The view from 20 below

Severe clear day, the kind that would have sun dogs if the sun hadn't gone behind a mountain already, with a steel blue sky, mountains pure white rising into it as if attempting to reach a silver and white full moon, until late in the afternoon alpineglow turns those white slopes a subtle pastel pink. As if nothing that pure could be left alone by mankind, an Air Force jet crosses the sky leaving its contrail, the only break in the blue, an accepted form of military tagging, a gangsta marking territory.