Cabin Journal

Last Light

The Native Americans had a name for all the seasons—“when the geese return” or “when the creeks thaw.” Now at the cabin is the time when the pine cones are falling from the trees, when nature has decided it’s the most auspicious time for the ponderosas to try to reseed themselves. Working at my computer, I’m startled by the crashes, as the cones fall on the roof and porch, like some kind of tree artillery.

It’s also the time when the hummingbirds have returned from their winter havens. At the cabin last week, a warm evening, I wanted to absorb the last light of day, that fleeting time when everything is bathed with golden light as the sun gets ready to disappear behind Mount Meeker. I’ve finished my work for the day, and I just wanted to open all my senses to everything around me, turn off the thinking part of my brain.

Down the road, past Claudia’s house, the first thing I saw were the hummingbirds thick among the willow bushes, little bits of emerald green and red among the blooming pale yellow flowers and pale green leaves. It’s the nectar they want, and there seems plenty of it, but the thick bushes are also a good place to hide from predators as well as to launch their straight-up dizzying flights meant to dazzle the opposite sex. I don’t know about the female hummingbirds, but I’m impressed.

On the hillside, the last light hit a grove of young aspen trees, thin, girlish stalks that culminate in a burst of lime-colored leaves. In the thick woods along the creek the golden light burnishes the trees and bushes in 12 shades of green: from the somber pine needles to the pale willow leaves to the psychedelic aspen.

On my way back, I notice  the wooden fence posts, now falling apart since Tom went into the nursing home two years ago, and there’s no one to maintain them.

I thought about how we all have our time to love and enjoy this valley, and then we move on, while new people discover this place. I met a man last week who had been coming here for 50 years, but it was no longer the “Shangri-la” it once was, he told me. Life’s circumstances, including the death of his wife, had changed his feelings toward this valley.

For me, Meeker Park is still a paradise, especially this time of year when life is returning. But watching the seasons, as well as the people who come and go here, I get the sense of the cycle of life that keeps moving, whether we want it to or not. In only four months, these lime green aspen leaves will be replaced by golden ones, as nature retreats again and the cycle continues.  All we can do is hang on for the ride, as long as it lasts.

Rocks and Sky

 

On my hikes, something always resonates with me, captures my attention, sort of like a theme for the day, although I don’t consciously look for it.  Sometimes it’s the flowers or the light on the aspen trunks, or Mount Meeker itself.

On my last hike, in the Twin Owls area of Rocky Mountain National Park, it was the sky and the rocks. Unlike the rest of the park where glaciers carved the valleys and mountains into sharp relief, at Twin Owls the granite base was weathered by a slower and gentler process of rain and wind that produced more rounded rocks. The Twin Owls are two such formations, resembling two overlapping owl heads. (It’s easy to start anthropomorphizing here with all the differently shaped rocks; I’ve seen the body of a slug, a sleeping lion, and there’s one rock formation known as Paul Bunyan’s foot.)

It was a changeable day, with clouds forming and dissipating and reforming, so the light was ever changing, reflecting on the rocks in ways I’ve never seen before. It was a soft and warm light, as tender as the new leaves on the aspens in the valley below, where a huge herd of elk were eating and resting(above).

It’s the combination that seems so powerful and eternal: there’s nothing on earth more solid and heavy than rocks and nothing more spacious and open than the sky. Maybe it’s the yin and yang counterpoint that draws my eyes upward over and over, that catches the flight of vultures and hawks soaring so high they are not much bigger than specks, although I can still delight in their aerial dance. I want to be up there, floating in this unbounded space between the rocks and the sky.

 

Survival Mode

Coming back from the cabin last week, I stopped for a hike at Hall Ranch, a valley surrounded by red rock hills. It’s a dry place with creek beds in which I’ve never seen water, and yet every spring nature puts on a show, with all the bushes flowering and the short-grass fields turning green (though some of last year's brown grasses, right, hang on).

Even after three months of little precipitation, most of the plants were making valiant attempts to put on their best faces. And yet when I looked closely, I could see that the showy flowers disguised the fact that the plant was struggling. The bitterbrush were flowering, but on some plants there were only flowers and almost no leaves, as if the bush had gone into survival mode and the bush was focusing on its most important task: to produce flowers so seeds would carry on the plant’s survival for the next generation. 

The rabbit bush that grow here in huge numbers, sprawling in every direction, have become more circumspect, keeping their branches in check. Even in my backyard, where I often water my trees, this spring most of the trees have produced only a few leaves per branch, while waiting and hoping for more rain.

