Tuesday morning

Having gone through the first volley of emails for the day, I'm now sitting at my desk eating a big bowl of fish stew. It's been nearly five months since we left our home in Asia to work for a while at our home in America, and- besides our many friends and colleagues- I'm starting to miss hand-pulled noodles, boiled yak meat, and raw cloves of garlic. I'm also, surprisingly, missing the holidays in our little grey city. Coming in from the dark and frigid streets to our warm apartment to find Shinay cooking something hot and delicious, snuggling under warm down comforters while ice crystals formed on the windows, trimming our little tree, singing carols at the home for the unwanted- those memories will now forever be a part of the collage of images and emotions that form Christmas.

Near the Karakoram Highway

We went out early one morning and made the mountains at first light. The sun was high by the time we were hiking behind Karakul Lake and we did not make the glacier that afternoon.

Old man, blue door

Recovered the files from my hard drive. Here's a shot from Kashgar.

Happy 233rd America!

It was a great day here. This is the third one I've spent in the East-
the 223rd in Beijing with a bunch of Marines on embassy duty, the
228th on the high plateau in the midst of bear country with a bunch of
nomads, and now the 233rd grilling burgers and shooting off fireworks
in a concrete courtyard while Tibetan kids played basketball and older
folks danced beside the incense shrine. From a distance and in the
middle of a completely different reality- the things that we sing
about America, the lines from famous declarations and speeches, the
words that we don't nearly so often ponder as we recite- they ring out
the more true, and the promises of equality, liberty, and justice
shine out more brightly.

Back from the land of snow and tsampa

It was yet another snowy day in the valley as I wrestled over whether to head down to the city or stay another week, but found it more necessary to take care of matters in town. After retreating in the face of a near white-out along two swiftly diminishing brown mud tracks, the snows that we had fled in the project area were now filling the valley. I purchased a ticket on an overnight bus from the small, muddy town back to the big city. It was a surreal journey through high snowy mountains and Tibetan towns tucked in at their feet beside icy streams. The bus - as usual- was filthy, smelly, smoky, and stopped 3 times in 20 hours. It was wonderful. I finished "From Heaven Lake" by Vikram Seth around 4 in the afternoon, had a huge bowl of noodles and yak meat in Madoi at 9:30 pm, saw that we had finally left the snows around 4:30 am, and was spewed abruptly at 6:45 am onto a street full of color and warmth and noise in the city. How strange to see green trees instead of snow covered grassland, tall buildings instead of tall mountains, tangles of traffic instead of herds of yak. But how wonderful to see my Shinay.

Snow

Had to turn back because of bad weather. We made it as far as the research station 8 hours west of town, but the roads to the snow leopard area were impassable. For most of the drive all we could see were two brown mud tracks and all the rest was white. At the research station they said that more snow was coming and folks there were leaving for town. We spent the night there and in the morning filled up with gas pumped out of barrels into a watering can and gave a lift to a departing monk. On the drive home we stopped for tea and yoghurt at a monastery and found out that the eminent biologist George Schaller had come through a month before also researching snow leopard. We made one more stop to repair some fences for the grazing study, and then it was a straight shot home. Back in the office, it's 45 degrees inside and for the first time there's accumulation in the valley. We'll wait here today and head down to Yushu tomorrow.

If you've seen the movie Kekexili: Mountain Patrol, this is the jeep that belonged to the man that the movie's hero was based on. This is at the research station, where he also built one of the first buildings. Below is an earlier building: a gun tower from the period following Liberation.

Clouds and ice

The manager arrived yesterday, but is unable to accompany us onwards, so we'll be heading out in the morning. We visited another valley today in search of caterpillar fungus. The weather was beautiful and the grassland is beginning to have the sour-sweet smell of late spring when millions of tiny pink and white blossoms open up. The sounds were also familiar- peeping pika, chirping birds, and bleating sheep- but the dominant sound is always the wind. In the narrow v-notch valleys, gushing water can be heard, but is still hidden below shrinking ice packs.

