OK. I admit it. I do it all the time. I can’t stop. It’s my superpower. I see things. Not the ordinary, “Oh look, a bunny-shaped cloud” kind of things. No. I see lions in boulders, faces in shadows, Elvis in potato chips. My imagination is basically running a 24/7 improv show with no intermission.
So naturally, when they opened up Old Fall River Road—that historic, one-way, unpaved, hang-on-for-dear-life dirt road carved into the Rockies—I signed up. This isn’t your Sunday drive. This is a road built between 1913 and 1920 by people who apparently thought seatbelts and guardrails were for cowards. It snakes up the mountain with hairpins sharper than your grandma’s knitting needles, climbs two miles above sea level, and provides enough opportunities to plummet into the abyss that you start humming “Nearer, My God, to Thee” after the third switchback.
As we passed the open gate to begin our ascent, there it was: a rock outcropping looming over the road. Instantly my brain lit up like a Vegas marquee: That’s a lion’s head! I scrambled for my camera like a paparazzo chasing Bigfoot.
The guide, calm as ever, asked the group, “See that rock up ahead? What’s it look like?”
The crowd tossed out guesses like confetti: “A bear!” “A camel!” “My ex-boss!” But me? Oh, I knew. I shouted, “It’s a lion’s head!”
“That’s right!” the guide said. “That’s Mufasa!”
But let’s be honest—if you’re a Tarzan fan, you know the truth. That wasn’t Mufasa. That was Jad-bal-ja, Tarzan’s golden lion sidekick. And here he was, reincarnated as a roadside boulder, two miles above sea level, keeping watch over all us nervous tourists.
I beamed like I’d just won the Nobel Prize for Overactive Imagination. My lungs gasped thin alpine air, my inner child roared with pride, and somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, Jad-bal-ja lives on.
Oops. There I go again.
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