Caught by a cloudburst on an open plateau, he squatted alongside his horse in the pelting rain until the sun at last emerged. While shrugging from soaked clothing and spreading them on nearby rocks to dry, the naked man caught the twinkle of blue glistening from the brown mud of a deluge-flattened marmot mound. When he held it, he chuckled at the way sunbeams reflected through the tiny stone's hexagonal prisms. As his clothes dried, still in his altogether, the man wandered from marmot mound to marmot mound, picking up additional queer blue stones until he held a handful. That's how Jake...