Redtail Rise black flies on the windowsill

Despite better vistas that he could have climbed, the marred landscape of the rise called out to him. Even at a distance, it seemed out of place with all around it—skeletal branches seared and blackened, void of leaves and all the other foreboding suggestions of its history—and maybe a wiser canine would have avoided it. Such was a thought that crossed his mind as he had begun to climb the slopes, but even he saw where life stirred. The branches may have been void of green, but earth itself was not.

From the higher climes beneath the midday sun, he made note of the distant mountains. From there they were unrecognizable but ever jagged and varied as they made their barrier between the relative unknown. A casted glance behind him thrust the glacier back into view, but he did not fancy a climb along its frosted paths with the weather warming. If anything, at least today was warmer and drier than the days before it.

Moving on, he brought his gaze to the path ahead. The horizon to his west seemed to be more the same—forests and small valleys, delicate rises pockmarked with plains and beyond it, a broad haze he was certain was more than a lake. It would not have surprised him to find the ocean again and with that promise, he ventured toward it with hopes to make good time.