Cabin Journal

Mobbing Wildlife

Recently, a horrific scene played out on social media: a video of a young girl being tossed into the air by a charging bison in Yellowstone National Park. It turned out that the girl and her family, plus other tourists, had gotten too close to these wild animals (one report said the bison was being petted!), and the bison had become agitated.

This seems the tragic culmination of a trend in which people try to get as close to wildlife as possible, often so they can get the best snapshot—preferably a selfie with you and the moose, although a ground squirrel will do, if the moose doesn’t cooperate. Some  people don’t understand the concept of wildness—that these animals are not pets but live in a world where survival is the most important priority. If a possible predator—including humans—approach, they will do whatever is necessary to protect themselves and their young.

Beyond respecting wildness, I’ve come to distrust what I call mob photography. It happens all over Rocky Mountain National Park: someone spots a moose along the creek or a bear up in a tree, and before you know it, dozens of cars have pulled over, and people, ready with their phones and cameras, run over to the herd of deer or elk.

At least in the park, volunteers are there to caution visitors about getting too close. In other places, photographers, sometimes professional, stalk animals that have been sighted in convenient places, such as along city trails or close to the roads. Someone finds a nest of great horned owl fledglings along a popular trail, and soon hordes of photographers, with their tripods and long-lensed camera, are competing to get the  clearest shot. Or a nest of baby foxes has been spotted near the road, and cars are lined up to take photos of these cute and rambunctious animals.  

Not only do the animals lose their privacy but they also can be hampered in their abilities to survive—whether it’s foraging, raising young or hunting prey.

I’m not immune to this apparently human desire to be as close to wildlife as possible. There’s something innate in us that’s thrilled by wildlife: animals that live by a different set of rules than humans, that look so different, that impress us with their size and ferociousness. Maybe we want to imbibe some of that ferociousness for ourselves.

I’ve taken hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures over the years of wildlife, many from my car: bighorn sheep on the side of the road in South St. Vrain Canyon, and a bear sleeping in a ponderosa tree outside of Estes Park.

But more and more I’ve come to appreciate the serendipitous joy of accidentally coming across wildlife, often while I’m hiking (or sometimes in my kayak), instead of deliberately seeking them out. Whether it’s watching two moose swim across Lily Lake while I’m on an evening walk around the pond or fragile blue dragonflies swarming my kayak, my most notable wildlife encounters have come when I’m just enjoying being in nature. In fact, when I deliberately try to find a big herd of elk in the park, to impress my out-of-state visitors, the animals are nowhere to be found.

What I’ve learned is that the wildlife we view does not exist independently of its surroundings. Everything is connected. The elk eats the grass that is nurtured by the water flowing down from the mountains or rain from the clouds. Stopping to photograph an elk by the side of a road or an owl in a tree separates these celebrity animals from their context. And, while we’re focusing on the megafauna, we’re missing  the butterflies hovering over the mariposa lilies or the storm clouds swiftly moving over the top of Hallett Peak or the grouse (above, left) almost camouflaged among the trees.

Two summers ago, I was on top of Trail Ridge Road,  hiking a path above 11,000 feet and admiring the alpine flowers, when a herd of about 20 elk suddenly appeared (top photo). There were about four or five young ones, which were being rambunctious, chasing each other across the tundra and kicking up their heels. For the 20 or so hikers on the trail, it was a magical moment, wilderness descending on us when we weren’t expecting it.

We were part of nature—not just the elk or the flowers but the marmots running across the tundra, the deep blue sky, the ring of mountains around us, the whistle of the mouse-like pikas. We weren’t looking at nature from our cars on the road, as if nature was one thing and we were another.  We were part of something much larger. It’s at times like that I feel such gratitude toward the world.

Gone Wild with Flowers

After a cold spring and delayed summer, the hills—not to mention the mountaintops, streamsides and rock clefts—are alive, if not awash, with colors. White bistort wave in a field of tall green grasses; yellow stonecrop emerge from a crack in the rocks; and hundreds of columbines spread across the hillside on the other side of the valley from my cabin.

