Cabin Journal

The Time of the Gentians

It’s fall already on the tundra, where most of the alpine flowers have disappeared: the blue forget-me-nots, the pink phlox, the cheery yellow sunflowers. What’s left of life at 10,000 feet are hillsides of white cottony seedheads, glowing in the sunlight, and a few animals.

In a small rockpile on the Ute Trail in Rocky Mountain National Park, the pikas (below) are frantically gathering more grasses to store up for the long winter. Meanwhile, the marmots (below, right), already fattened up for their eight months of hibernation, are relaxing  on the boulders, soaking up the last of the warm sunlight before the snows come—any day now.

But here on the the dried out, bronze tundra, one species of flower is not daunted by the coming of winter. For reasons unknown to me, the arctic gentian (above) has chosen to bloom at the tail end of the growing season. Because its colors are muted, most people don’t notice this small white flower with forked green tendrils, glowing among the decaying plants. But once I see one, I start seeing them everywhere.

 

 

 

At the cabin, the lushness of mid-summer has faded, as the fields are being drained of color. The purple asters are pale and tattered remnants of their earlier glorious selves. Even the yellow sulphur flowers, which have hung on for months, are going to seed. Petals from the yellow and red blanketflowers litter the ground.

Now is when the blue gentian, cousin to the arctic gentian, shines. Like its higher-altitude relative, the blue gentian makes its appearance when all the other flowers are dying. But unlike the arctic gentian, this blue one can’t be missed. Amid the decay of summer’s end, the blue gentians are stunning, blazing a darker blue than the Colorado sky.

They are life itself—brave, insistent and almost reckless as they arrive now. Already the nights are cold, and the first frost could come at any time. And yet they are not daunted. The gentians are like the pasqueflowers of spring, flowering while the snow still flies and the ground is hard and cold,

When I look to the natural world for sustenance and inspiration, I’m always replenished.

Warning: Animals Crossing

Do you know that deer can slip quietly out of the woods and onto the road without warning? I silently ask this question of the driver behind me, who is on my bumper, eager to push me forward and make me go faster down this mountain road in late afternoon, even though I’m driving at least 10 miles over the speed limit.

I think of the time last year when I was driving back to the cabin from Estes Park in the dusk, driving the speed limit because this was the time of the day when the animals emerged from the forests along the road. That time, too, another car was on my bumper, and when I saw a deer step from the dark woods, I started to slow down. When the irritated driver behind me started to pass me, I had to honk the horn, as much to scare the deer back into the woods as to alert the driver, who stopped just in time.

And so I find myself in the position of being the old lady slowing traffic and irritating the impatient drivers behind me. The ones who drive seemingly unaware that herds of elk sometimes wander onto the highway and pause, as if unsure where to go. The drivers who don’t know that bighorn sheep descend from their high rocky perches to lick salt from the road in the winter.

These aggressive drivers likely don’t care about the chipmunks and ground squirrels that dart out from the bushes without looking, running as fast as they can to get across the road before a car comes. Or that birds sometimes fly low and can get hit by an onrushing heavy car.

Even in Rocky Mountain National Park, where tourists come to actively seek out wildlife, I see cars speeding down Trail Ridge Road, seemingly ignorant of the whole tapestry of life that exists alongside this ribbon of paved road: deer and elk in the forest and meadows, moose among the willow bushes and aspen trees, birds perching in the high trees or squirrels running through the tall grasses.

It’s an ignorance bordering on arrogance, one that presumes our human existence is the most important, that we can mow down animals that get in our way, and that getting to our destination as quickly as possible is more important than respecting the lives of other beings.

I could pull over, let these impatient drivers pass me and speed on their way, but I feel responsible for protecting my animal brethren, if just for that evening or that hour.

If I can save one animal from the crushing weight of a car, I’ll be happy. Meanwhile, I’ll mourn all the others.

Smoke Gets in My Eyes

It’s a sign of the times that, rather than check the weather forecast in the morning, I check the air quality index. Last Saturday, the Denver area had the worst air quality on the planet: 192—a combination of smoke from the fires in California and Oregon and Denver’s historically polluted air.

