Blue Tipped Hair

She held onto the lamp as if it were the mast of a ship as the bus rumbled up the hill toward its regularly scheduled stop.

At this time of day the bus normally would've had some high school students and commuters. But on the day after Christmas a family of Chinese were taking the bus to the Shanihan Ridge trailhead to do some hiking… and there was this girl ....

It didn't look expensive.  A floor lamp. Silver body with an opaque cone-shaped shade that pointed toward the ceiling. It's tube body was wrapped in Christmas wrap and the base and shade weren't.

As she stepped from the bus the chinook winds buffeted the shade of the lamp, pulling her arm away from her body. She leaned forward and thrust the lamp into the wind like a lance. The flatirons glowing red on the sunset. Her hair blew behind her like a tattered flag, the remnants of a shocking blue hairdye still visible for about four inches at the ends. When she didn't have it pulled up or back or the wind want blowing it reached down to her belt loops. She told people that she had been growing it out to donate to cancer patients.

But she really loved those blue ends.