Every inch around the cabin has been filled in with flowers and grasses, predominantly pale purple lupine and yellow cinquefoil, a fancy French name for a five (cinque)-leafed (foil) flower that grows in profusion.

In the past week on my mountain hikes, I’ve seen at least dozens of species of flowers—from the parasitic red coral root orchid growing in the deep forests, to the orange paintbrush on dry hillsides, to the intense blue (and wonderfully  named) sky pilot on the tundra. In the meadows, golden banner and purple penstemon (left) grow side by side, while the tall, stately angelica (below), with its radiating umbel of white flowers, floats up along the ponds and streams. Scattered among the grasses are tall green gentians with white starbursts running up and down the plant’s spine.

 

 

 

 

 

Most remarkable is that the modest, usually unnoticed sulphur flower (top) has spread itself across every field, which goes to show that there’s great beauty in numbers.

 

 

If you can behold the world in a grain of sand, you can see in a flower the interdependence, complexity and impermanence of life. On the hillside, the delicate looking columbines take shelter from the hot sun by growing in the shade of the aspens and willows. When I take a close look at a single flower, it is a symphony of elements that combine to form a perfect whole: the flower itself is composed of five white petals perfectly framed by five purple sepals, and the long purple spurs protruding from the back of the flower seem to balance the whole thing. And yet, the manifestation of this flower in the world is fleeting, only here for a few weeks at most before it pulls itself back into the dark of the earth.

How to handle this profusion of ephemeral beauty? With joy, only joy.

Flowers Amid the Snow

Last week, on top of Trail Ridge Road, one of the highest roads in the country, there were still snow drifts 10 feet high. This unusually late snow has become a tourist attraction in Rocky Mountain National Park, with visitors from all over the world—Indiana to India— posing for pictures in front of the walls of snow and etching their names and other marks (below) in it.

 

 

 

Despite the snow, the tundra’s native animals were active, searching for food and being playful with each other after nine months of of hibernation. The marmots (below, right), which some tourists thought were beavers) could be spotted running across the tundra, their long, bushy tails bobbing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The smaller pikas (above left), one of the cutest animals around, are harder to see because they blend in so well with the talus piles they inhabit. These animals, which are related to rabbits, technically don’t hibernate but munch all winter long on the grass they collected the previous summer. Because they mainly survive at high mountan elevations, which are getting warmer, they are threatened by climate change. A researcher interviewed on NPR’s Science Friday last week said pikas can’t tolerate temperatures above 75 degrees. Unfortunately, they are also threatened by drought, which has been prevalent for the past few years across the West. When there’s not enough snowpack to insulate their winter nests, they can freeze.

Luckily this year we’ve  had record snowfalls, but that also means a shorter growing season and less time to gather the grasses the pikas will need for next winter.  But life has always been precarious and fragile at these extreme altitudes (10,000 to 12,000 feet in the park), with all forms of life having a short time span to breed or flower, produce the next generation, and then get ready for winter, which can come as early as September.

With the late snow, last week I didn’t expect to see any tundra flowers, which usually appear in late June, just as or after the snows melt. Where the ground was open, it seemed bare and brown—lifeless. But when we stopped the car to take a picture, I was amazed, first, to see the alpine avens, a brilliant yellow flower that blooms at the edge of snowfields. When my eyes scanned beyond it, I saw a familiar and welcoming blue: the tiny alpine forget-me-nots (above). In this cold, almost barren landscape, these flowers hug the ground, exhibiting some will to survive—as well as beauty—that is almost unfathomable.

New Beginnings

Coming back from a week in California, where the hills are starting to turn brown, and small fires are cropping up across the state, it’s a joy to be at the cabin where new life is just beginning its seasonal cycle. It’s my third chance to experience spring: first down on the plains near my home, then the tail end in California, and now at 8500 feet. Higher up, on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park, are places where it’s still winter, where 10-foot-high snow drifts tower above cars on the road.

