As you can see, these last few years have been essentially defined by mountains, French, a whole lotta new and old friendships, snow, and love.

Maybe the love was burning like those flames you see leaping across the pinyon juniper trees in southern Idaho.

In any event, the last two years have been a very rich experience. After coming home from France last year, I worked as a Wilderness Ranger at Mt Rainier National Park, basically hiking along trails and interacting with the public, whenever I happened to come across them....which sometimes didn't happen much....I was left to think a lot of the time, and coming "home" from France left me with lots to think about...sometimes I felt great and enthusiastic and content, other times, I felt really alone and powerless. Being really alone and missing the hell out of people does things to you. "Well," I'd think, waiting on my water to boil to cook some rice or something that evening, "nothing I can do about it right now, and counting the minutes to go back there doesn't make it go by any faster." Plus, thinking like that tends to make you miss out on things, and looking back, I did miss out on some things. But in the end, man oh man, what a great time it was. That's Lucas in a firetower, using a highly specialized technique that invloves an apple core to spot wildfires. Lucas was a good pal out there in the pines, originally from Maryland. We went to a Mariners game once and all the introverted, non-confrontational Seattle-ites were aghast at his raucous behavior when he cheered for his Orioles....

If you see that building nestled in the woods there, that's where I lived when I wasnt camping out. It was about an hour's drive from the nearest "town"....more details on that drive can be found in an earlier post.....there's another picture that accurately shows my previous performing arts talent (I bet you didn't know that)....and finally, there's a bear. Joe and I were coming down off the Interglacier and some people were looking rather panic-y and said "Hey Ranger! There's a bear down there!"
"What's he doing?"
"Well for now he's just sitting there!"
And sure enough, he was. And to provide you with some culture, the real name of "Mt Rainier" is "Tahoma."