In times of stress, when nature produces less than optimal conditions for growth, nature does what it has to do to survive, conserving resources and energy.  

I want to respond in kind, curtail my water use, eat less food, reduce the amount of lawn at my home, take shorter showers, and drive less. We just got a day of rain, which seemed like a blessing, but the previous lack of substantial moisture for at least three months and the unnatural heat seems like a crisis. Yet the human world goes on as if everything is normal. Only nature  is smart enough to know to pull back in times of hardship.

No Trespassing

 

Shortly after I moved to the cabin, a former owner told me about a trail that followed the creek and led to a waterfall and then continued down the valley. Because the trail passed through private property, I avoided it in the summer, not wanting to disturb anyone’s privacy, even though no cabins were visible from the trail. It’s not really a trail but a faint outline in the grasses, a narrow passage through rocks and trees.  

But once fall came and most of the summer residents left, I discovered a wonderful hike, different than the surrounding landscape of dry hills covered with pines. Down along the creek, it’s more lush, with stands of aspens and more grasses. With everything squeezed into the bottom of the valley, I felt closer to nature, brushing the trunk of the aspens, climbing over the rocks, and skirting the edge of the stream. It felt like a hidden place, not visible to the rest of the world from above.

I felt a bit uneasy about hiking through someone else’s property, but other people had mentioned this place, so I got the sense that others walked back here, that perhaps it was something commonly accepted. The cabins around here are surrounded by Forest Service property, so who’s to say where government property ends and private property begins?

Yet, when I attempted to do the hike a few weeks ago, I was met by several no-trespassing signs and branches laid across the beginning of the trail. There was no uncertainty that the owner did not want anyone on his property and that I was definitely unwelcome.

Reluctantly, I turned around, not willing to challenge someone’s strong territorial claims. Yet I wonder where the lines are drawn here. Many of the roads I walk on in Meeker Park are private roads that lead to cabins, with “no trespassing” signs guarding the entrance from the main road.  I understand that local residents don’t want people who don’t live there driving around, kicking up dust, and making noise. But as a walker, I’m not bothering anyone.  Compared to the jeeps and ATVs, what harm am I doing?

I can understand the impulse behind “I found my piece of paradise, now leave me alone.” After all, one of the reasons I bought my cabin was to escape from the “civilized” world with too many people and too much noise. But is there room for those of us who love and respect this valley to share the space?

Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring

 

This week at the cabin I celebrated two rites of spring and one last ritual of winter.

Sitting at the table, working, I tried to decipher a sound I hadn’t heard since last spring. Amazingly, the frogs have come out of their winter stupor and were humming away down in the meadow where the creek runs. Their arrival is at least two weeks earlier than last year. Meanwhile, new grass is coming up through the old, and the bluebirds (below) are everywhere.

Mid-afternoon, I thought I heard what sounded like distant thunder, but told myself it was just a plane passing over. April seems too early for thunderstorms. But the rumbling continued, and soon there was rain, not a lot, but a good sign. That evening, when I was in Estes Park for dinner, there was more thunder and then a real rain, coming down hard for at least an hour. After a month of little precipitation, the rain felt like a huge relief, as well as a gift for the   earth.

When I came back to the cabin, the air outside was still moist from the rain and cool, so it seemed a good night to use the woodstove. For the past month, it had been almost too warm, with daytime temperatures in the 60s.

I got the fire going and prepared to settle down to a pleasant night of reading by the fireside. But then I heard a noise on the roof, puzzled for a moment, and then realized it was rain and started seeing flashes of light. Amazingly, another thunderstorm was moving through the valley. I realized I could either bury myself in a book or just open myself to this astonishing night. So I raised the blinds, turned off the lights, so only the fire glowed, and the only thing I was aware of was the crackling from the fire, the thunder from outside, and the sound of the rain. Who needs a TV or CD player or even books when the world is so alive?

 

Eyes on the Ground

Most of the time on my walks around Meeker Park, I keep my head level, or I’m distracted by the clouds that bloom over the mountains and sail east.  But this time of the year, I’m more likely to keep my head down, looking for the first pasqueflowers, those springtime beauties that are more dazzling than anything I’ll see later in summer—carpets of purple lupine or bunches of purple and white columbine—because these first flowers of spring emerge so unexpectedly from the brown detritus of last year’s plants. Right now, they’re the only thing of color—aside from the yellow Oregon holly—in the still drab landscape and more so because their petal-like sepals are almost transparent, so a tiny purple light seems to glow from the brown forest floor.