At the cabin, the grasses are a few inches high, and the columbine next to the front deck is starting to leaf out; in a few weeks, hopefully, the elaborate purple and white flowers will surprise me once again with their lush beauty. The aspens in the back yard are just starting to leaf out—their leaves small and fragile, some still curled up like a fetus, awaiting a new birth

 

 

 

 

The hummingbirds have settled in, and the violet-green swallows are snatching insects from the air and delivering them to the babies inside a bird box next to the garage, a box that has been used by many generations and species of birds.

 

 

A mama moose and her two young ones have been sighted around the valley, and last night a male moose walked down the road in front of my cabin and went into my neighbor’s yard, where he proceeded to strip all the leaves off the young aspens (above). Later I saw three deer in the front yard, happily chowing down the fresh new greenery. In the park, the elk have shed their raggedy, winter coats and now sport sleek brown fur with newly furred antlers that look soft and tender, like you might want to touch them.

Along the creek in nearby Wild Basin, purple larkspur cover the hillside at lower elevations. Higher up, in the wet meadows, the strange primitive-shaped horsetail plants (above) are just emerging from marshy areas. It’s a strange sight: a miniature remnant of the lush Paleozoic forests of 100 million years ago, incongruous among the dry rocky hillsides.

Small rivulets that will dry up in a few weeks are rushing down the hillsides, watering the hundreds of small plants now hugging the ground. In a few weeks, these plants will unfurl and start climbing toward the sun. But for now there’s just the promise of lushness on the mostly bare ground.

On the Hollowell Park trail in Rocky Mountain National Park, the willows along the creek are a soft, tentative green. Above the willows, on the steep hillside, the creek spills through these newly leafed aspen like quicksilver, shiny and brazen, showing off its energy (above). Along the creek hidden among the leaves of the heart-shaped arnica are one or two gleaming yellow flowers (above).

Even with all the snowmelt, the rivers haven’t yet reached capacity, as the mountains still hold onto the snow. Apparently, our cool, wet and delayed spring is linked to something happening thousands of miles away. The Arctic and Greenland ice is melting at high rates, releasing cold moisture into the air that is making its way south. One scientist described it as a refrigerator door being opened and letting the cold air flow out.

As it does every year, nature comes forth, offering hope and beauty, even though humans have done little to warrant such optimism. It’s more hope than we deserve.

A Day of Contrasts

I knew snow was forecast when I went to the cabin this week. Still, it was a shock to see the grass coming up through the snow and hear the hummingbirds buzzing, while the drifting flakes changed from hard grauppel to lightly feathered, as the temperatures flirted around the freezing mark.

My brain was confused. It appeared to be winter—snow on the ground with  more snow coming down and the pine trees heavily smothered in white, —and yet the calendar says May 21, and there’s new plants coming up, the aspens are starting to leaf out, and young ground squirrels are running around.

I headed for the Fern Lake Trail in Rocky Mountain National Park, where there were more incongruent sensations: as the snow drifted around me, waterfalls spilled off the cliffs to the north; small purple violets were popping up; the leaves of the willow and dogwood bushes were starting to unfurl; and the small meadow by the river seemed impossibly green.

After a while, my mind stopped trying to compute this paradox and accepted it, because the landscape was truly beautiful.

 

There’s the soft brush of lime green from the aspen trees across the creek; the tenderness of the whirling snowflakes; the intense colors of the moss and lichen on the boulders; and the fragments of clouds that circle the mountains, muting their harshness. On top of all these visual sensations, all this moisture has released deep, fragrant smells that haven't existed since last fall.

But it’s a cruel beauty, too, because nature has to suffer, has to endure colder temperatures than usual. The hummingbirds, in particular, have to work harder to stay warmer and find food. The usual food sources for chipmunks, bears and birds in spring are delayed, so animals must find other sources—sometimes at the cost of starvation.

And it’s ominous too because this cold weather that has persisted for weeks would indicate a new and disturbing weather pattern –one with the potential to disrupt life. I’m torn: do I enjoy this day of new sensations or worry about the future of this planet? A little of both, I guess. It's the paradox of our lives now.

