The sun has warmed us through the thin, high mountain
air, and, panting a bit, we hasten to find shade
in ponderosa pine and spruce before continuing
along the sunlit path that winds among the fossil beds
of Florissant. We’ve admired the fallen giants’
huge remains—Eocene sequoias turned
to stone, the limbs long gone but the base still upright,
petrified after tides of volcanic fire and ash
roiled across the valley, more than thirty million years
ago. There are signs here, too, of paleo-Indians,
mixed with artefacts of Uncompaghre Utes and Apaches
of the Jicarilla tribe, who left their potsherds
scattered in the redwood ruins; too, abundant shale,
imprinted with the brittle, delicate debris of ages
even earlier—times I cannot imagine—
when sediments, compressed, solidified, took hostages—
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