For those of us in the American West who own hiking boots or mountain bikes or skis, it is a generally-accepted fact of life that there is no such thing as a bad day in the mountains.
If you don't believe it, I offer five photographs today as proof.
Most weeks I spend at least one day getting high -- hiking up, up, up into the mountains, I mean. More often than not I go with a friend or two or three, and we just have a hell of a time -- talking or not-talking, but always enjoying the peace of the woods and the wild places.
Just being.
I shot the above photograph on one of two hikes a friend and I did last weekend in the Wallowa Mountains of northeast Oregon. The pictures below presented themselves yesterday as three buds and I trekked in Central Washington near Lake Wenatchee.
This is a wonderful part of the world where I live, and I will never, ever, not feel fortunate for the life I have.