When I arrived at the cabin on Wednesday, I checked the place in my yard where I usually see the flowers but there was nothing. Yet Thursday morning, when I went to my car, I nearly stepped on one, and when I came out a few hours later, there was another. And a few hours later, a whole phalanx had emerged, some of them still curled up. Around the unfurled ones, I could see the silky hairs that protect the plant from the still cold nights and always possible snow. From the seasonal records I keep, these pasqueflowers are flowering two weeks earlier than last year.

They seemed to pop from the ground, as if the warm sun had finally penetrated the soil and propelled their release from the earth. I thought if I sat there long enough and watched, I could see one actually slither up through the soil. But other things distracted me, so they surfaced when I wasn’t looking, their secret entry into the daylight safe from my prying eyes.

 

Too Hot for Comfort

In Rocky Mountain National Park this week the signs of early spring were everywhere. The ranger at the entrance station excitedly told us he had seen bluebirds and woodpeckers and even a butterfly. My friend and I told him we had just passed a herd of deer, some of which were sitting in the shade of the pine trees, as if the March sun was already too warm.

On the trail to Dream Lake (above), despite the presence of 42 inches of snow (according to the ranger), people were hiking up the slush/snow-covered trail in shorts and T-shirts in this 50-something degree day. We ran into a photographer who had been taking photos of and on Haiyaha Lake and suddenly found his feet sinking in the lake. He had been taking pictures in the park for 25 years, and never had the high alpine lakes started melting this early.  For the first time, he was seeing robins who stayed here through winter rather than migrating to warmer places.

On the trail, there was almost a spirit of revelry, hikers greeting each other with smiles.  And how could you not be happy on such a day: the warmth, mingling with the coolness of the snow under the vastness of the shockingly blue sky.

Yet there’s a disturbing undercurrent, a feeling that things are not right, that we have altered the climate in ways that could prove unalterable. Over thousands of years, animals and plants adjusted to nature’s dependable seasons, but that calibration is being sundered now, as warming temperatures produce earlier flowering seasons and food that arrives at the wrong time.

To sit here on a March day in my cabin and have the windows open, so I can feel the breeze and the sun is wonderful. But I rather have the snow we usually get in March, which means the streams and reservoirs would be full in summer, the fish will have enough water in the streams to survive and there will be enough berries for the bears to eat in the fall.

The nature photographer we met on the trail to Dream Lake said he would give up 20 years of his life to make nature right again. I feel just as passionate, that I would be willing to put my life on the line to save the planet, to keep the glaciers and icecaps frozen, to save the polar bears from drowning in oceans where ice floes have melted. But my life is insignificant compared to the massive forces of progress and greed that ravage the environment in pursuit of cheap food, gas, and wood, among other things. 

I want nature back: the snow that we used to get every March; the flowers and fruit tree blossoms that didn’t emerge until April; the time when we didn’t have forest fires in March. Is it too late?

Learning from the Trees

Last week’s warm spell, with temperatures in the 50s, suddenly revealed what’s been hidden for these last three months. For the first time since December, I can see what was underneath the piles of snow. The solar driveway lights, which were buried up to their tops, giving off a strange glow in the snow at night, now shed full light.  The trash that got blown into the yard last November and was forgotten about is now available for me to clean up: cardboard and beetle kill patches from the trees. The path to the water pump is clear, and the benches for the picnic table in the back have emerged from the once four feet of snow.

I can see where the rocks from last summer’s campfire ended up after the snowplow driver inadvertently pushed them to the back of the driveway last December. Most gloriously, I can see and smell the earth, still brown and covered with needles and flattened grasses, but breathing.

This winter, when I went for my walks around Meeker Park, it was always with difficulty. As much as I love the snow, climbing up the hills in snow up to my knees was hard work, especially when it was blizzarding. But with the snow now melted from the south-facing hillsides, I feel like I’m bounding up the hill, unencumbered, as if my feet suddenly got lighter.

I’m hearing more bird calls, and I saw my first bluebird this week. Unexpectedly, there was a fish swimming in Cabin Creek where the snow still lingered around the edges of a small pool.  The top half of Mount Meeker is already stripped of snow, its wide flanks open to the sun, but its lower half still has slivers of snow, especially in the wide gullies that run down its side.

Near the creek, I found a small pine tree growing from a boulder (above)—a seemingly improbable place to take hold. I’ve seen this before, with even fairly tall trees existing on the water that collects in the cracks that the tree’s roots have managed to force open in the hard granite.

