Cabin Journal

Touching In

Often when I come up to the cabin for my weekly visit, I have big plans: like going up to Rocky Mountain National Park to snowshoe or to Wild Basin to cross-country ski. But, just as often, when I arrive, I realize I want to stay right here, don’t want to go anyplace else but around Meeker Park and the cabin.

Especially if I’ve had a rough week—done too much and overstretched myself—what I really want is to touch in with all my landmarks—places that have accrued meaning for me in the more than 11 years I’ve been here. These are small scenes—like the line of aspen trees, an impressive ponderosa pine or a place that opens a new view—places where, every time I walk by, I stop to take a longer look. Something about these intimate views touches me, for reasons I can’t quite articulate.

I have my familiar walking circuit, which I alter a bit in winter to avoid deep snow or shade. My walk takes me past Sharon’s wood cabin, almost hidden, even in winter, in a thick grove of aspen. Around the corner and next to Bob and Bonnie’s house, I always pause to admire the pattern of shadows in a small aspen grove along the creek. On the bridge over Cabin Creek, where in summer I watch the small fish dart away from me, now in winter I look for changing ice formations on the creek (left). Past Candace’s small house, the valley opens up, and I can see Cabin Rock to the north, Mount Meeker (top) to the west and the hills coming together to the east.

In the open field, I often see the two shaggy Highland cattle, always together, or sometimes coyotes; in the spring I'll see bluebirds. On the road to the pond, I pause to enjoy the embracing branches of the large ponderosa and, on the other side, the thicket of aspens (right). Beyond the aspens is an open meadow to the south, dotted with the tall, white angelica flowers in the summer but now covered with tufts of bleached grasses emerging from mounds of snow.

I always linger at the pond itself (below), now smothered in snow and dotted with  animal tracks. In warmer times, the water is fringed with tall grasses, and I might see dragonflies darting among the reeds or mallards roosting on the small island in the pond.

Each landmark touches something in my heart, reaches down deep and grabs me, wakes me up to the world, more so because they are familiar and have garnered meaning over the years. At the same time, these touchstones settle my mind in this place, where peace reigns, especially in winter.

I’ve taken this walk (or some variation) every week, so over the past decade I’ve taken this path hundreds of times. Yet I’m never bored. In fact, each walk is precious because it’s different in every season, in every time of the day, in every type of light. So each scene is layered with all the other times I’ve taken in these views of the grasses in the open meadow, Mount Meeker in all seasons or the white bark of the aspens.

They say familiarity breeds contempt, but if I can keep my heart open every time I walk this path, familiarity instead breeds a deep love.

Empty Cabins

Last November, I had the rare opportunity to follow my curiosity wherever it took me around Meeker Park. It was the short period of time between when the summer visitors leave and the snowstorms began. Without deep snow on the ground and the fear of trespassing where people still lived, I was able to wander through the woods and down small, winding roads to see what I might find.

 

If you drive the main roads around Meeker Park, you see maybe 20 or 30 cabins along the road. But dozens more are hidden in the woods. Finding them feels like an adventure from one of the books in which I buried myself as a child, such as Grimm’s fairy tales, where a walk through deep woods leads to an enchanted cabin inhabited by elves, fairies or witches.  

I’ve yet to meet an elf, but some human presence lingers after the summer folks have boarded up their houses for the winter, even if it’s just the melancholy sound of the wind chimes or the pile of wood standing ready for the next time the cabin owners come, or the outhouse door blown open by strong winter winds.

With no humans around, I feel free to linger, to stop and admire the sunlight on the rough pine exterior, the decorative touches like a painted red screen door and red-checked curtains (above), or a pathway made of stones (right). I can admire the compact and tidy shapes of these cabins, some with screened porches.

A place like Meeker Park is rare in Colorado because many original cabins are still standing, which is not true in the tourist town of Estes Park down the road, where most of the old lodges and cabins have been replaced by modern hotels. Meeker Park often feels like a place that time passed by, leaving it in some perpetual state of rustic pleasure. It’s like discovering Brigadoon, a window onto a past that no longer exists.  

Each cabin is different, some dating from the early 20^th century and hand-built, including the stone fireplaces. Every cabin has its own flourishes, like door handles made from deer antlers (like on my cabin, which was built in 1939). Because these cabins have been around long enough, nature has grown up around them, so the cabins seem part of the landscape, a natural extension of the ponderosa forest.  Some have sunk into the ground and are slightly tilted, while logs can be a bit crooked and windows off center, so the cabins seem organic, as if they’ve grown from the ground. 