Weather, and snapshots of town

The weather finally broke yesterday mid-afternoon. The sunshine quickly warmed the office and brought me- along with dogs, people, and flocks of goats- out of hiding and onto the street. Actually, the goats didn't really hide during the weather- but they looked a lot happier after it passed. The late afternoon was warm and golden, and after nightfall the stars were so numerous and thick and close that they seemed like cotton batting overhead- a quilt of comfort rather than an infinite void. I slept long and deep- as is usually the case when I come to altitude. They say that many people have quite a bit of trouble sleeping and suffer from disturbing dreams when at high elevations, but over the past 5 years I think I've slept the best here on the high plateau, and my dreams are the usual time spent with family and friends.

Another weather system must have come through during the night, for in the morning there was a fresh covering of snow on the hills. The day, however,was bright and clear and warm and I studied Snow Leopard research methods from a folding chair in the yard, occasionally breaking to shoe goats out of the compound. Early afternoon brought a curtain of rain down the valley from the southwest, and with it some hail as well. The warmth of the morning quickly dissipated, and now it's cool and damp again and the hills are hidden behind thick fog.

We've been worried that the heavier-than-usual rains and snows may be creating difficult conditions in the Snow Leopard area, but since we're stuck at the current location anyway waiting for another person, the weather has not yet been a problem. The caterpillar survey was successful, some others carried out an investigation into some local environmental health problems, and I've gotten to study up a little more on the Snow Leopard work and local water resources. Hopefully tomorrow our last party-member will arrive and we'll set out then or the next day, though the weather report that just came in calls for more rain over the next four days that will likely be snow up and to the west where we're heading.
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The rain has picked up again, and when I went outside to fill the water buckets for cooking dinner, I saw that a furry Tibetan mastiff puppy had taken refuge under our solar panels. Luckily I got a good fire going, so for the first time in days the office is a comfortable temperature despite the lack of sunshine and I am taking my own refuge beside the stove.
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Caterpillar Fungus

It's another snowy day. 52 degrees and smoky inside- not sure what the outdoor temperature is. The rain and snow have kept our dung pile damp, so getting fires going is a bit of a challenge, and getting a good fire going has not been achievable.

The day before yesterday, we traveled south of town to survey a caterpillar fungus area. We had to pass a police checkpoint to continue along the dirt valley road as fungus digging is restricted to residents of the area. We were a group of three outsiders and two locals (all Tibetan but me), and the police were happy enough to let us through upon learning that we were researching the fungus and its harvest and sales process for economic development of the region. We joined a group of about 28 people scouring one of the hills for the little, dry grass-like protrusions that indicate a goldmine below. The fungus, also called Cordyceps, is valuable for its use in Chinese medicine and is- I hear- formed when a fungus invades the cocoon of a moth just below the soil surface. It's supposed to do just about everything (you may see an ad for it in your junk-mail box one day) and fetches prices of roughly $3 to $15 per fungus- this in an area where many households subsist on less than $150 per person each year. The search party consisted of men, women, and children from about 8 years old to 60s. I had spent some days searching for the fungus with another family in the valley in 2004 and was this time content instead to watch the pickers and look for other plantlife and animals. It was a rewarding afternoon for all involved- the primary researcher managed to procure a handful of samples and interviewed many of the harvesters, the harvesters sold most of their afternoon's pickings to the researcher, and I got to survey some good Snow Leopard habitat and spy two flocks of Blue Sheep through the spotting scope.

Below is a picture of one of the family's tents, and the backside of one of the hills where we were picking can be seen through the valley notch.

At the office

Well, the internet's been a bit spotty at our upper-office location so
I better send this out while the wire's hot. For those who don't know-
our office is at 4,200 meters above sea level (just shy of 14,000
feet) in a small town of about 4,000 residents living in adobe and
cinder-block homes heated with yak-dung stoves. There's electricity
(most of the time) and internet (I'd like to say most of the time) but
no running water. The town has a wild-west feel with one long main
street bustling with Tibetan cowboys riding motorcycles decked out
with elaborate saddelry and loudspeakers. Women in from the grassland
and dressed in long robes duck in and out of the small shops and knots
of men form and disperse around caterpillar fungus deals.

