Run Up The Canyon

Yesterday, I decided to take a run. My finger has been hurting pretty bad lately, so I've been trying to scale back the climbing before the trip to the Red. Normally, I wouldn't take the rest and relax approach right before heading on a climbing trip, I'd try to train. Doing that, though, might well leave me unable to crimp with my right hand, so I've had to try to chill and lather the digit in arnica. (I think that's how you spell it. Spell checker suggests arsenic. Thanks.)
So in an effort to get some kind of movement, I laced up the saddest pair of Asics around. They go back to my freshman year of college. I'm sad to admit, but that was nearly a decade ago. Christ. I'm blowing through my life like a teenager through mom and dad's liquor cabinet when they're out of town. When they get back, there's hell to pay.
I ran South and made my way for Boulder Canyon, thinking I'd see the creek. The air was perfect, crisp but not bitter, and my iPod kept shouting good music in my ears, so I eventually found myself below a rock formation a ways up the canyon called The Dome. I stopped and looked up at the big slab of granite, remembering a few things.
My first real rock climb was on that same piece of stone. I remember driving up from Wheat Ridge with my father and two more friends of his, making our way up Highway 93 on a sunny weekend day one summer when I was about 12. One of the other guys climbed up to a stance under one of the roofs that punctuate the rock, put me on belay, and I started scrambling up the slab. I remember getting stuck and being scared to weight the rope, convinced that my 90 pounds of mass I carried at the time would be too much for the anchor, killing everyone involved. My dad's other friend saw that I was terrified and soloed up to where I was shaking and whithering on the rock to push me up past the "featureless" section. I'm sure it was about 5.5, not too difficult by any standard except mine at the time.

Below The Dome, Boulder Creek makes a series of pools as it flows towards the city. Another memory struck me as I wandered down through the willows and gazed out towards the water. My father gave me a light weight fly rod for my 23rd birthday, and just a few days after he gave it to me, I rode my bike up to that same pool and cast a fly for the small brook trout that dart in the shadows. My birthday is in the fall, but I remember it being warm enough to simply wade out into the water in shorts and sandals, the heat of the day washed away by the creek still chilly from late runoff.

As I looked out on the water, remembering myself standing there a few years earlier, I got the feeling that I really wanted to see another trout rise and take a natural fly from the water's surface. I looked to the same bank where I'd caught several with that day, and after a few minutes, saw the tell tale rise. Not content to just see one, I kept telling myself to stay for one more rise. Three more fish rose to take mayflies from the creek, and I turned away, finally content to let them eat their bugs.

I ran home, up and over Anemone Trail, eventually finding my front door just as the sun set. It was a nice run, but I'm ready to have a working finger and start climbing in Kentucky.