On Saturday, I discovered some people in my family had plans to go hiking and I hadn’t been invited, but they got stuck with me anyway.  We hiked in our new backyard. It isn’t very diverse terrain compared to what I grew up hiking, but it has its’ appeal. Inevitably, we came upon animal bones and so I started picking them up and showing everyone, much to the disgust of my offspring. It wasn’t like it was fresh or anything! As we were heading down the mountain from our hike, I spotted a whole ribcage that wasn’t recent. Just as I was coming upon it as the first person, I smelled a terrible stench. The stench was not from those white bones, but what was it? I covered my mouth and face area and screamed at everyone else to also. Just beyond the bones around a bush was a huge and I mean “UUGGGE” carcass that looked to be the size of a horse. It was pretty recently killed and left with no head. As the fur colors were darker than the local deer, we determined it was an elk. Since we live next to the wildlife zone, it has become obvious that we are never quite sure what we’ll find out there. When we successfully got beyond the stench, we continued on our way to the beautiful stream that flows down next to our home. I then gave an impromtu lesson on why we don’t drink from beautiful mountain streams. BECAUSE just as that elk died/was killed in a lonely ravine up above, animals randomly can decompose in or near streams. BRING YOUR OWN H20!!!! 

Ascent