Waiting for dinner

Same night. We had just come down from a hike at the Piro research station. While others chatted, the introverts among us took our time to converse with nature. Carlos stared into the sunset, the soft sea breeze rustling through his hair, his brown face golden in the last light of day. His girlfriend was expecting their first child, and I didn't interrupt his thoughts. I walked down the shore, past Billy standing there barefoot in his khakis letting the surf come in around and over him. Down a ways past the tussock of grass where the hippies strummed, through a grove of coconut palms I found a small lagoon cut off by high dunes from the pacific. I stood a moment, wondering about snakes, peeled off my clothes and jumped in.

Sunset

Same time and place.

Music at sunset

On the pacific coast of the Osa, Costa Rica. February 2011, iPhone. Where else would you expect to run into three hippies from Floyd strumming their guitars and singing?

A doorway in Kashgar, 2009

Rebel XT, 18-55mm stock lens.

Stone detail, Bangkok

iPhone pic. March 2011.

Two views of the lake, Hangzhou

Two farmers, Hangzhou

Sweeping or playing?

Chatting in the evening

Evening prayers, Yangon

So until I save up for a new camera, I'm taking pics with my iPhone. Here's one from Schwedagong Temple, Myanmar.

New Year's

"Fa-TAL!" Exclaimed the conservation manager with much animation as we cruised slowly down the highway in the falling night.  He was commenting on the pot of coffee I had brewed in the office that morning and my keen intuition hinted that my methods may not have agreed with him.  In broken Spanish I elicited the bone of contention: he uses fully one fourth the amount of beans per cup compared to my morning eye-opener.  Either way, contrary to his gentle indications otherwise, it's good stuff.


Oil palm plantations and dry-land rice fields slide by in the humid night.  A little farther on we pass an organic chocolate farm.  It's the start of summer and what can be called the comparatively dry season, though it's rained nearly every other day since my arrival three weeks ago.  I'm finally getting used to seeing trees again, and Spanish is gradually overtaking my inclination to respond to everything in Chinese.  I feel cold when the temperature drops below 70.


2010 was a stormy and tumultuous year, like nothing we could have imagined, and nothing that I care to recall here.  In something somewhat like a movie scene, the raging winds and crashing waves of a midnight storm have dissolved, and I find myself that castaway pulling his senses together on some sunny tropical shore edged with coconut palms and little blue waves licking at its sands.  It really does seem a disconcerting dream, but here I am in Costa Rica in my 5th week of work with a new company doing conservation and development in the region.  Soon, we'll be settling down into an apartment in Virginia- our 11th place in our 5th city in five and a half years- and maybe things will sink in more fully then, maybe there will be a "normal" again.  But for now I'm happy to have passed into a new year and the new promises it holds, whether my senses have fully arrived or not.

Over the last bone-jarring, tattered steel bridge, we roll into town on a dusty lane paralleling the only paved street in Puerto Jimenez.  Pulling up outside a low building surrounded by a high metal fence, I wish the conservation manager a happy new year and step out, my mind adrift in some far off place as it attempts to navigate the path from the rubble of Tibet to the jungle of Costa Rica.  It could be a long time before it finds its way fully to here and now.

As the gate shuts with a clang, I hear howler monkeys in the distance.

Repkong

The real ice road truckers

Here's a pic from early April. We were servicing camera traps and were lucky enough to still be able to make use of the frozen rivers as highways. Going is much tougher after the spring thaw, and the trip would have to be done on foot or horseback next time.

Monday Afternoon

For a while, there was only sideways streaking white outside the windows and the muffled sound of traffic coming from KunLun Fast Road. But now it's 5 o'clock and the snow is letting up enough to see the faint outlines of pagodas and power lines on South Mountain, just above the flat rooftop horizon of neighboring apartment buildings. Baby has woken from her afternoon nap and is playing in one of the cupboards and soon we'll be needing to get dinner on, but for now we're content listening to Alison Krauss and letting the world beyond the radiators reappear on its own terms. 


It's been a long time since April. After the earthquake there were no more days, no more weeks, just endless work that dissolved gradually from earthquake relief into project catch-up. Sometime in July we found out that our landlord's home had been destroyed in the earthquake, so we had to move to a new apartment, and thus now have this view of south mountain - obscured only by snow and not by mega-construction projects.


There's not a lot to tell about the intervening months. Life happens and doesn't stop happening until it really stops, and at that point we won't be around blogging about it anymore. There were trips to the field, driving through rubble, seeing neighborhoods replaced by barren earth with little teepees of salvaged timbers here and there. There were bear fences to put up, community meetings to organize, frustrations to hear with sympathy, aspirations to hear with validation. There were moments of triumph setting camera traps high above the world on rocky crags 16,000 feet closer to heaven than to the sea. There were moments of despair wondering how anyone could go on trying to meet so many needs. There was lots of life crammed into a tiny amount of time.


In September we took a break to visit friends in Korea. In October we returned to fall weather and the familiar sounds and smells of China. Rehab work has been approved to begin in Yushu. Eco-tourism meetings and workshops are scheduled for early November. A doctor training is also to be completed before year's end. Life keeps on going. 

Cashmere

Don't worry- the goats don't die. They just get combed and sheared and then jump around enjoying their new summer coats. The little ones are the best, rascalling around the edges of the tent, sometimes getting scooped up into the arms of one of the women or children of the tent to be cuddled and fed a treat.

234

Happy Birthday America! Same as last year- nothing makes a person love America more than stepping away for a while and seeing the beauty from a distance. Despite some flaws and the griping of persistent naysayers, the freedom, justice, and opportunity of America shine as a bright contrast to much of the world.

Waiting in the dark

Both of these photos were shot as single-exposures. Between projects in 2007, I had a little time on my hands when I couldn't sleep, so I had fun playing with some ideas.

Evening

Weather

Second one looks a lot better on black background.

 Clear skies.

 Stormy skies.

Red Lanterns

Sim's Cozy. Chengdu 2010