Here's a small sample of the wild and zany meanderings that came from my head during an especially long and useless faculty meeting this afternoon:

Staring bleakly into the distance between him and the lectern, Logan listened to the presenter’s opinions of at-risk education. These addresses hadn't always been this vacuous to him, but in the past few years something had changed.

“Gordam, this is getting old,” Logan cursed under his breath, glancing around to gauge the volume of the unintentionally out-loud grumble. With this break in his concentration, he typed a flyfishing site's address into the browser on his laptop, but the lobby's WiFi couldn't penetrate these thick, energy-sucking convention-hall walls.

As he cursed the weak network and his seat too far inside the row, the evening before came back to him in a misty stream. He’d been on the Lone Peak Trail to investigate how high the snow pack had melted to. The air was quite crisp, even though it was the end of April, and sounds carried from afar in the clear air from all around. As the snow retreated up the mountain, it was bringing spring and its rites.

Most of the resident deer and elk had calved. Coyotes and foxes had their litters in the same period and the pups and kits were leaving off their parent’s lessons for the day. Hares and grouse were busy heading to their shelters, and other birds called as they settled in their places for the night. The few nighthawks returning from their migration to these high valleys were making their last dives and swoops for early insects before darkness fell.

Logan continued up the hill, with the snow showing in patches more and more frequent along the side of the trail and on the northern exposures of the canyon.

Glancing up, he thought he heard something descending the hill. At this elevation and hour, Logan wasn’t sure what to expect. He’d heard nothing in that direction but the chattering of birds, so as the quiet padding came closer in the moist debris of the path, Logan intuitively stepped off the trail and into the encroaching trees and brush, with a clear view of the approach.

With his heart racing and mind searching, the sound came still closer…