None of us knows at birth where we will land: in loose soil nurtured by decaying pine cones and needles, on top of a ridge where strong winds try to constantly pull us down, or wedged in a granite boulder.

We all land someplace different, and we work with what we’ve been given. Some of us will have easy lives and others will struggle. The trees don’t complain but go about working to survive. They inspire me.  All I can do is hope that this small promise of a tree will grow strong.

Life Without Animals

 

For the past two weeks, I haven’t seen any rabbits at the cabin. Because I see so few animals in the winter, I miss the rabbits’ presence. In the winter, it’s just the chickarees and rabbits that stick it out, while the ground squirrels and chipmunks hibernate.

The chickarees keep me entertained with their rushing to and fro, while the rabbits have a sweetness and calmness that belie their predicament. I read recently that scientists studying hares in the northern Rockies found the animals live on average one year. Being on the bottom of the food chain makes for a short life. Have all the rabbits here been eaten or starved to death in a winter where the snow has remained on the ground since October?

I miss them; they’ve kept me company all winter long. I know their deaths are part of the natural process, but around the globe animals are disappearing at alarming rates due to less natural forces—loss of habitat and climate change, among other reasons.

What would the world be like if we lost our wild animals?  Strictly speaking, we don’t need wildlife. Most humans, aside from some indigenous people, live in a totally domesticated world that provides all our biological needs: water, food, shelter.

And yet I think we emotionally need wildlife; it takes us out of ourselves and into another world that is different than our own. People are drawn to wild animals. You can see that every autumn, when thousands come to Rocky Mountain National Park to see and hear the elk bugling. Last summer, while hiking in the park, a friend and I discovered a moose standing in a pond right off the trail (top), and within a few minutes a crowd had formed, all of us whispering excitedly to each other, as if something unbelievable had descended from the heavens.

Maybe we’re drawn to things that are wild because we have lost our wildness and want to rekindle that extinguished part of ourselves. Or maybe we’re drawn to wild animals because their lives are so much closer to the edge than ours. For most of us, life is predictable, while most wild animals struggle daily to eat or be eaten. So when we cross paths with an elk or bald eagle or even rabbit, we can vicariously feel the thrill of that other existence (without being eaten).

A couple of weeks ago, I was excited to see a red fox in my backyard in Boulder (above), even though it could have eaten the birds and squirrels that I tempt with bird seed. But it was something from the other side of the fence, from the open space beyond my suburban yard and too tamed life. If we lost the wild animals, it means we lost whatever shreds of wilderness are left. And that would mean that there would be no chance of existence beyond our everyday and increasingly programmed lives.

An Agreeable Day

 

When I came to the cabin this week, I was hoping for spring but got blasted by winter. More 50-60 mph winds were whipping up the snow, forming small tornadoes, and obscuring the landscape in total white-outs, as if a giant hand was smearing the landscape in white.

In this wind and cold, with snow still piled high, not many animals were out. The only animals I saw were the chickarees (gray squirrels) and Stellar’s jays. The chickarees sprint across the snow as if it would collapse any minute, and I wonder how they know whether it’s safe. In soft snow, surely they would drown, while this tough snow, constructed of weeks of thawing and then freezing, with some additional blowing, can even hold me up.

I worked all morning and then went out into the blizzard, desperate for some exercise, after sitting and staring at my computer screen all morning. It felt like a full-force assault by the wind and snow, as I struggled with every step, especially on the icy parts of the road. It felt like nature was trying to shake me down, wanted to force me to crawl into a hole or behind a big boulder or under one of the dancing pines. To stand up to it felt like some act of courage or craziness. But there’s a beauty to it also, especially in the whirlpools of snow, which danced across the landscape like phantoms.

  That night, watching the flames in the wood-burning stove, I was happy to discover a kindred spirit. For almost a year now I’ve been reading from the journal entries of Henry David Thoreau, dipping into them while I’m at the cabin, letting myself read only a few pages per visit, as if they were treats, and if I ate too many, the pleasure would be gone too quickly.

On a January day, he writes:

“even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this, when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel. . .  that cold and solitude are friends of mine. . . .  I am aware that most of my neighbors would think it a hardship to be compelled to linger here one hour, especially this bleak day, and yet I receive this sweet and ineffable compensation for it. It is the most agreeable thing I do.”

On a day like yesterday, most sane people would stay inside, curl up with a good book or TV show. Yet being outside in the mountains, even in these strong and cold winds, is one of the most agreeable days I can have.