The Place at the End of the Road

I often wonder how people find Meeker Park.  It’s tucked off one of the main routes to the tourist town of Estes Park. Most people speed by Cabin Creek Road, the dirt road that leads down to this assemblage of cabins grouped around the valley bottom (referred to as a park in the classic sense of the word) and in the shadow of 13,900-foot Mount Meeker.

Passing motorists might notice the historic Meeker Park Lodge on the main road and slow down enough to be curious about Cabin Creek Road, which is just past the lodge. I first found Meeker Park, more than 10 years ago now, via a real estate listing. Others find it through family connections or word of mouth. After visiting my place, my sister and her husband bought two cabins here. Many of the cabins are owned by families that go back several generations.

Of all the stories I’ve heard, I like Kyla’s best. She and her husband were taking their yearly summer vacation to Estes Park from their home in Kansas. One day, the weather  wasn’t cooperating with their plans for hiking, so instead they decided to do some exploring by car. Heading south from Estes toward Allenspark, something made them turn onto Cabin Creek Road. Through a series of serendipitous turns, they ended up on Bill Waite Road, just a few houses down from my cabin, where the road splits in two.

That’s where Kyla and her husband turned around but not before noticing a red wood-slatted cabin (in the center of the photo)—and the people inside curiously watching them, as if the residents didn’t see a lot of people come down the road.

Something about that cabin and about Meeker Park sent Kyla and her husband back to Estes to look for a real estate agent to help them buy property in the area. Not knowing where to start, they asked the proprietor of a gift shop if he knew of a good real estate agent. Coincidentally, this man had friends who wanted to sell their house, and he gave them the directions.

It probably won’t come as a surprise that, the next day, the directions delivered them to the same red-painted cabin they had seen the day before. Sometimes fate delivers us to the exact spot where we want to be, even if we didn’t know it before we found it.

I didn’t know Kyla then, but I presume she and her husband enjoyed the cabin for several decades until he died prematurely young. After that, Kyla made the trip every summer to the cabin alone, stacking her van with everything she would need for three months.

Even though I'm not far from Kyla's house, I didn’t get to know her until the great flood of 2013, when Kyla, then in her 80s, and a few other neighbors were stranded together, our exit blocked by washed-out roads. Daily, we traded the latest rumors and information about the extent of the flood’s damage. One day, she caught me transporting back to the creek, in a pail, a fish that the flood had dumped in a ditch that had only a few inches of water.

A few years later she told that story over dinner to neighbors who weren’t here during the flood. It was the last time I saw her. She died of cancer the following winter. At dinner that summer night, with the hummingbirds still buzzing in the early twilight, she didn’t tell any of us about the cancer that must certainly have been already ravaging her body. I have a feeling she knew this would be her last summer in Meeker Park.

I miss her and wish she were still here to help me fill in the details of the story she told years ago of how she found her cabin. Maybe we find places because our heart draws us to them, and these places are just sitting here, waiting for us to find them. I know there will be others, like me and like Kyla, who will find their way to this magic little kingdom without knowing how they actually got here.

What Spring Feels Like

With all the snow still on Mount Meeker (right), it may not look like May, but the signs of spring are unmistakable. After being gone from the cabin for two weeks, I arrived to find something missing—something huge. Almost all the snow had melted, so when I looked out the back window, I could see the picnic table that had been covered with snow all winter. On the east side, the septic system was now visible. The back porch was unburied.

Small shoots of grass are coming up among last year’s dead grasses, and I can hear the frogs down by the creek, singing quite lustily. A few weeks ago, the ground squirrels and chipmunks were out, looking a little dazed after a long winter underground. This week I heard the unmistakable buzzing of a hummingbird. Around the valley, the aspens are blossoming (below), a pale pink against the deep blue sky.  

