Before becoming parents, René Brask and his wife Sophie traveled around the world in search of waves to surf. The pair from Denmark found a fine place in Bali, a mountainous Indonesian island just south of the equator in the Java Sea, and returned to it every year for five years running. As it seems to always go, one day they learned they were going to have a baby . . .

Last I heard, Jackson, Wyoming is enjoying a lovely 10-degree low and taking on an inch or two of fluff during some awfully pleasant snow flurries. They say the skiing's not that great this year, either. So prepare yourself. Corners of the American Sonoran Desert are invoking cliché lyrics to Jimmy Buffet songs at 74 degrees during the day and chilling the bones at night around 45. Those are facts, so pack the bikes and come on down. 38 Photos . . .

Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF16-35mm f/2.8L | Setting: f/14, 1/125, ISO 100

I stopped and looked around for another way. He, on the other hand, rolled by me on the passenger side, draped a wrist at 12:00 on the wheel, and entered the sludge at a creep. Life as we knew it unfolded in slow motion. The front tires touched the water and went down. They didn't stop, but they sank with such a dreamy, cartoonish pace that those of us watching had enough time to process, react, and theorize. So, we laughed . . .

Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF24-105mm | Setting: f/7.1, 30sec, ISO 1000

From us to you, good reader, a New Year wish. The place to be on this recent New Year's Eve, for us and an assortment of friends anyway, was a far off slice of beach on the Sea of Cortés down in ol' Mexico. And we couldn't stop thinking of you. It's a place that's good for kids, clean and empty, and as relaxing or as adventurous as . . .

Place a wager for best description of a desert rain on chapter twelve of Barbara Kingsolver's book The Bean Trees and there's a good chance you'd win. She crescendos over the course of some 800 words just to build up to her description of the subtle and therefore easily dismissed scent that rises in the air before a desert summer rain. It's a remarkable and realistic chapter. So why would I bother writing about it?

Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF24-105mm | Setting: f/4, 1/8, ISO 1600

As a nine-year old girl with big, brown, criminally beautiful eyes tells me you're not supposed to call people weird. They're "artsy." So, I have a bunch of artsy friends who like to make a tradition out of gathering deep in the desert totally off the grid on the weekend after Thanksgiving. It starts with all participants knowing just three things:

1. Who's coming and how the responsibilities of food, drink, firewood, and frisbees are divvied up
2. A location in the form of a geodetic datum
3. That we're going to make a couple pots of feuerzangenbowle, the stuff you see ablaze here

Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF24-105mm | Setting: f/6.3, 30 sec, ISO 1000

You don't have to be all that hardcore to be out in the Sonoran Desert in winter. During the day, the ol' mercury could easily rise to to a steamy 80 degrees. At night though, it's not uncommon for the shiver point to begin around 55 or 54 and bottom out at 35. You'll get just a light frost in the morning. It ought to be a crime.

It has some downsides. Like scorpions and a lot of . . .

To hear my wife tell it, I present no shortage of difficulty when it comes to Christmas trees. She's probably right. Before our second Christmas I barnstormed with fury that we forget a tree and get a cactus instead, because that was something we could plant in the yard after making a spectacle of it. Well, that unfestive suggestion grew no wings and did not fly. We still found ourselves at a tree lot, looking for something perfectly triangular and uniform and just tall enough and something more or less out of a storybook and everything else that just doesn't come naturally to things that are, well, natural.

We bought one. Probably for 60 bucks. The whole experience left me dissatisfied . . .

The forest road I picked out while combing the map at the kitchen table a week ahead of time looked like it would take us to a camp spot right above the West Fork of Oak Creek at about 6,700 feet under the pines and junipers. It always amazes me what a map will reveal. This time it showed tight bends and little space between the contour lines. Translate that to an abrupt and likely sublime view of the canyon below, one carved out of polished and peaceful sandstone and trimmed with the dying leaves of oaks and cottonwoods. The otherwise nondescript spot is down a long dirt road that eventually leads to nowhere resembling civilization. Sometimes this is a pretty good thing.

However, as everyone knows, you can't always get what you want. Then again, what is an outdoor adventure without a series of bummers to solve?

Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF24-105mm | Setting: f/4.5, 1/100, ISO 100

She found the tree with the right branch, but it took some time to find. As you can see, good, strong branches that are close enough to the ground yet far enough from the tree are few. But that's exactly what you need for a proper rope swing. My wife found the one that worked.

I lassoed the branch, tied off the webbing, tied a big figure eight on a bight . . .