five hundred and twenty hours [UPDATED]

I simply could not muster any stoke, despite 19" of new being reported for the week at Snowbowl, to go stand in long lines just to ski the same six groomers over and over this morning.  I don't know if I've grown spoiled, or if I'm becoming more misanthropic as I age, but the thought of massive bluebird-day Phoenix crowds and meager off-piste conditions, caused me to turn my back on my plan to ski the area today.

So I went fatbike riding by myself in the woods instead.  No lines.  No piste. Only perhaps three inches of warm wet snow with a bit of mud here and there.  Fine conditions for the fatbike.

Flicker Down

Flicker down

There was a dead northern flicker lying in the snow the middle of Rocky Ridge this morning.

I don't know what killed it, but probably it hadn't been dead long before I came upon it; it's body was still limp and unfrozen as I moved it off the track, despite the day being quite cold and the snow firm and unthawed.

Finding dead things in the woods is always a bit unsettling.

Flickers are beautiful birds and one of the more common species of woodpecker in our woods.  Before today, I'd never had the chance to really examine one up close.  So, before I rode off, I hunkered down and took a good long look at its piebald plumage and strikingly orange cheek and tail-feathers.

These woods

I love these woods.

Since the very first time I ventured out into them, on a spur-of-the-moment solo ride which took me from my studio apartment behind the bus station down the service road that runs along the railroad tracks, up the old dirt road past Tunnel Springs, across A1 Mesa, and back down road L10 through the Lowell Observatory's land, I've loved these woods.

I love the breadth of these woods, the depth of them, too.

I love the sight of these woods, the vistas, tall stands of old growth, and dense thickets.

I love the terrain and the geology and the history of these woods.

Most of all, I love the seasons of these woods. I love being out in them when it feels like you're there the very moment that the seasons have changed in these woods.

This weekend these woods turned from fall-woods to winter-woods.

My fat-bike took me there.  It was wonderful.

Leaf Peeping

It feels as though family-time has come at a premium of late.  My work always conspires to pull time away from us.  But lately, because my wife and daughter are cast in another Flagstaff Youth Theater production (Narnia), our weekends have been somewhat compromised by long rehearsals the past few weeks, too.

So today we ditched church, including our monthly obligation to lead singing, and went for donuts and then for a lovely long walk in the woods together, just the three of us and the dog, to peep some leaves up toward Brookbank's Tank.  

We were rewarded with a near-perfect morning: 47 degrees, bluebird skies, a light breeze, and a million aspens exploding in color!

Pink Car Hill

My fondness for wandering around in the woods looking at stuff has not diminished as I have aged, in fact it's probably grown more intense as I've found that, as an adult, I can wander farther afield without concern for having the right "permissions" to do so... my wife understands my propensity to sometimes wander a little off track now and again when I'm out riding in the woods... my mother did too, for the record, but I think she worried more actively about her overdue, errant 10-year-old son than my wife does about her overdue, errant 46-year-old husband.

As a kid, the Prescott National Forest near Walker, Arizona, where we had a summer cabin for about 40 years, was littered with rusty old hulks of broken-down and abandoned early-20th-century to depression-era cars.  As we rode our motorcycles around in the woods, my family and I identified each locale and every major turn in the road by naming the wrecked car or rusting tractor or yellow-tallus mine-tailings or dilapidated cabin found prominently nearby.

Thus the woods are filled with this sound

The other day, while we were out riding together on the Arizona Trail, my daughter and I stopped off to the side of one of the trails we ride regularly to inspect a little check-dam she made a springtime or two ago.  She was pleased to find that it was working well, holding back a small pool of bubbly, dark-green water.  Nevertheless, she added a rock or two to the top of the dam to stem the water's egress due to the pool's rising tide.

And then, as she was crossing back to the bank where I was sitting, she slipped and fell in.

Two Hundred

I officially started putting real content on this blog back in 2009, hopeful, at the time, that it would become "a place for me to write, to practice writing," in order to keep my pencil sharp, so to speak.  

Prior to the founding of this website, through no fault of my own, I'd lost every single one of my regular, recurring writing gigs, those that paid and those that didn't.  Thus left otherwise without options, my choices were simple: either I was going to stop writing, or I would need to find a new place to be published.  And thus: I signed up for a blog: rockychrysler.blogspot.com. "A place to practice, a place to just write.  For lack of any other venue, like millions of other writers, by default This Blog will be the place."

And, I'm happy to say, it has been.