Instead of taking my morning slowly on Sunday, I woke up before dawn so I could make it to the Valley just as the sun was breaching the horizon. While it has been hot in the afternoons, my side of the earth’s finally leaning further and further away from the sun, making the mornings cooler for longer. Unfortunately, school’s taken up the majority of my mornings this semester, and summer refuses to loosen its grip on Colorado  (yay, climate change!). 

But this Sunday, after not paying the Valley a visit for over two weeks, I knew I had to go, for the sake of my health and sanity. 

Dressed in my typical jeans, hat, camo hoodie, and worn-out hiking boots, I gathered up my camera gear and sped west in my Xterra towards the foothills, which were stained pink by the sunrise. Five minutes later, I found myself driving in the shadow of the hogback on Ken Caryl Avenue, as grey-brown mule deer flanked the road on both sides. Hardly anyone was out-and-about. I saw nobody except for mule deer from the hogback to the huge red rocks I call God’s Ass, where I parked my Xterra and jumped out with my camera gear slung across my shoulders. 

The calls of magpies, blue jays, starlings, and chickadees echoed from the still-green cottonwood trees as a doe and her fawn plodded down the nearby sidewalk. Both of them had mostly shed their red summer coats, and were now a dark grey-brown. The fawn was much more unsure of me than the doe as I approached them from behind. While mama continued to calmly walk into the field adjacent to the sidewalk, which was shaded by huge red rock monoliths, her fawn trotted around us, stopping at times to stare at me with his huge ears aimed towards me. 

I almost forgot to take any pictures of the deer, as I’d grown so used to seeing them. They’re resident deer, after all. The same deer I regularly encounter in Ken Caryl Valley will also come down to Ken Caryl Ranch and eat my roses, though they prefer my neighbor’s fruit trees across the street. However, when the little Muley fawn continued to circle me and shoot me funny side-eyes as he did so, I just had to take a couple pictures before I moved on to the red rocks to the west. 

I followed the paved trail past the field, towards the Bradford house and a grove of ancient cottonwoods. I could hear birds of all kinds singing and fluttering around those cottonwoods, but the trees’ huge, green leaves hid them from my camera. So, I moved on, following the trail as it turned to dark soil in the grass, then rocky, sandy, and crimson as it wound around more red rock formations.