1. The Great Salt Lake. Big surprise here, right? The Great Salt Lake is a hyper-saline, terminal lake located in Northern Utah, and it's awesome. Being hyper-saline, the lake supports a unique ecosystem based on the brine-shrimp and brine-fly, and the freshwater and brackish wetlands that fringe the lake support millions of migratory birds every year. And it's where I do my field work. I love it very much.
2. Petroglyphs and pictographs. Petroglyphs, seen on the left, are images carved into rocks, while pictographs, seen on the right, are images painted on rocks. Both can be found in some great places in Southern Utah and it's pretty great to sit and ponder how old they are and what they might mean.
3. Sandstone. Sandstone is formed where sand has accumulated, settled, and become cemented through precipitates that bind grains together and pressure that compacts sand. Sandstone often forms great topographic features like cliffs, canyons and towers (see #11). Wingate sandstone is my favorite, because it forms splitter cracks and often has a varnish of minerals that make it extra sticky. Compared to harder rocks (see #18 - Granite), sandstone is easily eroded, and wind, water and time make really interesting features that are great to hide in (obviously).
4. Niblings. Saturday Brent told me "niblings" was the term for nieces and nephews, and I like it (and the Wikipedia dictionary agrees with it). My sister's kids have made my world a better place just by existing. I think they're great to hang around with. And my phone is full of pictures of them, which means I can scroll through memories of them whenever I please. I brag about them a lot, (see here).
5. Biking. I enjoy riding bikes. I've got some really great memories of the freedom I felt riding my bike as a kid, and I'm finding that more as I get into mountain biking (but this wasn't always the case). I also enjoy a nice road bike trip every once in a while. I've got some great friends to go on these rides with me and I think that's what makes biking so awesome.
6. Friends. I've been blessed with many great people I can call friends in the last 29 years. I've recounted some of our adventures here and here and here. And here's to many more.
7. The Cactus Spectacular. In 2011 I cashed in a travel voucher for a trip to Tuscon, Arizona to Saguaro National Park. It was so great! I spent 3 days trying to find as many different species of cactus as possible and learned lots of fun facts. The cactus forest is an amazing ecosystem with a unique suite of plants adapted to an exceptionally dry life (with chances of monsoons). Cacti are the raddest plants around. Unfortunately, I was not blogging about it as the time, so there are no links here.
8. Rock climbing. It's probably well understood by now, but I really enjoy rock climbing. I like climbing on sandstone quite a bit, in part because the views are very dramatic. I like climbing on Logan Canyon limestone, too. And granite, oh gritty granite, I like that a lot too. Climbing rocks is lots of fun. In addition to the physical fun of choosing the most challenging route possible to get to the top of things, rock climbing is a good time to bond with my awesome climbing peeps.
9. Oceans. I live in a very dry, landlocked state. But through the miracle of vacation and airplanes, I've managed to visit the ocean a few times in my life. I got to see dolphins and ponies in the Atlantic Ocean (upper left - thanks, Eric, for the picture and the chance to go to Maryland), shorebirds on Lake Superior (I've heard that region called the North Coast, and since it's an inland sea I'm counting it here), glaciers and rainforests leading right up to the Pacific (lower left), and snorkel the warm water off the coast of Cancun. I think the ocean is an essentially soothing place.
10. Winter sports. Winter is a key part of the climate in these parts, nothing is growing, but it's when most of our precipitation falls in the form of snow. Snow makes skiing, snow shoeing and polar plunging possible, and that's pretty great.
11. Towers. Climbing a desert tower is probably the coolest thing I've ever done. On our first trip together Brent and I climbed Castleton Tower (top left), and we've been climbing more on every trip to Moab since then. The best summit was probably Ancient Art (lower left), its tiny and interesting and people recognize it. My proudest climbing moment may have been leading Independence Monument (center), while one of my silliest moments was forgetting how to chimney climb on the Three Gossips (upper right), and there were definitely some dark moments when we were stuck on Lighthouse Tower. But mostly, tower climbing has been excellent.
