Ramblings from the field

Heading out to a 1500 acre job in Fields, OR (at the SE end of the Steens Mtns.) I stopped off at Smiff for a long, easy climbing day with Keely (Keelia as she now has begun using her full name). We hiked out to the marsupials and managed to climb about 1300 vertical feet in 11 hrs of climbing (including the 2 hrs spent in a cave waiting out a lightning storm). My goal was 15 pitches in a day and we managed 16. We ran up the marsupials traverse, mini-halfdome, round river, and “birds of a feather,” 5.7, on the wombat (summit above Koala Rock). It was so much fun climbing at no harder than 5.8 for the whole day. No pictures though.

I got to spend a day and a half alone in the desert and had a blast. I had to hike into the work site to look at some things, so I made an evening of it and brought sushi, a camera and some beer up to a peak. This is what I wrote as I was sitting up there, and it is a little embarrasing to have such an emotional time, but it was kinda cool. So I will share it with you, unedited:

"Every now and again one has such an intense moment alone with nature that you can only laugh outloud in joy, and shed a tear simultaneously. Feeling the pureness of nature is a joy that is completely inexplicable; it can only be experienced.

To try and tell of the quality of the experience is pointless. A sunset, a flower, a mountain, the wind; it can only be understood in the context of what someone already knows.
To seek new, deeper experiences from nature is the only way to truly understand what she is capable of (a boundless perfection and utterly incomprehensible beauty).
As I cry joy right now, I can’t fully even get ten percent of what I am feeling inside. The tears are the only evidence of the beauty of the desert. I do nothing more than write feeling as this sunset passes, but I understand more of nature with every experience. I am a rich man!
To describe the feeling as spiritual does not do justice to the deepest enveloping joy I get from sitting on a windblown ridge, or on a dirt game trail while writing this. This place of reverence provides all that the soul could ever desire!"

Yea, so that is my little time in the desert. Oh, and Malheur Wildlife Preserve is fucking amazing! There is more biodiversity there than anywhere else on the west coast. The large majority of birds I saw there I have never seen before. I wish I could have spent more time there and had a big ass camera lense. I also got to check off Alvord Hotsprings from the "to sit in" list. It is a funky little concrete tub in the desert, but boy are the springs hot.

From work, we got snowed out, rained out, blown out, but luckily no mechanical problems. Heres the snow day in June and the helicopter doin its thing.
In a week and a half, I will be married. Whoa! We all new it was coming, but it does kinda sneak up on ya like that. I am really stoked to be marrying such a fine woman. We have a beautiful life together and I am glad it is now going to be permanent.