I am definitely a landscapes person. Although I will forever long for the lush and beautiful forests and fields of places like Germany, there is also much to be said of the rugged and foreboding landscapes of places like here in Afghanistan or a place I am dying to visit, the seemingly endless wild of eastern Russia.





Although a life alone is never one that I would wish for myself, there are times where I can sympathize somewhat with some of the ideas of the monks of primitive Christianity who went out to the wildernesses of Europe, Africa, or the Middle East to seek solitude. There is something to be said for being alone at times. It took me a few years as a teenager to recognize and figure out how to act on the feelings but sometimes I just get this urge to get out and be alone for awhile. Of course I could drown those inclinations with mind-numbing cable TV or endless Youtube videos but getting out and whether its simply sitting on a rock in the woods or climbing to the top of a much bigger rock to sit and think, it is simultaneously a marvelous recharge for both the body and soul as well as an outlet for stresses and worries that I am often not even aware that I’ve been harboring.

I guess that as with the monks of old, when celibacy is a way of life, you take what you can get lol.

But if I were to win the lottery, after seeing to the affairs of myself and my family, I would buy myself a helicopter and spend a year just flying around this amazing country. As I spend hours zooming around the sky here I see caves that aren’t visible from the ground that I would give anything to explore and amazing mountains just screaming for some idiot to come climb. Even setting aside the sense of adventure of traveling all through a war zone, this place has so much adventure potential that it bothers me so much to be cooped up by rules or danger. That’s probably why I go crazy and drive my truck up to the mountains and do Pete stuff for days on end on my R&R’s.





Even with rules and regulations in place, there is still a ton of fun to be had here. A lot of it isn’t easily understood or explainable except to the participants though. Today I typed up a little letter and had it translated into Dari and then I printed off a few copies and put them in empty water bottles and tossed them out of the chopper over random villages that we overflew. Imagine the shock of the readers as they are informed that not only are they part of a new country, but that the country has and is named for a new queen that they are subject to, who also coincidentally happens to be a good friend of mine! Afghan men almost universally believe that women are some sort of sub-human breeding commodity. Yay!

Here’s the video clip:
CLICK HERE!!!




Me being excited about successfully forming a new country. Hail Ginastan!