Rockies Quotes

“We spent June and July in the Rockies, growing stronger, feeling feral in the untamed range of mountains.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“They headed across the meadow, passing groups of students eating lunch. A mottled bird that looked like a cross between a chicken and a pheasant burst from the undergrowth. Ash watched it flutter into the trees, then land in the bushes.
“What in the world…?”
Vale followed his gaze to where the bird waddled through the undergrowth. “It’s a spruce grouse.”
Ash stared into the trees. A few steps away from the meadow, the light dropped by half. “What did you call it again?”
“Spruce grouse is the official name, though they’re sometimes called prairie chickens or fool hens.”
Ash chuckled. “Fool hens, huh?”
“Yeah. People think they’re kind of dumb—the way they let other animals get close to them. They’re pretty mellow.”
Ash watched it as it faded back into the autumn foliage, the plumage a match to the brown and orange leaves. “How do you know all this stuff?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I read things, I guess.”
“I know that, but where’d you learn the stuff about birds?”
“I’ve got a couple books on wildlife. Books on the woods, and on camping, and survival, and…” Vale shrugged. “I just read a lot of stuff. Okay?”
Ash grinned. “Pretty cool.”
― Danika Stone

“While they rested, he searched for landmarks. The mountains they’d walked into were gone, a hazy gray ceiling of storm clouds in their place. It gave him the unsettling feeling of being caught inside a box. Ash turned and looked back the other direction. His attention caught on the forked top of a pine tree and he frowned. What the hell…? That looks like the same tree we passed fifteen minutes ago. It felt for a moment like he was in a poorly designed game and had just come across a repeating landscape. His gaze dropped down to the path where they’d just passed. His stomach churned uneasily. The trail was a faded smudge, the line of it almost too faint to follow in the gathering darkness, but there was a small outcrop of rocks in the trees that also looked familiar.
His attention jumped back to the pronged top of the branches. “What the…?”
― Danika Stone, Switchback

“Ash nodded. A moment later, sleep overtook him and he began to dream. He stood in the gamescape of Immortal Defenders, Vale in armor at his side.”
― Danika Stone

“The ‘Hypoxia Blues’ can be a feature of living in high altitude cities.”
― Steven Magee, Hypoxia, Mental Illness & Chronic Fatigue