To Winter

Words and photos by Greg

We began flirting with autumn months ago, as mountain meadows wore frosted mornings, as leaves began falling toward gold. Since then, through bright days and cooling nights, the garden has faded, leaves have dropped, peaks have whitened with snow. In our valley, snow has merely brushed past leaving no lasting impression of the season turning toward winter. Until now.

For two mornings now we've woken to snow. Yesterday, barely enough to sweep from the walkways. Today, hardly more in depth, but wet enough to shovel away into small piles, enough to bring welcome moisture to the dry winter garden.

There are days left, yet, until the planet reaches the time and space when our place upon its face will turn no further away, when we'll reach the shortest of our days, when the sun will stand and then tip into winter. But now, with snow clinging to bare branches and clouds of cold grey surrounding the town, if feels like winter is here.

This snow may melt by afternoon. Tomorrow it may be bright and sunny. But today I look backward down the long golden hallway of autumn, remember our harvest, remember mountainsides covered with yellow leaves, remember bright skies with light as warm as honey and dry trails that stretched away behind us. Today I look back. Then turn the corner into winter.

The Eccentric Wheel of the Season

Words by Greg
Photos by Greg and Trina

December lays claim to snowy celebrations. And while heaps of plastic snow pile up in the aisles of stores and inside plastic bubbles in front yards, snow on the ground remains sparse to nonexistent on the nearby cliffs and in the nearby canyons.

We began our own celebrations on the first of the month by sunning our bare feet alongside the trail, tucked into the warmth of a south-facing cliff where we ate a picnic lunch and drank in the view.

The eccentric wheel of the season has rolled out other blue sky days and also cloudy days, warmer days and colder days, and days when beams of sunshine snuck between flurries of snow that skated over the valley floor.

Our dogs are eager to assist in our celebrations, always willing to join us for a romp as we walk under any kind of sky, willing to charge through snow and brush, over rock and bramble, to bring smiles to our faces when the bite of the wind tries to turn us toward home.

And we do turn toward home. Where we celebrate the warmth and comfort of shelter. Where wild dogs become lap dogs. Where our connections to the outside world become windows and sunbeams and laptops and the photos we bring back from our small adventures.

Riding with Sticks

Q: Why is that man with the sticks on his back riding his bike through the desert?

A: Because the sun is out and it's pleasantly warm. Because it's late November and the trails are dry. Because mountain biking is fun when trails are rough and demanding.

Q: No, I mean, why does he have those sticks on his back?

A: Um… I have no idea.

Greg: It was because an entertaining length of engaging singletrack happens to end at the bottom of a hill where there's a long un-entertaining and non-engaging climb out on a slightly rough road.

Mike and I "just happened" to have our packs full of rafts and our paddles strapped on behind. So instead of riding the long way back up to where we would ride back down toward home, we took a short ride on down to the river and floated our way back to town. Not a bad way to squander the final drachma of what has been a rich November.

However, this afternoon trip may have been -- really this time -- the last of its kind for the season. In the week that's followed (these little adventures have been piling up behind these posts…) the temps have been dropping, until this morning's slipped into the single digits F. My route today took me along the river, and from within the warm embrace of my motor-cubicle, I could see lots of slushy ice clumping on top of the water.

Which could - could - mean that I'm done rafting until spring. Riding? That will probably continue anyway. But floating… I'll take this opportunity to start looking forward to next season.

Mongolia: Aesthetics of Decay

Words and Photos by Greg

There was a timelessness that crept into my feelings about Mongolia as we pedaled across its wide spaces. A sense that life there has continued to be very much as it has been. That the grass, the horses, sheep, goats and yaks remain. That herders still follow cycles of seasons. That lives both cling to and thrive on traditions that have rolled forward out of a dark past, through waves of glory, through times of obscurity, through hardship and plenty. Through growth and decay.

I saw shadows of decay that led me to believe more deeply in this long continuity. Hide and bone. Wood and straw. These discards of life traced an arc within the cycle. Sun whitened bone becomes dust becomes grass becomes horse becomes bare bone again, bleaching under the sun.

There were shadows, too, of spiritual worlds. Sacred places, high places, peaks and passes were marked with ovoo, heaps of rocks or sticks, perhaps littered with decaying offerings, small bills or coins, trinkets, bones, glass, liquor, and usually fluttering with strips of blue sky silk. These reached upward and backward through time to deep connections with shamanistic worship of those high places and the wide sky. And Buddhist temples, built, perhaps, to house a sense of the eternal, were decaying beautifully.

Many of the more recent ambitions for improving upon the nomadic life are already falling into ruin. Roads and bridges. Rail cars and industrial buildings. The roughly constructed basketball hoops that stand against the dreams of the youth. The plastic, glass and aluminum from the products of better lives lay heaped and decaying, scattered over the steppe. There is a catch. The bones and hides and fat of sheep may rot within the life of a man or woman. But plastic, glass and aluminum will not be turned so quickly. The arc of their decay reaches far into an unknown future.

The country strives to change, to move "forward". There have been and there will be improvements. And there have been and there will be failures. As in my own country, the results of many of those attempts lay crumbling and bleaching under the sun.





Offerings of blue sky silk connect with a long history of shamanism.




Temples I saw were decaying with grace.










Basketball hoops sprouted from many ger camps. This dilapidated one was near an abandoned camp.


Bridges seem necessary only for cars, trucks and motorcycles. Herds and herders do well without for all but the largest rivers.




Industry in Mongolia seems to have arrived in fits and starts. In the country and small towns, I saw much more falling into ruin than productive in any obvious way.




Hot stones filled a lamb carcass as a means of cooking it. The discarded heap will easily return to the earth.


Discards from more modern feasting will linger.