My new mistress winter

On the 1st day after the Winter Solstice, I sought a final release....a release which has been long overdue.  This plan started with a vision I had during my last bikepacking trip of the summer season....a vision which I shared in an email to a few friends and family immediately following that trip.  Yesterday, that vision came true....what I wrote back in September is quoted in italics.

Gearing up outside of the truck....Graham's whimpering became a constant reminder to hurry up and adjust my bindings and skis.....

Sunflowers are hard to come by in winter in a grocery store, so I grabbed the bouquet with the most yellow "sunflower" like flowers and strapped it to my pack for the climb up to the clearing I had envisioned.  As I skinned through the forest, I could feel the Folgers coffee can holding her dig into my back....a reminder that I was taking her to this spot one last time.  Listening to a few choice songs on the iPod, "I made my way to the clearing at the edge of the dark forest, thoughts of black and white swirling about in my head like the soft snow falling at my face......."

".....Walking out into the open expanse, snow slowly falling from above....the promise and potential of a warm dawn is dead...the heated romance that once was summer is gone......."  It is here that I paused for a few minutes and reflected.....Graham sensed something too and became much more stoic....

Climbing higher, I started to notice Graham struggling on the skin track.  The soft powder was not compacting enough under my skis for him to pass....so I helped him along physically in spots....and realized that he was helping me along in other ways.  I felt that he was helping me through this process of return, acceptance and release......What I had envisioned as a somber trip...was mixed with happiness and joy at my companions occasional hijinks....new beginnings for both of us.....cut into the virgin canvas of snow....on a skin track symbolizing a climb out of the darkness....

Arriving at the spot I had seen in my vision many months ago; I dug out a bivy for Graham and I to sit in, protecting us from wind while we watched passing clouds drop the occasional stellar dendrite from the sky...

   

Above me I planted the yellow flowers in the snow, lay down and cried a mixture of emotions....

Removing her from my pack, I planted the rest of the flowers at the spot I last saw her adventurous spirit....a fight to live life, a will to explore and a drive towards new experiences.......this is the lasting memory which will triumph over the memories of sickness and death......

 ".......He lets go of the memory as he falls into love with his new mistress winter....." 

"........It is here she comes to rest for time immortal amongst the snow and sunflower owned only by seasons eternal..."

Returning home, I make a few cautions turns in the thin snowpack....I look back to view our spot one last time as an eye in the sky looks down upon me.

That night as I lay in bed....the sound of a winter storm raging above me kept me awake for most of the night.....several inches of new snow had fallen.  My new mistress winter has come home.

Road Trip

A trip across the expanses of time....geography....is a thing to behold. A road trip is a brilliant event marked by experience, expectation and newfound experience.  As in all seasons there must be a marker thrown down on the ground to identify the change......a change in seasons marked by the falling leaf of fall.  Our season is now marked by the fallow bike gear in the garage in place of the wax iron stinking up the closet......a closet that now smells more of melted P-Tex and wax as opposed to Stans's Sealant and ATB lube.......the search for the crystal.....the zero-gravity mass which lifts us up......the cloud of frozen Hydrogen and Oxygen in a 2:1 ratio....it awaits us all.....

The darkness of a straight road cuts below the pregnant low clouds of a leading low-pressure system presuppose a healthy dump........

The climb on the first day up Alberta Peak, against the helmet of the man before me,  reminds me that the race is on......never slow in your search for powder....for there will always be another before you.......strive to be the first.......

.....the mantra to be first is etched in my toes of winter.....with every step I take, I peer down and realize my own commandment.......climb....CLIMB......Never stop climbing.....never stop attaining what you dream of.....never stop reaching........for this is the goal....the fight, is the goal.....and you'll never get there......Climb Dammit!!.....and if you stop.... well.....then...you're probably dead....

.....but never forget, that climbing blindly will result in folly.....climb with caution, climb with knowledge, climb with certainty......climb as an educated individual and all I know......will climb with you......

Turning my eyes to the lens, I spot a shot where the light of early afternoon backlit the chunder of an oft-used corridor of powder......the powder in this shot was heavenly......Cholla shows the cush.....

...in a rare moment.....the photog gets his backpack and glass snagged.....and gets a pic in.....

......or two...........

The afternoon celebration, steeped in stories of frozen crystal clouds, bails and near-misses is captured in the stoke of brilliantly glistening bottles of microbrew.

The next day dawns with a focus on improvement.....improvement requested........you're lookin good bro....just get that positive pole plant out there to increase your upper body angulation which will result in better control on the steeps........outside of that....your flask of aged Jameson makes me happy.....

On day two....I revisited the shot we were in before....the light angles necessitated it.....and so did the powder...the later being the dominant factor.......

The splash off of the bow of board.... illuminated by a shaft of light from an early winter horizon fascinated me......

......shadow of rider, and brightness of effect became what I sought......I no longer cared for a face shot......

......I wanted illumination of frozen water.....a crystalline expression, frozen in time and space against the body of force....,,,,

......a force which made it all happen.....a force driving forward.......

......a force which can reverse itself.............

At other times....this force drives higher......

High enough to the point they stop shit talkin' because they can't catch their breath.....