It used to be that the mountains provided relief from the summer heat and pollution on the plains. But with climate change, temperatures at the cabin often are in the 80s, and the smoke from the western fires affects the whole state. In fact, last week,  the air quality index for Estes Park was higher (144) than it was in Denver, possibly because this mountain town sits in a basin where noxious air collects or else because the jet stream is moving the pollution in unexpected directions.

At the cabin, I could barely perceive the outline of Mount Meeker (left), just a few miles to the west, and the whole valley below was sunk in a white haze. Even the birds have seemingly fled. The swallows that were here the previous week, raising a new brood in the birdhouse by the garage, are gone. I miss their chirring sounds as they darted through the air catching bugs.  My neighbor who puts out feeders for the hummingbirds has noticed fewer of these tiny flashy birds in the past week. Even the birds that are still here—like the Steller’s jays—are quieter and less raucous. Does the smoke-filled air make it harder for them to breathe and thus vocalize?

Yet amazingly, amid all this gloom, the wildflowers are still going strong. The lupine have died out, but the purple asters, yellow sulfur flowers, white yarrow, yellow and red blanketflower, and mauve fireweed are still blooming, joined by the goldenrod.

I know I shouldn’t go out into this polluted air, but I can’t help myself. In only a few weeks, most of the flowers will dry up for the winter, and in another month the aspen will start changing color and dropping their leaves.

But today the creeks are still running, and the the wind is softly rushing through the aspens. The chipmunks and golden-mantled ground squirrels are still running through the grasses and flowers, as if there’s no time to lose. I watch from the porch as one ground squirrel (left) makes repeated trips under the cabin to steal the pink insulation and stuff it into its underground nest where it will make for a cozy and warm winter retreat.

Yet walking under these unnatural skies, I have to resist the urge to close my heart to this harbinger of our future under climate change. A part of me wants to huddle inside the cabin, close the curtains, distract myself with the Internet or a good book. But shutting out the world feels like death, like I’m cutting myself off from the source of life. Instead, I choose to cast my fate with the birds, the wildflowers, the pines and aspens, the chipmunks and the bear that wandered through the neighborhood that morning. Whatever happens to them happens to all of us.

Flowers Gone Wild

In a summer with record-breaking heat across the West, wildfires so hot that they are creating their own weather storms, and reservoirs, rivers and lakes drying up, here in the Colorado mountains a small miracle is occurring.

A late spring with snowstorms into May followed by daily rain showers in June have produced more wildflowers than I’ve ever seen here before. On my septic field, flowers are blooming that have never grown here before, and on ground that in past years would have been barren if not for the thistles.  Last week I counted at least 20 species of wildflowers in the yard around the cabin, and I’m sure I missed a few of the smaller, less showy ones.

The wild roses that grow here sporadically are flourishing along the roadside and among the aspen, their pink petals littering the ground. The columbine that usually flower for a week in mid-June are still blooming in late July. The modest sulphur (buckwheat) flower, short and with tight yellow blossoms, has taken over whole hillsides (above).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the past few weeks, the view from my front porch has been a sea of purple lupine, sulphur flowers, yellow cinquefoil, pink wild geranium, and the tall needle and thread grasses, which I’ve rarely seen.

This week, as the cinquefoil begin to fade, the yellow blanketflower (gaillardia, right), purple asters, mariposa lilies and blue harebells are making their appearance. I love the blanketflower with its smart golden petals and red centers, but the asters (bottom photo, with harebells) are one of my favorites.

 

 

A simple flower with the thin purple petals around a yellow center, they usually appear in bunches that light up their surroundings. Around them the mariposa lilies (top left) float serenely—white delicate bastions of light. The blue penstemons (left) aren’t as plentiful, but amid a field of white yarrow and green grasses, their color is startling.  

On my walk around Meeker Park, I stopped at a field where I always see a few angelicas (below), but this year there are probably 50, raising their thick, juicy red stalks above the grasses that are now turning brown.

 

 

 

Another tall plant is the green gentian, 2-3 feet high, its flowers a subtle greenish-yellow, but the whole plant is a marvel, an intricate and yet delicate structure. I always have to wonder: how was such a perfectly proportioned thing created? And for what reason? It doesn’t need to be that beautiful and elegant to attract bees or other pollinators.

I don’t know the answers, but I know I need to get out as much as possible—brave the heat and smoky skies—and admire the wildflowers for the short amount of time they light up the landscape. I need to stand respectfully in their presence, trace their intricate patterns and let myself be awed by their wealth of colors and forms, and by their profusion.