We arrived here a couple of days ago and are waiting for one of the
nature reserve managers to join us before heading out for the Snow
Leopard survey and camera trap setup- which will take place in an area
about a day's drive to the west traveling along gravel roads and
riverbeds. It's rained, hailed, snowed, and thundered almost every
afternoon here- as is typical from now through the end of July.
There's rarely any accumulation in the valley, but when the clouds
lift the view of the surrounding hills rising white above the green
pastures is beautiful, and when the sun shines it's glorious.

Been a while...

This morning this was in my inbox:

"I might be the only person that reads your blog, and as such, my
suggestions may be trivial. Nonetheless, please update your blog."

Well, my trusty computer of 5.3 years died on me last month and I've
been scrounging around town for old castaways to try to get something
working. Last night at the kitchen table, Shinay got one of these
frankenputers reformatted and it seems to be working pretty well- so
hopefully you'll be hearing more from me. However, I am actually
leaving town in a few minutes for 10-14 days to do some Snow Leopard
research work- walking transects, assessing habitat, and hopefully
setting up 12 motion-sensing camera traps. So... maybe it'll be a
while longer before anything of substance comes through.

Rockin it old school

I was at the used furniture market the other day and couldn't resist getting a shot of the boomboxes. Apparently the guy selling them does a pretty swift business in dual-cassette decks and sewing machines. I like the 52W PMPO F7300

Spring Snow

I slept in until eight this morning. I woke peacefully to what sounded like the wild chatter of little birds in the trees outside, but eventually the chatter gained rhythm and sounded more like a sputtering old tractor. Lying in bed I ran through last night's dreams in my mind. Saying good bye to Gabe. Sitting at the Brickhouse kitchen table saying good bye to Pavit. Saying good bye to Grandma and Grandad. Being stuck in my truck rolling backwards down a mountain. I had just been trying to re-park so someone else could pull in and was still in the middle of my goodbyes. Climbing back up the mountain passing by farms at daybreak when the mist is just rising off the pastures. Alone at first and then with Dooley- passing the time talking about baseball and bluegrass music. Who knows what the mind tries to make sense of when we sleep? Or the heart. This kind of thinking doesn't make for a productive day.

So I get up. It's two hours till class and this is my studying time. I pull on warmups and a Tech sweatshirt and fix a cup of coffee. Outside the noise is back to small-bird chatter and the sound of a train passing by to the north side of the river. A nighttime storm has left West Mountain covered with snow and wearing a crown of fog. I open the window to sniff the delicious smell of spring snow and see where the birds are playing. The neighboring yard is starting to show a little green. Eventually the fog clears off the mountain top, but remains as a low ceiling over the city. It was good to see my family last night- and I'm glad that Grandad was so happy about our news.

Second Dinner

I'm used to instant coffee, not by choice, but by adaptation. When I'm at home, I don't have a coffee pot, so I don't have coffee. But when I spent some time in Colorado with an unlimited supply of Kona beans- I drank several pots a day. Waking up at 4:30 to stoke the coal boilers, I'd get a pot going before starting the fires in the woodstoves. Then from 5:30 on, I'd sit with a Nalgene bottle full and watch the black night fade blue and eventually orange and pink. Finally the sun would come up over an eastern ridge near the Silverjack just about when someone was firing up the kitchen for breakfast. There were some great cooks living at the lodge where I was staying, and another half pot was the perfect finish to each home-cooked meal of the day. In the afternoons my friend Dick and I would cut wood a little further up the mountainside. Fall in Colorado is comparable only to fall in the hills and mountains of Virginia, and those golden afternoons bucking and splitting logs were the best memories of that time. As the fall wore on, the days grew colder and eventually we were working in a couple feet of snow. But the Kona beans never ran out and every afternoon we'd head uphill stuffed full of fried trout, green beans, fresh baked bread and cobbler- and we'd each carry a half pot of the black stuff with us.