......for but a second.......

The vision of what is possible....me encouraging a path forward is defined.......

On the way out....the skiing over.....more beauty and experience is captured.....

One can't drive the expansive void without thinking of nothing for at least a few moments....this is one of those moments......

........and yet, another........

As I think back on this seasonal roadtrip with friends, it is not the times with friends I remember as the marker for the season.  Rather, it is the last turn I took....in hip deep powder.....and the ABSOLUTE absence of thought that occurred when I did so.  My mind at peace, present and focused:  I was living in the moment......I'm glad to have found that in the middle of good friends.  There is nothing like a powder day.....NOTHING.

The sands of the season

If you've never ridden the AZT singletrack from Pistol Hill to the Cienega and back.....you've not lived.  Here is your chance to do so....AZT Jamboree.   I set out to ride this section on my day off....what I found on this day took my breath away.  It's a land defined by contrast....an equilibrium held by gossamer threads....a place where seasons hold tight within topographic anomalies....a place where emotions can find solace in similar circumstance......

It once was said that the sands of time know no boundary.......

That whispers spoken in the wind are too soft to hear..........

And that the colors of a rainbow only represent what we see in our own hearts........   

I don't believe in any of this, for I hear the whispers in the sound the breeze makes between the spines of saguaros as I pass......me stopping from time to time, wondering if someone is there.....

....I see the colors of the world expressed in varied configurations through the seasons.....

....and I count the grains as they slowly pass by me in the current of a desert stream.

We can slowly adjust our expectations to tune ourselves to these things....Mindful acceptance of what is present over what is not, will bring us closer....closer to happiness in what is our inheritable right...a world of beauty and wonder.

When you strip away the layers, you find the raw beauty of what is, at times, death and decay.....they become beauty within the right perspective....

A fading stream held captive to the transition of fall to winter....no longer exhibiting the roil of a summer tempest....is now sanguine.  With banks carved from the violence of excess, it now sits draped in the contemptuousness of fall.

I visited old friends this week, and made new ones.  I paid homage to those left behind, and I've looked toward the future.  Within each, I've faced them with an open heart; ready to spill blood if I must, and smile when in doubt.

Someone told me this past week....."people should smile more"....I agree.  As in riding and skiing...where you look, your body follows.  As on the singletrack and powdered slope, so goes our attitude......where your smile leads, your heart will follow.

Where do you want to go?.........

A winters rain

The words of a thousand poets could never describe the beauty of a winters rain in the Sonoran desert....we set to ride into a winters storm....such a rare treat upon two wheels....

Closer inspection brings perspective to the sepia world reflected back on a rusted plate of iron covered in the thin collection of a winters rain.  The predictable bend of light along the edge of matter....photons warping around the meniscus.....stretching what is seen into a swirl beyond the edge of what is apparent....what is seen...what is reasonable......it draws us closer to inspect what we know with our own eyes, yet see in a different light.....

Studying just a small portion of what I'm about to ride.....I see in a new light, the raw numbers and perspective of what I'm to climb.  It sounds absurd....and it is absurd....I much prefer it in the flesh, the experience....which will truly define how it is vs. how it is graphed into the intangible experience of my memory.  Never look beyond the horizon....one pedal stroke at a time.....never predict the future....for if you do, you'll be sorely disappointed......we ride now, we ride here....we live.

.....et voila....ici.....laissez bon temps roulez....

The cold world of winter brings flat light, and yet the opportunity to work in a softer pallate....with the sharpest of subjects....is welcomed with healthy appreciation of the things that bring us pain.

My ole' workhorse, LaFawnduh, seen in the beauty of her worn appearance......she's taken me through more than you could imagine...more than what should be tolerable...perhaps more than what you'll ever see yourself.  She's never faltered....a testament to this valley of the sun and the folks that call it home.....

In a light hearted moment.....I capture a smile against the boulders.....

.....but I must keep it real....so I sneek some pics of chollaball pushing through the reality of a 20 minute HAB up the East End to Toms Thumb.....through an unexpected snow flurry......

My wonderment in our luck is expressed in vocalized "wow's" and "awesomes" which reverberate into nothingness...for in the humid environment...all sound is absorbed within the air itself leaving nothing but the sound heard in our chests and ears as we push onwards in an anerobic world....We are lucky to be here in the rain and snow, for any fool can be here on a sunny day and see what the rest would believe you to be real......

....our "real"........right now....is a rare....."real".  Right now, it's the only "real".....and for a few....the prefered "real".

Descending off the face of the earth, back towards the festering neon distraction....a crimson carpet twists and turns against gravity and the newly found greenness of a seasonal rain...

.....as humans....we merely try to follow the path drawn for us....

.....paths hewn from the inevitability of thorn, slope and rock.........

........paths which claw their way through the improbability of reason.....

...paths which have been forged by those before us......

But as we approach each turn in life, we are each afforded an opportunity to make it our own....to cut corners....or to go long........

...and it is from those turns in life, we are given a new chance.......

......a chance to ride a new line.....a chance to redefine, what we call our own.

And yet through all of this....we still climb....onwards and upwards....we climb.........

6,000 vertical feet, 4 summits, 25 miles.....