Seasonal migration patterns

A few years ago I had an instructor who shared with me a perspective that has been helpful to me ever since. The subject was the seasonal lifestyle, the constant (or seemingly constant) changing of address, job, location, climate, and friends that happens a few times each year to those of us in the tribe. She got to talking about the differance between nomadic peoples and people who simply wander. Nomads may be always on the move, but they tend to frequent the same pastures and lands year after year, season after season and that after awhile these lands, dispersed though they might be in time and space, become home as places and seasonal events become part of a person's landscape. Thus the nomad, despite being on the move, is at the same time always at home on the move, within the boundaries of that personal landscape. The wanderer in contrast lacks that personal connection with the places and seasonal events they encounter.

This concept has helped me at times when I feel particularly un-grounded. This is not one of those times, in part because I have grown into my personal landscape and migration pattern, which includes the journey from Flagstaff to Lander, Wyoming, where I sit writing this. I passed through Mesa Verde for the third year in a row to visit Melissa the Taller. Went to Winter Park to visit a friend from the Ice. Made my yearly pilgrimage to Ft. Collins to visit the New Belgium Brewery and sample the fine beverages on tap. And now tommorrow I'll start my third season as an instructor for NOLS. While I generally try and take some differant roads and studiously avoid the freeway, I invariably end up on familiar territory, especially as the years go by. And that is ok.

This year is feels shorter though. I still made my rounds in Colorado, and will visit the ranch for a week after I get out of the field, and then swing up to Montana for a conference of diabetic mountaineers. Then I don't know what will happen, but hopefully an adventurous road trip involving mountains, rivers, and a girl I'm kinda' sweet on, all on the way back to Flagstaff. Then I have the lofty goal of setting a new record for longest consecutive stretch of time without leaving for distant lands. I think if I make it past five and a half months, it will be the longest I've ever spent in one place at a stretch in over 7 years. Regardless of the time, it is the attitude which is important, wherein my adventures happen on a slightly more local scale. But since I'm still adjusting to this new attitude, I think this road trip and NOLS adventure is a good stepping stone in transition.




Driving through Colorado backroads is like driving through a post card.

Tasting at the New Belgium Brewery.

Ranger Mel and I.

Condors

Went out in the field for a few days last week, helped a friend who teaches desert survival classes do a course for some fellows from the National Transportation Safety Board, the guys who travel around the country and the world investigating plane crashes. Anyway, I taught a short class on wilderness first aid and helped Tony Nestor teach his basic outdoor survival curriculum. Then we went and toured the ruins at Wupatki National Monument and then Grand Canyon, where I got my first good look at the condors that were released into the wild here and few years ago and have since begun breeding succesfully in the wild.

A ten foot-plus wingspan, these bad boys were swooping and diving and soaring no more than 15 feet from me at times. At other times these were much, much farther, obviously.

Kumquat

Have you ever had a kumquat? Do you know what a kumquat is? Do you think the word kumquat is fun to say out loud?

Until today my answers would have been much as your's: no, sorta, and you betcha'!

At my favorite grocery store, they sit in a small pile under the mangos and kiwis and assorted fruits that grow in the tropics and yet are still available in this high desert town 11 1/2 months of the year. They are in a small pile that never changes size or shape or goes on sale. In fact the kumquats that I bought and ate today may be the entire suppy of kumquats in Flagstaff, so infrequent is their purchase and consumption. Or so I infer from the aforementioned constancy in appearance in the produce section and the fact that it took 3 checkout ladies to identify what I was attempting to buy and locate a price code for it.

So what do they taste like? Well first, if you didn't know, they look like tiny ovuloid (a recently invented word meaning oval shaped sphere like blob) oranges, both in color and texture, if not size, being about the same size as quail eggs. So the comment about quail eggs aside, they taste like they look; tiny oranges that you eat all in one bite, rind/peel/skin and all. So first it's bitter, they it's sweet. Kind of like stereotypical old men in disney movies.

Sorry, I didn't really know what else to write about, life is less compelling in written form while not on the road. But I've been enjoying these last nearly 2 months in town, having adventures of a decidely more local nature. In about 2 weeks I'll head out again, but for a much shorter time, only going to Wyoming for a month to lead a NOLS trip in the Wind River range, then making a pass through Nebraska and Montana for a couple weeks on the way home.

Not work related

Went down to Fossil Springs last week, just for an overnight. That meant we could bring all the things that you seldom see on a backpacking trip: beer, wine, watermelons, mangos, cantelope, and what seemed like 3 metric tons of assorted other fresh produce for a monsterous breakfast buffett. I was torn what picture to post here for the trip, this one captures the moment best I guess, even though I think the only person in our group in this frame is Risa, flying through the air from the rope swing into the creek.

Went climbing at the Pit on Sunday, first time on real rock since September. Felt nice. Nic is belaying me here as I pause to take his picture.

Tim-Tam Suck

I first learned of the Tim-Tam, and the Tim-Tam Suck, from Aussie Steve, the intern at NAU Outdoors from a year or so ago. The Tim-Tam you see is a chocolate cookie wafer thingy, something the Brits and Aussies might call a biscuit. Which really confuses them when they visit the U.S. and find biscuits and gravy on menus. But we would call it a cookie. So the Tim-Tam suck works when you bite the tip off either end of the wafer-cookie and dip it into your hot cocoa and suck the hot chocolate through the chocolate wafer, providing a moment of extra rich coco bliss before the whole thing melts into coco sludge. Which is good too.

Had my first day of work at the new job last week, after a 4 day backpacking trip in the canyon country. Then after a day of work went on an overnight hike to Fossil Springs. This week I'll probably work more than one day. Hard to get things done otherwise, still, I think it best to ease into this sort of thing, like a hot tub, or conversation with strange drivers while hitchhiking.

Hard to focus too much on work these days; I have a new adventuring buddy that likes exploring new places at least as much as I do. And she is possibly even more hard core than I am.