A wildflower season like this one is rare and will likely never happen again in my lifetime, especially as our climate becomes more extreme. In a summer where the environmental news gets worse every day, I have to rejoice at this source of wonder.  

Here and There

In Glacier Bay, the water is an unearthly and milky blue: something in between turquoise and jade. On a boat, plying the channels and bays of southeast Alaska, you feel that you could sail these waters forever and never reach an end. Always in the distance are white-capped mountains, which never get closer or farther. They’re always on the horizon—seemingly unreachable.

On an Alaskan cruise last month, I was overwhelmed by the vastness and emptiness of this landscape. For days we saw no other boats among miles of open water where the only signs of activity were the spouts of humpback whales and a quick view of the tops of their sleek bodies as they briefly surfaced before slipping back into their watery homes; sometimes we saw their tails flip as they took a deeper dive into a place invisible to us on the boat. Occasionally, we would come to an island teeming with life:  sea lions lounging on the rocks or playing in the water; sea otters floating on their backs; and puffins and other seabirds in the water.  

Evidence of civilization was scarce: only a few fishing boats and yachts; and almost no human habitation. It would be difficult for humans to get a toehold in this monumental landscape, even though the early natives found a rich life here. Pristine forests come down to the water’s edge, and waterfalls plunge from the tops of mountains so tall that I got dizzy staring up to the top where snowfields dazzled the eyes. At the terminus of bays, glaciers creaked and groaned while we wandered through a maze of blue icebergs big enough to get lost in. I felt that vastness most when we kayaked, where we were tiny dots in a landscape that seemed too big to comprehend. Here we were insignificant.

Coming back to Colorado, I dreaded returning to a place crowded with humans and their detritus. Even in the mountains, there are masses of people, especially in popular places like Rocky Mountain National Park. Yet once back at the cabin, I fell into the ease of life here. In southeast Alaska there is no easy way to enter into the hundreds of miles of wilderness except by boat. Hiking is difficult because the mountains are so steep and are covered with dense and almost impenetrable forests—and also full of huge brown bears.

But in Colorado, I can drive to the nearest trailhead, park my car and start walking. Or I can walk out my cabin door and hike into the forests around Meeker Park. This ponderosa pine landscape is spacious enough for flowers, shrubs and grasses to grow, so I don’t have to bushwhack through dense and steep woods, like the sitka spruce forests in Alaska.

Although the flowers in Alaska are huge—the purple lupine reaching almost 4 feet tall—the number of species is small, because there are few open and sunny meadows in which they can flourish. Here in Colorado, especially this summer, the wildflowers are profuse: whole fields of Indian paintbrush, yellow buckwheat, purple lupine and blue penstemon.

The only deciduous trees I saw in Alaska were alder, which are outnumbered by the more plentiful and somber spruce and hemlock. Here in Colorado, aspen cover  meadows and hillsides, providing a sheltered space for the columbine and other flowers to grow, and for birds to nest. In this landscape of intense sunlight, the soft rustling sound of their leaves and filtered green light provide havens of coolness and calm.

On the waters of Glacier Bay, I never heard song birds, perhaps because there’s not enough food. Here at my cabin, hummingbirds, swallows, nuthatches, Stellar’s jays, western tanagers and bluebirds fill the skies from morning till night.

In a world that is fast becoming overrun by humans, Alaska is one of the few places on earth that’s still pristine and untouched by civilization, a place where humans are vastly outnumbered by bald eagles. I’m grateful it’s still wild, but I also appreciate the intimate landscape at the cabin, where I can sit among a field of flowers and listen to the soft whispering of the aspens and the chirping of the swallows. In Alaska, I’m awed by the grandeur, but here I feel enclosed in nature’s sweetness.

Nature Disrupted

Last winter, I finally had the opportunity to see what was left of Moraine Park after our destructive fires the previous fall. One of the most beautiful and iconic landscapes in Rocky Mountain National Park,  this wide valley is bisected by a meandering river and surrounded by the tall peaks; it’s a favorite place for elk herds to graze—and for tourists to take photos. Only a few months after the wildfires, the nearby trails were still closed, but from the road I could see the blackened soil and charred and burned trees and bushes—a seemingly lifeless landscape.

