I realized I was the only one who cared whether those dudes saw me slip on the ice. I was worried they would see me as someone who didn’t belong on the trail.

I realized I had my fair share of trail credibility, having been on trails 52 times already this year, including some tough ones.

But trail credibility is a fairly useless manmade (or womanmade) notion.

There is no one who doesn’t belong on a trail. There is nothing we need to prove to the natural world.

There is only blue and white, and blue and white, and blue and white.

Hike length: 4.5 miles

Difficulty: moderate

Trail traffic: moderate

Wildlife spotted: curve-billed thrasher, dove