Especially in the winter, these cabins hold secrets, stories of people long gone. I know some of the stories, like the nearby cabin that was owned by a childless couple who willed the cabin to their caretaker, whose children now rarely use it; or the cluster of cabins bought by a group of airplane pilots who built a swimming pool, now long gone; or the couple who lived across from them—several years ago she died of cancer, and soon after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and moved away.

But now, as the winter winds blow snow off the cabin roofs and the snow piles up around their foundations, sealing their doors shut, the cabins hold onto their secrets even more tightly.

 

Oh, I’d Rather Be a Squirrel

I was at the cabin last week doing a three-day meditation retreat. When I became exasperated with trying to catch and calm my wandering and frenetic thoughts, I let myself be distracted by the animal antics in the front yard. The Steller’s jays (below) had come calling, squawking for bird seed or just to let me know they’re here, hopping from tree branch to porch and back again.

Not many animals stick around for the winter months, but the gray squirrel (right),  like the jays, remains active all year long. The squirrels are just as frenetic as my thoughts, bounding across the crusty snow of the front yard, climbing up and down the ponderosa pines, from which they drop pine cones that cause a loud clattering on the roof and porch, a noise that always rouses me. These mountain squirrels, also known as chickarees, never stop moving. They use the fences around the property as a super highway, so they can move even faster, unimpeded by snow in winter or grasses in summer.

They dart under woodpiles and the porch and carry pine cones back and forth between the trees and my neighbor’s shed, which must be where their nest is located.  The only time they stop is when I appear to get in their way, and they’ll give me quite a lecture, in that hectoring tone, about how they don’t have time to be interrupted; they have lots to do. In fact, they move so fast, I have only a few photos of them, mostly taken when they stop to eat. Otherwise, all I capture now are their tracks in the snow (below).

Who cannot love these squirrels? They are determined, hard workers, with no time for extraneous thoughts about the meaning of life or possible end of the world. I can’t help but envy these animals, even as I know their lives are precarious. They have to constantly be looking for food while staying alert that they’re not food for something else.

The squirrels are easy prey—liable to be snatched by a coyote, bobcat or red-tailed hawk at any minute. But, on the positive side, they are ignorant of the current political situation and blissfully unaware of the polarizing divisions in this country. They don’t feel obligated to listen to the impeachment hearings or trouble themselves about climate change.  

All they need to do is follow their single-minded pursuits of staying alive. They are just purely in the world, whether it’s two feet of snow in the winter or green fields of flowers and grasses in the summer, whether the winds are blowing strong or the air is calm and quiet.

 Scamper on, my little chickaree.

 

Silence and Light

Unable to get to the cabin for almost two weeks because of the big snowstorm, I was anxious to get up there and see the reported accumulations of 2 feet of snow. But the warming days and high winds in the meantime had reduced the snowpile considerably, especially in the fields exposed to the sun and wind.

The two Highland cattle (below), which have been pastured in Meeker Park for at least two years, must have been happy to have the grasses become accessible, even though they are tough animals, bred to withstand the cold and winds of Scotland.

On my walk around Meeker Park, I nodded to them as they stood side by side in the late afternoon sun. In the places shaded by trees and north-facing slopes, the snow was still high. Yet what struck me more than anything—the wind patterns on the snow and the ice on the river and ponds—was the quiet.  We are so accustomed to a backdrop of noise in our culture—constant traffic outside and constant electronic sounds inside (computer, phones, etc.), that when we encounter the absence of noise, it’s startling.

Suddenly, I can hear the jay call from across the valley or the muffled sound of the creek under the ice. It’s the kind of silence that settles on you, wraps you in a comforting blanket, as if you’ve been longing for this without knowing it.

Walking back, late in the day in a valley where the sun drops behind Mount Meeker at 3:30, I was touched by the lingering sunlight. It was the last light of the day, precious because I wouldn’t see the sun’s rays for another 16 hours, when they would creep over the foothills from the east and into the valley bottom.

I wanted to reach out and hold onto this tender light as long as possible as it brushed the pine trees on the hill and the grove of aspens in the valley bottom; as it caressed the brown grasses that weren’t felled by the snow. Even the cattle seemed aware of the preciousness of this last light; the two stood facing west, as if paying homage to the last bit of warmth before their long night began.

