2020
NFE on the beach. A warm start to 2020, calm after 48 hours of wind and rain. Got in a short ride out to Bush Point on Whidbey Island. Happy New Year!
Bombing Around
Tour2019
Tour 2019 – Day 32
I wake every morning the same person. Same life- history, same mind, same eyes looking. Some- times, when the boredom seems almost endless, I walk out among mountains the same mountains, sky sky, and I understand them perfectly. -David Hinton from Desert: Poems Time after time after time In one, not even particularly long, day I would unwind my whole month of travel. Around 8:30am I made my way to Epic Mountain Sports where…
Tour2019
Tour 2019 – Day 31
Rain soaks my hut then the sun shines weather can change in the blink of an eye but not as fast as the breath of existence at dusk it’s hard to hear the morning bell -Stonehouse translated by Red Pine in The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse Last ride I was up early enough to see the sun come up behind the mountains across the Dillon Reservoir. The spiky peaks on the other side of the…
Tour2019
Tour 2019 – Day 30
LXXXVIII There are men these days seek a road to the clouds, cloud roads, dark and trackless. Mountains are high with many dangerous crags, green crags above, and down below as well. And cloud roads, where are they? Cloud roads are empty; cloud roads are in empty space. -Han Shan translated by J.P. Seaton in Cold Mountain Poems Coming down from the mountains Overnight I awoke and watched the nearly full moon ripple on the…
Tour2019
Tour 2019 – Day 29
My hut is two maybe three mats wide surrounded by mountains on every side my cot couldn’t fit a cloud for the night I shut the door before sunset -Stonehouse translated by Red Pine in The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse Rocky Mountain High I was late getting out of Steamboat Springs as I had some errands to take care of and I wanted to spend a bit of time in town in the day. The…
Tour2019
Tour 2010 – Day 28
This is something no one can force besides knowing it’s there there’s nothing to know once the moon shines above a flowering plum it’s too late to look at the blossoms -Stonehouse translated by Red Pine in The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse A Wild Sheep Chase I was up early this morning early enough to see the rising sun tint the clouds above the river bend. I set off early as well, to get ahead…
Tour2019
Tour 2019 – Day 27
I hiked staff in hand beyond the pines and found myself on an emerald peak a flock of cranes were chasing a hawk tree shadows darkened the streams thorns made wild fruit hard to pick their scent made herbs easy to find thin smoke veiled the sinking sun red leaves shaded half the cliff -Stonehouse translated by Red Pine in The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse Where the jackalope roam I rode south of of Rawlins…
Tour2019
Tour 2019 – Days 25 and 26
To get to the end the very end let it all go let it go foam piles up on a pair of lips moss grows thick on an ancient road a wooden horse flashes through the clouds a clay ox thunders beneath the waves a clear moonlit night amid ten thousand snowy peaks a hidden scent says spring has reached the winter plum -Stonehouse translated by Red Pine in The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse High…
Tour2019
Tour 2019 – Day 24
Light Rain Blazing summer days: no force could bring them back. Clouds suddenly rising off the river, lovely, so lovely, ducks leave a bridge’s shadow, paddling into fine rain, and butterflies flutter out, frolicking in field breezes. The willow won’t survive nights and days much longer, and waterlilies will only open two or three more times. If the changing sights of a single year haunt your eye, why wonder that a palace lake is ash…
Tour2019
Tour 2019 – Day 23
Wandering on Bushel Mountain Gazing all day into mountains, I can’t get enough of mountains. Retire into mountains, and mountains become your old masters: when mountain blossoms scatter away, mountains always remain, and in empty mountain streamwater, mountains deepen idleness. -Wang An-shih translated by David Hinton in Mountain Home Moment by moment do what needs doing The next stage of the route heads into the Great Divide Basin which is 144 miles of high plains…