This spring, the Park Service opened one of the trails—to Cub Lake—and I wanted to see if there was new growth. Walking through the valley (above), I saw grass  lusher than usual but also more death: groves of blackened aspens, some still standing while others were collapsed on the ground, perhaps blown over by the winds that pushed the deadly fires. Although some ponderosas still had green needles on the top while the bottom of the trunks were charred (left), other pines were laid flat out, their trunks now charcoal.

I knew from past wildfires that, in the aftermath, plant nutrients are returned to the soil, and new growth is more fertile—and greener—than what was there before. Taking advantage of this nutrient-rich vegetation last week were several large herds of elk, their heads buried in the deep grasses, while around them the Big Thompson River was surging, almost over its banks.

For every heartbreak, there’s also an opening. Somehow, this part of the Colorado escaped (so far) the horrible drought that is affecting the rest of the state and most of the West. Snowstorm after snowstorm in March and April resulted in a full snowpack, brimming reservoirs and overflowing rivers.

Hiking through the valley, I saw more ponds than I’ve seen in decades—enough water flowing and pooling to attract ducks and geese—while on the other side of the trail were the dead and fallen pines (above). Even some of the rocks looked charred.

Last fall, we experienced four destructive wildfires, intensified by hot, dry conditions and fast-moving winds. One of them, the East Troublesome, came close enough to my cabin to warrant an evacuation advisory. Researchers are only now starting to assess the damage and predict what the future landscape will look like.

For decades, wildfires in the West were repressed, resulting in a build-up of dead material that contributed to the intensity of the fires. Ponderosa pines that may have survived past fires are now in jeopardy. In many places the pines are being replaced with shrubs and grasses, which, in turn, will cause a change in wildlife, forcing some species out and bringing in new ones. While the West has always been subject to hot, dry weather, climate change is exacerbating these conditions.

As I hike through this bedraggled and new landscape, on the hillside I spotted a pincushion cactus—a round prickly ball with startling pink flowers. I rarely see them anymore, perhaps as a result of a flourishing market for cactus and succulents. But there were dozens spread across the hillside. Had the fires triggered this exceptional growth?  Or with the trail closed off for most of the past year, had these plants been allowed to grow without interference from our species?

At the cabin, after seeing one house wren a few weeks ago, I haven’t seen or heard anymore. Did they leave because the insects haven’t emerged after a late spring? And why are the aspens still not leafed out?

It’s hard to know. But with a climate change, it’s a whole new world. Hopefully, it’s a brave one, because we’re going to need courage to face this uncertain future.  

Nothing Is Lacking

When I first arrived at the cabin this week, the first thing I noticed was the bare ground. The absence of snow is startling after six months of winter. In Wild Basin, the several feet of snow that dazzled me all winter has melted from the creek, which is roaring and open for the first time since last fall.

But the snow was such a powerful presence, creating its own austere and elegant landscape, that it feels like something is missing. Especially because the earth is still raw. Only a few pasqueflowers (below) have emerged around the cabin, looking battered by all the snowstorms. The aspens haven’t leafed out yet, so the world seems colorless, even with a few grasses coming up among the brown and rocky earth.

Yet, if I look closely, sit still and listen, and peer under rocks and trees, there’s more life emerging than I think. Last week, I saw one hummingbird; this week, the sky seemed full of them, chasing each other and doing crazy loops in the air. Last week, both bird nest boxes around the garage were empty, but this week violet-green swallows had reclaimed one.

I thought the other was abandoned until I heard a brilliant song above my head one morning while I was outside meditating and looked up to see a house wren, one of my favorite summer visitors. Holding as still as possible so I wouldn’t spook it, I watched the bird fly over to the nest box that had been used for several years by these small birds. When another wren appeared, the two appeared to quarrel over which one had tenant rights. Finally, one gave up, and the victor flew into the box and started getting rid of last year’s (or perhaps its competitor’s) debris: Out came  bits of leaves and twigs and one feather, sailing softly to the ground. It was time to start a new nest.