 

A Singular Snow Day

Last week (before this week's big snowstorm) we had one of those rare days when the atmospheric conditions were just right for the snow to cling to everything it touched: pine boughs, aspen branches, bronze grasses, cabin roofs, fence posts and telephone lines. Instead of obscuring the landscape in a covering of white, it outlined every twig and branch. The icy conditions had the strange effect of making everything clearly delineated while, with moisture condensing in the air, softening the landscape at the same time.

I love these vivid snow days even more because they are transient. As soon as the sun comes out, the snow will melt, and the landscape will return to what’s normal for winter.

I’m not the only one who wished such perfectly formed landscapes would last forever. I just saw an exhibit of Claude Monet’s paintings (at the Denver Art Museum). The French painter preferred working in the open air, even in winter when he had to bundle up to stay warm.

His subjects were bridges, buildings, fishing boats, haystacks and water lilies, but mostly he loved water and sky. Especially he strove to capture the different stages of light on the haystacks or sea, but he was continually frustrated because the atmospheric conditions kept changing. As fast as he painted, he couldn’t keep up. Like the rest of us, one of the world’s favorite Impressionist painters had to deal with impermanence.

Indeed, the next morning after it snowed at the cabin, the sun came out, and there was a small window of time before the crystal landscape lost its glimmer. I stood on the road (below) by the field facing Mount Meeker, which was engulfed in swiftly changing clouds, and admired the pine trees still outlined in white, the dazzling grasses and that deep blue sky, while listening to the steady drip of melting snow.

 

The Real Thing

In Rocky Mountain National Park, two different landscapes inhabit the same valley. One is natural, the other a product of human interference. In some ways, the artificial landscape is more beautiful.

Moraine Park (right, in summer) is one of the more popular places for park visitors to congregate. It’s a broad valley with stunning views to the west of a dark and dramatic cirque of mountains. It’s also where large herds of elk hang out, especially in autumn, and attract hordes of people who want to see the male elks clash and hear their mating and territory calls.

But this breathtaking landscape is not natural. Before this land was protected, the early (non-native) inhabitants cut down most of the trees and willow bushes to put in a golf course. After it became a national park and the golf course was removed, elk moved in and started chowing down the young and tasty shoots of aspens and willows that began to regrow. Because humans exterminated wolves, the elk’s main predator, there was no check to their hungry and destructive ways. The elk’s dominance also chased away beaver, which needed the willows and other trees to create their watery habitats.

At some point, the Park Service realized that something needed to be done to correct this imbalance. As an experiment, it fenced off  small areas in Moraine Park, especially along the river. The results are dramatic. Inside the fence (right), which keeps out the elk (above), aspens and willow bushes thrive. Outside the fence (below) are only grasses, chewed down to their base by the time winter comes around, so there’s a barren look to the park this time of the year.

 

To see what a natural park (the traditional word for an open setting or valley bottom in the mountains) looks like without elk interference, you need to go to Wild Basin (below, as seen from the Sandbeach Lake trail), in the southern part of the park and near my cabin. Bisected by the St. Vrain creek, the valley bottom is thick with willow bushes, almost impenetrable to humans (but not to the moose who wander through). Without the open grassland, it’s not as spectacular as Moraine Park; the mountains are hidden by the bushes and trees that have thrived in the valley. But it’s more real, more natural and more conducive to other types of wildlife than elk. I often see moose there and plenty of beaver dams; once I saw a river otter emerge from the creek.

Humans have been creating artificial landscapes for centuries—look at our cities or the whole state of Florida where humans replaced messy swamps with golf courses and palm trees. It may be “prettier” to the human eye, but a human landscape is very different than a natural one. Where nature has been left alone, over centuries or even decades, it has created a complex environment. Trees and bushes spread where they want, fall to the ground and decay, enriching the soil with micro-organisms that help flowers and other plants thrive and attract insects, birds and other animals. There’s an interlocking web of life and natural regeneration that doesn’t exist in the human-created world.   

Nature has its own wisdom, which is different from human ingenuity. A human environment, even something that involves nature, such as a park, has been simplified and manipulated by humans for human preferences. In this world of increasing human habitation, we need nature to rebalance us. I’ll take natural over pretty any day.

