cuyamaca coulda been

sunday was a cuyamaca cougar coulda been kinda day.

the dutch journos and I went hiking in cuyamaca rancho state park on sunday evening.

a gorgeous evening. The hills had burned five years ago. The oaks are coming back, as are the manzanitas. But nothing close to their former glory.

the hill is covered in big purple spikey wildflowers that look like foxgloves on steroids.

it's an amazing evening.

and then dutch journo 1 freezes, stammers, switches from english to dutch and in a primal voice says "beast!!!"

he thinks he heard the growl of a cougar. I start yelling and waving my hands. I stand tall. We're at the corner of a switch back and one of us looks back to make sure it's not coming up the train from below. It's not.

We never do see the cougar. If there ever was one. We never hear it. But we do hear ourselves do a lot of talking that evening becauase we decided to keep talking in an an attempt to ward off evil cougar spirits.