Quickly gaining momentum as I slid down a towering pile of loose gravel, I managed to use my tripod as a ski pole to regain my balance, lift myself up off my rear, and get back upon my two legs. To my own surprise, I had managed to save face and avoid a mouthful of quarter-inch crushed stone for lunch. At the bottom of the aggregate mountain, I could see an overgrown field stretched out before me full with scratchy shrubs and juvenile spruce trees. However, the sky above was as grey and menacing as the quarried stone I was emptying from my pockets by the handful. I knew it wouldn't be long before the clouds burst and a flood of rain would turn the low-lying quarry field into a pit of mud and quicksand.

Looking out across the vast field, I spotted in the distance what appeared to be a herd of grazing creatures camouflaged among the spruce saplings and knee-high weeds. Walking closer, I swear I saw before my very eyes, the slender neck of an enormous Brachiosaurus rising into the stormy sky. To its left, a hulking Stegosaurus appeared to be watching my every move, its heavy skull browsing and bobbing in the breeze and above the undergrowth. The further I pushed through the tangle of weeds closer to the enormous beasts, the more distinct their shapes and textures became.

Soon I was surrounded by these colossal creatures. Their rust-scaled bodies seemed to have weathered a million years. Their metallic, armored hides were blotched with moss and lichen as they towered above me, reeking strangely of diesel. The silence of our peaceful coexistence was quickly shattered. Emanating from a thick patch of birch trees no more than one hundred feet ahead, the unmistakable sound of branches snapping sent my heart racing. As my eyes focused toward the noise, I watched a Triceratops slowly emerge from the brush. Its immense skull, crowned with three razor-sharp horns, flattened the delicate birch trees as its scaly limbs partially sank into the sandy soil. My heart began to calm, because I did not feel a sense of danger, knowing I was surrounded by a group of herbivore friends, who surely saw me as more of a nuisance than as a snack.

It wasn't long before the first drop of rain began to plummet from the heavy grey sky. I felt a single cool droplet slide down the back of my neck, nearly evaporating into a puff of steam as it trickled farther down my sweaty back. To my amazement, even beasts as gnarly as these dinosaurs seemed to fear the impending rain storm too. Over the next few minutes I watched as the creatures slowly began to migrate, single-file, toward the cover of the distant wood line. No sooner had the dinosaurs vanished without a trace than the rain began to intensity.

The quarry pit began to flood with water, quickly puddling around my boots. Hastily, I made a mad dash back toward higher ground and the very gravel pile I had slid down earlier to enter into this prehistoric world. This time, however, I found myself sliding backward with every step toward the top of the loose gravel. After too much time to admit passing, I finally reached the summit and took one last look over my shoulder at the massive expanse of the quarry behind me.

Moments after, a cracking boom of thunder, heavy sheets of wind driven rain blanketed the quarry, turning the lost world into a series of darkened silhouettes that seemed to play tricks on my mind. The Brachiosaurus' soaring neck now more clearly resembled the long boom of a crane, held taut by a web of cables. The hulking Stegosaurus was merely the rusting carcass of a massive diesel engine perched within the skeletal frame of a Caterpillar bulldozer. The Triceratops's razor-sharp horns were nothing more than the toothed bucket of a dead, front-end loader, rusted in place, its broken hydraulic system leaving it frozen, permanently raised toward the sky. Whatever beasts I had witnessed roaming this place now seemed to have transformed into something more realistic, leaving only their rusty steel bones behind within the fossil quarry below.