 

Early Snow, Fresh Air

I was hoping for a longer autumn before I had to start shoveling the front and back decks, before I needed to strap on my ice cleats and gaiters to take a walk. But nature, it seems, has its own schedule, especially with climate change throwing a wrench in otherwise (somewhat) predictable seasons. Now, instead of a gradual shift from summer to winter, we get 70 degrees one day and a high of 25 the next. We’re lacking some transitions, some days of 50s to ease us from warm to cold.

One week I’m basking in the sunlight, along with the ducks on the pond, and the  next week the pond is frozen solid, with the mallards having fled. At the cabin I’ve got the baseboard heat on high, while trying to thaw out all the frozen water containers. On the creek where I saw fish swimming last week, ice has now obscured their existence, except for the few open places where the water surges through the ice.

 

It always comes as a surprise to see the landscape change so drastically—from a rock hard landscape with stiff brown grasses to a sea of supple snow that curves and bends to fit around the trees and hills. In the past two weeks, three or four snowstorms have come through, delivering an early snowfall of at least a foot and a half, although the sun has melted some of it in areas exposed to sun and wind.

Everything feels different. For months, Mount Meeker (top) has been all sharp angles and hard granite surfaces. Now, with the snow wrapped around it, the mountain has a dreamy kind of look to it, clouds swirling around its summit, while tendrils of moisture rise up to the sky as the sun hits its flanks.

With the new snow, the air feels different: fresher and more moist. On my usual walk around Meeker Park, the exhilarating combination of the cold snow and warm  sun gives me enough energy to stomp through the deep snow, the powder forming small clouds around my feet.

It feels so good to breathe that I  ignore the cold wind that makes my eyes tear. I know this air is precious, that the majority of people in this world live in cities where the air is dirty if not unhealthy. When I breathe in this clean air, I can’t help but think of the thick smoke and orange skies that have been ravaging California.

I’ll just keep taking deep breaths of this sweet air, grateful for each one and wishing I could pass it on.

 

Autumn Light

There’s a small period of time now, between summer and winter, when the light is as clear as it will ever be. It’s the interlude between when all the trees and bushes have shed their leaves but before the snow starts to cover everything.

Without the sunlight being filtered by the leaves from the aspens or willows, or refracted by snow, the light is so dazzling it makes me stop in my tracks. Could the bark of the aspen really be that purely white? Could the sky really be that deep blue? Maybe it’s my sunglasses intensifying the color. But no, it’s the lack of humidity, no moisture in the air to make the landscape fuzzy. The winds help, too, scouring the air of any possible dust or pollution.

 

In the fields, every blade and seed head of the crisp brown plants seems illuminated. Even the cabins in Meeker Park seem to glow from within as the sunlight hits them directly.

It’s the kind of light that makes me feel I could stride up the gray granite face of Mount Meeker, still snowless. The kind of light that makes me want to walk across the umber fields, all the way down to the plains, the grass crunching under my feet. The kind of light that buoys me, keeps me supported no matter what’s going on in the rest of the world.

On the pond (above), a group of mallards relax in this light, taking refuge in this safe spot—a small island that shelters them from coyotes or other predators. I envy their comfort, their total absorption in this sunlit moment. Any day now, the pond will start to freeze, and the ducks will have to find refuge elsewhere, at a lower elevation or farther south.

But for now, we’ll all revel in this light, so honest and stripped of any pretense that it crumples your heart a bit.  

Letting Go

After a summer of chaos, life moving too swiftly for me to absorb everything, I’m happy to  settle down now as the seasons change. Although I love summer, a part of me is happy to see it leave. All summer long, I’ve been traveling, including to Illinois to see my mother, who was struggling with dementia and other disabilities that were making her life almost unendurable.

In between trips (including a fun, if hectic, one to Scotland), as much as I could I sought to enjoy summer in the mountains—the three brief months here when life flourishes and the landscape erupts with color: the lime green of the aspens that saturate the valley bottoms and the wildflowers that cover the rocky ground with every possible hue—this year in numbers I’ve rarely seen because of the wet spring. The rivers and creeks are replenished with snowmelt, and the summer birds —house wrens, swallows, hummingbirds—fill the air with their trills and swoops.

I want to absorb it all, because it goes by so quickly. There’s only a short amount of time to get my kayak out on Lily Lake before the water and air gets too cold; a few months to hike to my favorite alpine lakes—Mills, Isabelle—before they start to freeze. There’s hardly enough time to get my fill of the frenetic chipmunks and curious ground squirrels that pose on the front porch.