When I drove 1,000 feet down into Estes Park to hike the Twin Owls trail, at first I was disappointed to see that, at even at this lower altitude, the aspen were still bare. After the pandemic, all I’ve wanted is for life to return to normal, to visit my favorite trails and have them be just the way I remember from years past. But that hasn't quite worked out. I partly blame the pandemic and all the unforeseen changes it has wrought, like twice as many people visiting the mountains. Or should I blame climate change for an unusually wet spring that has delayed the start of new life? This late in spring, snow still covers the range of mountains that encompasses Mount Meeker and Longs Peak.

However, in a springlike gesture, thunderstorms rumbled to the south and east as I hiked. Alongside the trail, I found pasqueflowers blooming. Down in the meadows, a herd of elk (above) warily eyed me, their winter coats molting. On the return trip, I slowed down, training my eye to notice what was present on this May day: the leaves on the currant and sumac bushes starting to unfurl and, under the protection of small boulders, tiny ferns (left) rolling out their leaves. Ferns are one of the most ancient plants on earth, munched on by dinosaurs when the landscape was much wetter. Here in these dry mountains, they find small pockets of moisture, like under these rocks, to thrive.

As my wonder increases at spring unbounding, I can see that life slowly and haltingly starts to fill in, like a patchwork. The world is not lacking. What is lacking was my faith in this process.

Water Running Everywhere

At the cabin this week, the warm temperatures have gotten ahead of the snowstorms. Everywhere I go, in any direction I turn, water is running: off the roof, down the gutters on the cabin and shed.

When I go for my walk, both Tahosa and Cabin creeks are rushing, stirred up with brown organic matter and flecked with bubbles. At Fritz’s pond, a small stream pours into the pond and out the other end, into a small meadow of willow bushes, their branches tipped with soft buds.

Along the way, water flows alongside the roads and from the fields, where the strands of grass are yellow/brown and flattened from snows. All this water creates ponds that will last only a few weeks.

It’s even dripping inside the cabin, as the snow melts on the roof and finds cracks in the ceiling that I’ve never been able to fix since the 2013 flood.

As the snow melts, things are uncovered: the door mat that blew into the side yard last winter and I haven’t seen since last February, and a pile of rotten wood that needs to be relocated. And I hear the first hummingbird of the season—a welcome sound and sight.

I see one pasqueflower in the front yard, only two or three inches high, the flower not ready to open yet, and I think of the other pasqueflowers still underneath the ground, feeling the earth turn warm, the sunlight finally free to penetrate the soil. All that life underneath, just waiting, even as Mount Meeker is still blanketed in white and framed by aspen blossoms. It could be Mount Fuji bordered by cherry blossoms—the same blend of strength and delicacy.

As spring comes to the high country, releasing all this water, something in me wants to break open, too.

The Odd Behavior of Tourists

A few weeks ago, I ran into a middle-aged woman who was floundering in thigh-high snow on a steep slope above Alberta Falls in Rocky Mountain National Park. Apparently when she and her son arrived at the sign that says “Alberta Falls“ and they didn’t see any waterfalls, they headed up a steep hillside, where no trail exists.  Apparently, being from Florida, it didn’t occur to her that all that snow might be covering the falls and so set out to look for the popular attraction, which the Park Service had cleverly hidden someplace else.

A bit farther down the trail, I found another curiosity: a bridge over a small creek (about 5 feet across) roped off with orange cones. I can only assume the ropes were meant to prevent people from jumping into the creek, which was obscured by snow. Park rangers must have had to rescue people enough times that they decided to take preventive measures. Maybe they also needed to add some signs:

Warning: Creek below. If you jump in, you might get wet, and you might get cold. Just so you know.

As has been widely reported, since the pandemic started more people have turned to the great outdoors, both for distraction and spiritual solace. These newbies apparently haven’t spent a lot of time in nature, because they seem easily confused.

Last month, some hikers on the Glacier Gorge trail apparently didn’t expect snow on the trail in March, Colorado’s snowiest month. I saw women wearing leggings and tennis shoes that would have been proper wear in downtown Denver but didn’t hold up on a snow-packed trail where a few inches off the trail you sink into deep snow. On a steep section of the trail, a bottleneck formed with people lined up, unsure how to navigate down the slippery, icy slope in their shoes that had no tread. Some  decided that sliding on their backsides was the easiest way down.