12. Lonely trees. I'm a tree hugger, no question about it. But some trees are asking for it more than others.
13. Birds. I think birds are rad. They can fly and lay eggs and they have feathers and they sing. Altogether, birds are lots of fun to watch. Ducks and shorebirds are my favorite, in part because they are large and easier to identify. Part of the reason I'm studying wetlands is that I enjoy studying places I can get some incidental birding done. The ruddy duck (the bird with the blue bill picture below) is my all time favorite, no bird is better.
14. Epic adventures. In any season there are adventures to have and substrates to write on. This makes me happy.
15. Cache Valley. I live in a great place, occasionally the weather is too extreme for me, but for at least half the year the weather is pleasant. There are excellent mountain views, some sweet buildings, and many nice cool places to set up a hammock. Plus I'm 15 minutes from limestone rock climbing and 40 minutes from a ski resort. What better set up could I ask for?
16. Flowers. Most of the worlds plants, the phylum of Angiosperms, reproduce through flowers. These plant naughty bits are what I'm looking for when I identify plants, and some families are more modest than others (think of finding flower parts on a sedge versus a rose). The showy parts of plants bring me lots of visual joy, and they're the precursors to the fruits that bring me lots of tasty joy.
17. Lost World Butte. The trip Brent and I took to Lost World Butte might have been our best vacation ever. If you're up for it, it's described in detail here.
18. Granite. I know, how many different ways can I say I love climbing? Many more. Granite is metamorphic rock, as opposed to the sedimentary rock mentioned in # 3. Most of the earth's crust is made of granite, which is formed from cooling magma. Most mountains are composed of granite. The weathering process produces cracks, ledges, slabs and aretes that present endless climbing challenges. There are several granite adventures cued to be blogged about.
19. New Haircut Face. I don't know if this is a universal slice of heaven, but it should be. One day, my gorgeous mom and sister got a haircut, and made the face in the top left corner of the picture below. Yeah, it was because it's hard to take a selfie with an iPad, but we (my family) like to think its because of the haircut and have re-created it whenever possible. [Of note, the picture on the top right is from 2008, Dad has been making New Haircut Face for decades now.]
20. My Garden Domain. I have a garden in my backyard that brings me endless joy and relaxation (and a trap-stamp sunburn I'll talk about sometime). I've got a well documented love of plants (see #23 - Wetlands and #16 - Flowers), and I really love that I can control most of them in this little space. Most of the plants that grow are those that I planted, and they grow in nice straight rows. And they're delicious. The time I get to spend weeding, planting and harvesting are some of the best in any week.
21. Naughty Scotty. My brother is studying to be an engineer. It seems appropriate that he would engineer a weapon out of a hamper and armor out of a box. Scott's got skills that keep us all endlessly entertained.
22. Surviving. There have been a few times while I was adventuring that I thought, "Oh, this feels dangerous." Yet, I've survived it all, and that makes me happy. Wind stranded me on a beach, but I still made it away safely. I thought I might die by lightning/flash flood, but didn't. I thought I could climb Mt. Hillier and ran out of water, but that was ok (sorry, no blog post about that yet). I once spent the night in a rest stop, and that was just fine. And a moose never kilt me. Altogether, I've never died, and that's a lot of fun.
23. Wetlands. So, I love wetlands very much. I think they're super cool, being able to persist in both flooded and drought conditions, producing so much excellent habitat (see #13 - Birds), and providing critical ecosystem services. I get to spend my summer mucky around wetlands and oogling plants, and in no way is that a bad thing.
24. This guy who is willing to take some many pictures with me. The other day I put together a slide show of our highlights from the last year and Brent said "There's a lot of couple pictures there." It's true, the things we do together are definitely highlights of my year, and I'm glad that Brent indulges me in taking pictures together whenever we go somewhere new. It's pretty great.
25. Family. My family is the best family in the world, there's no doubt about it. There's also no doubt that they are silly people who must take a goofy picture whenever we all get together for a less-goofy picture. We go on great vacations and generally enjoy all ourselves whenever we get together. My family made me the way I am and I'm very happy about that.
Well, I don't know about you, but my mood is improved. All the smiling faces and excellent adventures that I get to be a part of are just pretty dang great.