 

 

But now, as the aspens put on their final show before last week’s snowstorm, and after my mother’s death and funeral, I appreciate more strongly than usual how life is slowly being released: the green chlorophyll receding from the aspen, willows and grasses, as the days get shorter and the sunlight decreases, leaving behind golden leaves and  yellowing grasses. All the summer birds have left for warmer climates, and the ground squirrels have retreated into their winter dens, soon to be followed by the chipmunks and bears (but hopefully not in the same dens).

The rivers have shrunk back, leaving exposed sandy and rocky shorelines. Only the tall brown skeletons of the angelica—what’s left of summer's thick reddish stalks and white flowers—are proof that wildflowers once covered the valley. Here at the cabin, everything starts to fade away, life turning inward in preparation for winter, as the landscape returns to its brown and beige complexion.

When the cold front moved in last week, winds tore not just leaves but whole branches off trees. As snow and cold descended, the snow dampens all sounds, and silences the churning of the summer chaos. Life retreats, as it does every year, and I work to accept that. There’s peace to be found at the end of summer, as at the end of a life—a release from suffering.

The last of the aspen leaves that have been clinging to the trees let go, slowly descend to the cold, hard ground, where they will crumble into dirt and become part of the earth. Let the snow cover and put an end to all the turmoil. I can hear it in the wind: Let go, let go, let go. Let the stillness descend.

 

Shaped by the Land

Having returned from 11 days in Scotland, I can see how landscapes form people. On the Outer Hebrides, the farthest western islands in Great Britain, the weather is cool even in summer. While the rest of Europe baked in the 90s and above this summer, the Outer Hebrides  stayed in the 50s and 60s. With almost no landmass between the Hebrides and Canada, the winds attack the islands with a vengeance.

While Colorado boasts that it has 360 days of sunshine a year, the Hebrides probably gets 360 days of rain. A good weather day on the Hebrides is when it’s either raining or windy but not both. It feels like you are constantly fighting the weather, even when you’re dressed from head to toe in rain gear.

To survive there requires a certain amount of resilience. When I asked our B&B host what winters are like, considering that it rains consistently in the summer, she said the rain in winter is horizontal, and there are no sunny “spells”—small interludes of sunshine.

It’s not just the weather that is harsh, but the land itself is dark: peat bogs cover much of the islands, and the rocks that emerge from the hillsides are black. Even the rivers (left) that spill through the valleys are dark brown, probably from the peat. While some of the valley bottoms were still green going into fall, much of the land was brown. Even with the constant rain, there’s not enough sunlight to encourage life.

Only the beaches are light, almost dazzling in this dark landscape, created from finely ground seashells, churned up and polished. Even, or especially, on a rainy day, they beckon. In the fall, the purple heather also brightens the landscape, along with the white fur of the hardy sheep. And it is any surprise that all the houses are white or beige?

I think of the Colorado  mountains as a harsh landscape: all this granite softened by only a few species of trees. But compared to the Hebrides, Colorado is mild and welcoming, especially with our sun-filled ponderosa and aspen forests. The Hebrides is a treeless landscape, partly a result of human destruction, sheep grazing and a northerly climate that discourages most plant growth.

When I came back to Colorado and the cabin, I was astonished by the ease of the landscape. There’s a softness here, among the aspen leaves, just starting to turn golden; the deep blue of the sky; and the tall grasses stirring on the east side of the cabin, still green. Unlike the Hebrides, where I was constantly taking refuge in the car to get out of the wind and rain, at my Colorado cabin, I can bask for hours outside.

 

Perhaps in response to their harsh climate, the Scottish are practical, down-to-earth and soft-spoken people, almost as if they are beaten down by the weather. On trains and buses, even in restaurants, conversations are subdued, if they take place at all. There is no place for frivolity. Even on a lonely trail, people don’t look at each other, keep their heads down.

Back in the U.S, I was surprised when people smiled at me, greeted me on a trail with a smile or hello. At the cabin, it felt good to have my neighbors stop by to inquire about my trip or just wave as they drive by.

I loved the wildness of the Hebrides—the rugged coastlines, the purity of the beaches, the emptiness of the land. But Colorado has a clear light that seems depthless, especially in these early fall days.  For these next few weeks, before the snows come, I’m going to let myself sink into this warmth and light.