This story was related to me orally from a friend of mine in Durango, Colorado. I have great trust in this man and KNOW his words to be true. The following is a true story about an encounter with a Land Spirit of a natural spring in a remote area of the San Jaun Mountains in southwest Colorado.

Colin: "Well I actually do have a story about a "spirit" of some kind that I encountered on a hiking trip a few years ago."

Ben: "Can you tell me more about what happened? This has been an interest of mine for some years now."

Colin: "Sure. Me and a friend went on a weeklong trek into the San Juans about three years ago. We went into some pretty remote country, it was breathtaking. Anyway, one day we had been hiking up a mountain canyon trying to get closer to higher vistas for the next days camping. Just before sunset we came across the PERFECT place to camp. A grove of Colorado Blue Spruce that bordered on an incredible spring that was coming right out of the canyon wall. All around the rock, around the spring, was the most intensely orange lichen, and green thick moss that I have EVER seen."

(Note: In Irish Gaelic the word for "spring water", fioruisce [pronounced fir-ish-ke] means "true, real, or genuine water". Springs have long been held as sacred in the Celtic tradition. The Nuche [the local native tribe of Colorado] also revere them as great sources of power.)

Colin: "So we decided that this was the place to be. We had a small fire and ate some dinner and turned in for the night in a little two man tent we had. Later that night my friend, John, wakes up screaming and in a really bad state. He is about halfway awake and is yelling, "Its going to crush us! It's going to crush with boulders!" I do my best to wake him up fully and reasure him that it is just a nightmare. But my heart is racing too! Eventually we both calm down and go back to sleep."

Colin: "I am waking up the next morning. As I turn over my foot brushes up against something hard that is pushing into the tent fabric. I get up and go outside and my jaw just drops. "John! Get up and come out here." I said.

John gets up and comes outside and then HIS jaw drops. All around the tent are some LARGE boulders about three feet high and maybe four feet across. Way to heavy to lift unless you had equipment. We could also see where the boulders had been ripped out of the ground AND where they had bounced and rolled on the ground on there way to creating a circle around the tent!

I asked John, "What DID you dream about last night?" He told me that he had dreamt of a spirit or "something" that he could hardly see that was storming around the camp enraged that we had dared to camp there."

Ben: "Wow."

Colin: "Yeah, needless to say I do not camp next to mountain springs anymore!"