The Girls

Having spent most of the past week in the back-country with the girls, I have a good collection of nice pictures of Four Corners scenery.  I also have a few pictures of the girls themselves.  These are two of my favorites.  VSO says that EDO is "photogenic."  The same can be said of VSO, and the picture below comes after a pair of back-to-back, nine-mile, rough-country days.  I think she looks pretty good for a woman who turns 54 this week and has just covered 18 miles of rough country in the past 24 hours.

Ellen Ruin

When we are in the Four Corners, we do go to some of the parks, but we also like driving down secondary and tertiary dirt roads on map-blank sections of BLM land.  We get out and walk up quiet little washes, poking the dirt, listening to canyon wrens, and enjoying the quiet--away from the park mayhem.  Because the Four Corners was once widely and populously inhabited by pueblo-building people, we often notice artifacts on the ground and masonry on the walls.  Yesterday, we discovered, in a no-name wash, a very nice five-room ruin.  We nick-named it the Ellen Ruin because EDO was the hiker who wanted to go in that direction.  We explored the area around the ruin until sunset and then came back to make pictures in the last of the light.

Yucca

The bible—Woody Plants of Utah—says that there is one species of yucca in southwestern Utah (Yucca angustissima).  There are, however, three varieties (var. angustissima, kanabensis, toftiae).  The bible's authors say that field identification is difficult.  On the map, none of the three varieties occurs in Iron County.  Well.  I was definitely in Iron County when I made this picture.  And I didn't make the picture because I was surprised to see it, either.  I made it because I liked it.

Ski Days

It seems like our best ski days are always in December.  We get that early snow storm and a blast of cold weather:  For a week or two we are skiing every day.  Then we have the January drought and the February thaw.  Pretty soon everybody is dreaming of spring.  Anyway, December 2016 has been no exception.  We had the snow and the cold weather.  Yesterday afternoon I set a track at Five Mile.  I brought VSO up at dusk.  I showed her the track, then sat by the fire with a small flask of red wine.  She joined me later and—after spilling most of the wine—we talked about how winter was best between 20 and 30.  Fahrenheit, that is.

Plein Air Scenes

It has been a while since we featured fine art at Rural Ways.  But, we want to remind our reader that we continue to make it.  Actually, VSO has been painting flowers again, which she likes to do when she needs a holiday from the landscape.  Nevertheless, the Homestead remains full of plein air scenes like this one:  A view of the Escalante River canyon.

Lichen

Lichen is one of the few things about which I know little.  (I know about pretty much everything else, although sometimes I can't remember whether Kafka was Czech or German.)  When she was little, EDO liked to tease me by calling it "licha."  I knew she was mispronouncing it, but that was about all I knew.  We were out on a little ridge today and she pointed out how beautiful the lichen were.  She was right.  I think there are at least three of them in the picture, two of which are lighted like neon.  Is my reader a lichenologist?  Genus and species, please.

Sunsets

These short, pre-winter days often end with warm, glowing sunsets.  We climbed up to the edge of the Castle to see it yesterday.  As the sun went down behind us, the gibbous moon came out in front of us.

Sport Climbin'

(Warning:  If you are offended by blog posts featuring the back sides of pretty women, you will want to delete my cookies from your browser.)

For the other two of you, it should be apparent that, today, I let the girls do the work.  With VSO's help I set up a top rope on a little buttress west of town, then I made her do the belaying while I used the camera.  It was EDO's first sport climb.  She did OK.  She needs to relax a little and use her feet, but she tagged the chains.  And it wasn't easy.  Give her credit:  This was the real world:  Real wind, real sun, real rock:  And both parents shouting instruction.

Cmas Tree 2016

We got the tree today.  A big one.  VSO ran the camera so I could run the saw.  The bow saw.  It took some effort.  The thermometer said low 20s, and the wind chill may have pushed it towards the single digits, but by the time I cut through this monster and dragged it to the road I was sorry to be wearing a coat.