A dragon on the hill

Forgive the hipster photography--the sunbursts, the bad colors, the poor contrast. It's my camera, not my taste, I promise you.

These photos are all from the route I run a couple times a week. It's about 3 miles total if I take the short route; almost double if I don't. The country is just gorgeous: farmland falling over steep hills, the road winding down the wooded gorge, a narrow field full of grazing milk cows.

This morning--these pictures are from yesterday when it was considerably sunnier--I managed to haul my sorry self out of bed at quarter to six. The world was just beginning to warm after yesterday's thunderstorm. Thick fog roiled off the hillsides and rose up. As I panted up to the top of the ridge, coming out of the woods, the surrounding hills for miles around seemed like little islands in the mist before I dove down down again. I could only see about 200 feet in the fog, and everything shone, drenched in morning dew. When I turned around, the sun was just beginning to burst over the ridge top from my perspective down in the valley, and it broke out between two hills just where the road wound down. There at the top, some kind of huge truck--perhaps utilities, delivering propane--was parked on the narrow road, headlights on, lights dotting down the back. I could only see the lights there in front of the sun like some huge dragon, floating in the morning steam flanked by barely visible grey banks of trees, staring me down as I tucked my head down for the long trot up.

I never heard the truck and by the time I reached the top it had gone, and the sun had nearly burned the mist away.

Some milk cows are sniffing the back of my neck as I take this picture of the pasture opposite the family dairy:

Taking the shortcut back home. My shoes are really wet from high-stepping through the poison ivy: