Blowing Snow

This is a journal of my time in Afghanistan, started a month after I arrived at Bagram Air Base in Parwan.

Blowing Snow

On Tuesday, the sun came out for what seemed to be the first time in a couple of weeks, lifting my spirits no end. I did not have to report for work on Tuesday, so I spent the morning, until about 14:00, sitting outside my hut on a field stool I had scrounged from the discarded materials of a departing unit a couple days after I arrived at Bagram.

I was reading The Second John McPhee Reader, enjoying his writing, wishing I had the books that the reader was sampling to read. I was reading from Basin and Range that morning in the wind.

JW, a Reports Manager on the shift before me, wandered over and invited me to join him for a run at 14:00. We ran along the perimeter road around our camp up the pallet of water that the soldiers manning the ECP close to our camp drink from. The wind had picked up, and there is precious little ground cover along the fence or road. I ran a little too hard to start, and burned out on the run back. No matter which we were facing, we faced into a sandy wind. It was mildly exfoliating and I had to rinse the sand out of my teeth afterwards.

I tried calling Chrysta, but her phone was on the charger and did not ring, so I was left to sweep and mop my room, and wander around on chores. Taking my laundry to the drop off (we turn our laundry over to a service that takes the laundry to another camp and returns it three days later), I was struck by the intense beauty of the snow blowing off the peaks to the west of camp with the sun behind them. I raced back to my hooch, grabbed my cell phone and took a few photographs. The above photograph is part of one of the shots–shielded from the direct sunlight by a concrete barrier . I hope I captured a little of what I saw–but I doubt it.