But that was nearly eight years ago, and now I'm used to instant coffee because when we moved into this apartment we inherited, along with other odds and ends, a huge can of Nescafe. It's not as bad as the instant coffee I remember trying in the States, and gives a somewhat pleasant taste and a familiar aroma to a cup of hot water. However, unlike the Kona beans, my supply ran out two days ago and rather than interrupt my daily routine to go to the store (that's a Saturday task)- I dug through the cupboards to see what reasonable substitutes might be available. There was one pack of something called coconut coffee that was more like hot cocoa than coffee, a Maxwell House coffee bag that didn't produce much more than the requisite color, and tucked away in the back corner of a little drawer was a beat-up red bag holding the remains of a pound of Shenandoah Joe's Sumatra. Luckily it was already ground, saving me the trouble of hunting down a neighbor with a grinder, and all I had to do was be patient enough for the grounds to settle out after filling a jar with a few rounded tablespoons and some boiling water. It was delicious and a little later I had a second. Being, as I said, used to Nescafe- two cups of coffee in the mid-afternoon should not have been much of a problem. But this was not Nescafe and it was much of a problem. But not a bad problem- just a sleeping problem.

So here I am at 20 past midnight, full on a delicious second dinner of vegetable stew, baguette, and bananas, and enjoying John O'Brien's At Home in the Heart of Appalachia (thanks Smitty!) for the second time this spring. I guess it's better to be wide awake and enjoying sleeplessness than half-awake dreading the morning.

Two months later

It is March 20th, a fine warm day in the city, and though all the earth within sight is brown- the smell on the breeze every now and again hints that spring is here. The birds outside chatter happily, Shinay naps peacefully on the couch, and I'm ruminating over a cup of instant coffee.

Over two months have passed since we left this city and my mind is still making sense of everything that the time held. From seeing my family on the Gulf Coast of Mexico to working construction with Gabe and painting with Ian, from spending time with friends and family in DC and Lynchburg and at Virginia Tech to seeing the new president inaugurated- then flying off again for "home" in Asia- it was like looking at the past through a kaleidoscope- all these fractured colorful bits of life crammed into a tiny amount of time- and trying to work out what the pattern means or what the future holds or if there's any way to hold onto it all- all of the people and the places that we love, but knowing that every turn of the hand, every change in the light creates a new and ungraspable mosaic that is perhaps better enjoyed than figured out.

And then we landed. Here. In one piece of the mosaic that is a grey-brown, dusty city surrounded by low mud mountains. My friend Bill picked us up at the airport in his familiar style, playing Journey and chatting the whole way back about some new revelation about life and how it all works. We passed by our usual Sichuan restaurant, my favorite noodle shop, the vegetable lady that Shinay always chats with. Mosaics within mosaics. Did they miss us? Did they wonder where we went? Four floors up with 100 pounds of bags each, into our quiet apartment. Thanks and goodbye to Bill.

And then it was just us again. In our own quiet, blue-colored, peaceful facet of the kaleidoscope. It felt good to have our own space. Our own time. Our own rhythms. To sleep in our own bed. To walk out and buy our own vegetables and cook our own dinner and do our own dishes. For a week we settled in, got registered with the authorities and with the school, put the apartment in order, found out who was in town and reconnected with folks. We were still in a daze from the whirlwind of the past two months, but happy to be with each other again. Before classes started, we decided to enjoy the togetherness that we'd missed and take one last trip before the demands of the spring resumed. We traveled through Xinjiang by train, connecting the dots of the eastern reaches of the Silk Routes from oasis town to oasis town. It was a wonderful adventure and returning made our home seem the more familiar and comfortable.

So here we are. Three weeks into being back in Asia, two days into classes and projects, several weeks into Spring by the Chinese reckoning. Now I'll stir fry some potatoes and onions and zucchini for a picnic with the neighbors and we'll enjoy a tiny March-afternoon-colored bit of what will one day be the memory of Spring 2009.

01.20.2009

Big Meadows

For those who don't know- we're down from the Plateau for a few weeks. On Thursday I was lucky enough to go for a walk with my brother at Big Meadows in Shenandoah National Park. Here are a couple of pics.

A Lady and a Man

 

Afternoon Prayers

 

Zijin Cheng: Lion & Dragons

Zijin Cheng: Door & Pot

 

Zijin Cheng: Gargoyle

 

The Shores of Kokonor