It feels like the shackles are coming off the earth. Now that the weight of the snow is gone, the earth is rebounding, and life is emerging: the chipmunks and bears from hibernation, the pasqueflowers and spring beauty poking up from the ground; the hummingbirds, house wrens and swallows arriving from other parts of the world. All of nature is responding to the sun’s warmth, as the earth turns toward the sun. Even the creek, silent all winter under a mantle of snow, has come alive, filling every corner of the creekbed, speeding down the hillside, finally free to go where it wants. Every crease in the hills is filled with running water.

It feels like an explosion of energy that can’t be controlled, like something that has been tightly held in check has been loosened. Who knows what this could lead to?

 

Another Boring Day in Paradise

A popular bumper sticker in the tourist town of Estes Park sports the saying, “Another Ho-Hum Day in Paradise.” Some tourists are confused by it, but for those of us who live here, it’s a reminder that a ho-hum day in the mountains is better than a fantastic day almost anywhere else.  Even on a gray day when the wind is whipping the pine trees back and forth, you only need to look up and west to see the cirque of high peaks covered in snow, and there’s paradise right in front of you.

When I arrived last week at the cabin, it seemed about as ho-hum day as you could get. The skies were hazy, and melting snow revealed brown ground, seemingly flattened of all life. It was a far cry from the fields starting to green up on the plains.

I headed to Wild Basin, several hundred feet higher than Meeker Park, where the snow was still deep and covered the road that serves as a trail in winter. The landscape was etched in black and white, stark and beautiful in its own way. The dark trunks of the conifers appeared to be growing out of the snow, while in the distance the granite mass of Mount Copeland was engraved in white. Along the creek (above and left), the pale bark of aspen trees contrasted with gray granite boulders. On the St. Vrain river, enough snow had melted in the past week for the creek to break through the chunks of ice, forming ink-dark pools and narrow slits of running water—the creek just starting to edge toward spring rambunctiousness.

Above me, the sky’s mood shifted between sunlight and snowstorms. If I looked up at the top of the cliffs, I could see a blur of white, then watch it sink lower into this valley. Suddenly I was surrounded by big ornate flakes, so thick I couldn’t see the tops of the cliffs. And then the skies would lift again, and some light would be let through, making more shadows in the dark woods.

It was a reminder that in the mountains there are no boring, ho-hum days. Each day brings its own rewards, if we just stay awake.

Mountain Dreaming

Above the Twin Sisters Peak Thursday appeared two thought bubbles in the form of clouds. It was a typical spring day, with clouds forming and reforming, racing at different altitudes, some slow and steady, others whipping across the sky in a rush to be somewhere else. But these two clouds paused for a moment, as if to recognize some synchronicity, some parallel destiny with the rocky spires below.

Some exchange was passed, and the clouds moved on, leaving the mountain in its own thoughts. And leaving me to watch other clouds form shapes that I could barely grasp before they melded back into the atmosphere.

Just Basking

Although there is still a foot of snow on the ground, the temperatures last week climbed into the 50s, enough to melt the edges of the snowdrifts--the places, I like to think, where the pasqueflowers (right, from last spring) will be emerging in a few weeks. In fact, they might be under the snow right now, just biding their time, ready to spring to action when the right time comes.

After a cold winter, is there anything more pleasurable than basking in the warm sun? Because the winds coming off Mount Meeker are still strong, I seek shelter on the east side of the cabin, where it forms an “L” that blocks the strongest winds. Instead, they angle around the edge of the building and become more breeze-like than tree-whipping gale—just enough to cool me off when the sun’s rays become too intense.

Although sitting in front of a heater or radiator provides the same warming benefits, the sun’s rays deliver something beyond heat. The same life-giving properties that cause the pasqueflowers (also known as western anemones) to open or the aspen buds to blossom also nurtures something in humans.

I think of my father, when he was in his 80s and always cold, finding a basking spot in the senior facility where he and my mom lived. In the afternoon, the sun’s rays hit a bench in a hall at just the right angle for an hour or so of good warming. Or my cat, who stretches out his body on the carpet where a wedge of sunlight pours in when I crack open the front door in the morning.

In a few months, I’ll be complaining of the heat and of the omnipresent sun. But for today, it feels just right.