I just read an article about a rescue group in a remote part of Wyoming that is now getting 10 times the requests for rescues than it did a year ago—some from wilderness users who just got tired while hiking and wanted to be helped back to their cars. One Denver newspaper article last winter mentioned a woman walking on an avalanche-prone mountainside, dressed only in shorts and a tank-top (somehow, she came through unscathed). By not being prepared, some of these backcountry tourists are putting others in danger, like the rescue groups and rangers who must search for them, often in bad weather, and bring them back to civilization.

But there’s another danger: that too many people see the world through the lens of our screens—whether social media, TV, video games or something else—so the natural and artificial worlds blend into one. Nature becomes a commodity that can be plucked for our amusement rather than being a world unto itself. Last month, two tourists stopped me at Wild Basin to ask how to find the spectacular mountain views, someplace they could take photos to be admired on Instagram. Another time, two young men asked me where they could find elk, their sole reason for coming to the park.

I love the high mountains and the huge herds of elk, but the tourists’ consumerist attitude—I want an experience that I can record and post—leaves out any genuine interaction with nature, any appreciation of this complex world where nature exists on a different plane than the human one. If you’re not so intent on finding the falls or getting that prize photo, you might glimpse an amazing world: lichen thousands of years old, ouzel flying behind the waterfalls or tiny forget-me-nots that can only be seen by crouching on the tundra floor.   

Part of me hopes the pandemic tourists return to the human world opening up again: fitness clubs, shopping malls,  bars and restaurants. I would love to get rid of clogged parking lots, endless lines of hikers on the trail, and visitors who let their dogs chase the chipmunks.

But that’s not the world we live in anymore. I can only hope that those who came to take a selfie with a nearby elk leave with more than a picture. Maybe a taste of a different world than the human one, some small bit of silence and calm outside of the chaotic human world, a brief brush with animals who struggle to survive with grace and courage. Maybe they’ll even learn what snow is.

Cycles of Ice and Life

Last November I started my search for one of the more ephemeral forms of nature: ice. Even though the autumn had been warm, ice was already forming on the St. Vrain River. I found it first on the pond below Copeland Falls, where it resembled a thick layer of slush, with a greenish tinge (right).

All winter long I walked along the creek, which gleams in this dark forest of pines, as the cycle of melting and freezing produced ice sculptures and formations that changed from week to week. When I returned to the falls in December, the pond was clear and frozen, and the falls themselves were a spectacle of frozen icicles and rounded ice clusters.

There’s something reassuring about this cycle. The whole world might be in chaos, but the river keeps flowing, insistently finding its way lower, moving downward. As the water continuously freezes and forms a new dam or impediment, the river finds a new channel, skirting the main one, going to the side or deep underneath. I can hear its beat, its thrumming under the ice: sometimes hollow sounding, sometimes like glass bells.

 

 

In the first few months of winter (which starts here in November), there was a lot of back and forth on the river: melting and then freezing and then melting, so every week there were new formations, something new to delight. There’s no end to the ingenuity of the creek. Between different weather conditions, gradients in the creek, boulders and rocks that block the way and divert the waters, the variety of ice formations is limitless.

In fact, I found hundreds of terms for how ice forms in lakes, rivers and the ocean. In addition to border ice, which is formed along the shore, there’s candled ice, which looks like thin vertical crystals shaped like candles; and frazil, which are fine, small, needle-like structures or thin, flat, circular plates of ice suspended in water.

I couldn’t find the name for one of my favorites:  the rounded ice goblets formed as the ice first melts in the sunlight and starts to drip into the creek and then freezes—all the while these crystal orbs getting bigger and more complex.

Before climate change, many towns celebrated winter with ice sculpture contests. But no human sculptor could create the intricate pattern of lines in the pond or the ice that forms along the edges of the creek. Water is the best sculptor because  it’s malleable and able to yield to changing conditions—from sunlight to darkness, from cold to warmth.

About a month ago, the creek went silent after more than two feet of snow smothered the whole landscape. I was happy we finally got a good snowfall in an otherwise dry winter, but I missed seeing the creek. Then last week, I was surprised to see clear dark pools among the piles of snow as thawing temperatures opened the creek again, with the river making hopeful, gurgling noises, as if life was stirring again. No matter what happens—a year of isolation and too many unnecessary deaths, destructive wildfires last fall, and horrific shootings across the country, including here in  Boulder—the cycle of life keeps going.