The New Year and New Destinations

So. We’ve made it. We’ve completed the first decade of the third millenium–ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the future.

Anyway. I’ve yet to make any New Year’s resolutions, as I generally tend to forget them within a few weeks, so instead I’ll give the present, some plans, and some possibilities.

The present: I’m still in Montana, and it’s been a surprisingly mild stay so far. I’d attribute it to global warming, except I know that it was 8 below zero here in early October and got down to -20 before the weather kindly warmed up to 10 or so for my arrival. We don’t have much snow, but there is snow on the mountains, and the pine trees up in the canyons are frosted white against the gray and black rock. I took a hike with a friend of mine up one of these canyons last Monday, and we walked up to some falls a few miles back. The falls were covered in thick white ice, and when you stood still next to them, you could hear the water grumbling underneath it all, like an underground river just below the surface. The cliffs were towering as high as I remembered them–one thing I definitely miss when living out east–and there were frozen masses of ice affixed to the rock where the mountain springs come down into the canyon. It was very quiet, with little moving except the low noise of the creek under the ice and the occasional woodpecker.

I fly back to Virginia on Friday: that is where the planning begins. The first major item on the calendar is another month-long trip to Turkey and Georgia at the end of January, where I’ll be collecting gold and silver jewelry and other small works of craftsmanship for import and sale back in the United States. I’ll be flying into Istanbul and spending most of my time in eastern Turkey and Tbilisi, Georgia, so you can expect pictures and accounts of Istanbul in the wintertime, the abandoned Armenian capital of Ani, and the snowbound passes of the land border into Georgia.

Then, back to Virginia at the end of February. Possibilities: I don’t plan on staying in Virginia for very long, likely not past spring. So, sometime in April or May I’ll take my laptop and iPhone development jobs on the road. I’ll either buy a car and spend a year or so bumming around North America and getting to know my own continent better, or accept a volunteer job overseas in exchange for room and board. Currently I have a request in with a tourist service in Wadi Rum, Jordan, where I would be–wait for it–doing web design for a faux Bedouin camp. Cheesy? Yes. Awesome? Most definitely. I have yet to hear back for certain, however, so we will see what we will see.

Either way, looks like it’s going to be an interesting year. So, best wishes to all, and have a great 2010.