Cabin Journal

The Most Beautiful Place in the World

    Once, driving across the state of Nebraska, a friend and I stopped at Lake McConaughy, a huge and popular reservoir for boaters and swimmers.  We visited a nearby gift shop, and the owner, a friendly woman named Betty, told us we had to check out the view from the top of the dam, of the Platte River that unfolded in the valley below us. In her words, it was one of the most beautiful places on earth.
    Now, few people would consider anyplace in Nebraska beautiful, but I’ve come to learn the truth of her words. When you get to know a place really well, learn to love it, it becomes more beautiful with every day that passes.
     Part of my routine at the cabin came to be taking a break from my work in the afternoon and going for a walk around the “neighborhood.” It was an exploration of sorts, and on every walk I discovered something new, gradually enlarging my view of this place.
    My favorite route is to follow the main road (known as 82) around the edges of the valley, as it winds east. I pass other cabins, tucked into the woods, along the creek, or perched on the hillside. After the road crosses a small creek known as Cabin Creek, the valley opens up, with fields of grasses and willow bushes, with views in every direction of mountains and hillsides. Every time I take it, there’s something new to see: a flicker’s nest in the hole in the aspen trunk, a hillside of columbine, horses in the field, clouds streaking above the Twin Sisters Peak to the north. And when I turn around and start back, there’s Mount Meeker, looming above the valley. 
    Gradually, the blank spaces on my mind’s map of this place started filling in. I learned that there were two creeks in this valley: Cabin Creek and Tahosa, which come together in the valley bottom. And on the slight hill above the creeks’ joining was a bristlecone pine, the most ancient tree in our forests. One day, on my usual route, I discovered a slight path going off into the field among stands of aspens which led to the creek, bordered by more aspens and rounded granite cliffs on the other side. It’s one of my favorite landscapes, and, once I discovered this place, I had a hard time leaving, even when work and deadlines tugged at me. I always found excuses to dawdle, to watch the water run over the red and brown rocks or the shadows on the rocks from the aspen trees.   
     That’s my favorite walk but sometimes, for a change, I’ll head north and west on what is known as Big Owl Road. It’s a different landscape than my meadow walk, more hilly with more skinny lodgepole pines and fewer ponderosa. Because of the dense forest, there’s fewer views, but occasionally a cut in the road affords close-up views to the west of the line of hills and Mount Meeker, which always takes my breath away. Numerous roads and driveways snake off in each direction from the road, whetting my curiosity. Where did they go? What interesting cabins are back there? There’s a whole world to discover, hidden throughout these woods, cabins of every  shapes and size, aspen groves and waterfalls. 
    There are plenty of other trails around Allenspark that I could take, but I don’t want to go anyplace else but this valley. I want to keep enlarging my sense of this place, put all the pieces of the puzzle into place. This is how life should be lived, getting a deeper knowledge of your surroundings. I read a story in a magazine recently about how the computer is changing our brains: All that time spent surfing the Web, doing a lot of things fast, has gradually given us a vaster but more superficial view of the world. But I’m taking the opposite tack: slowing down and getting to know one place well.

 

Saving My Trees

    One of the first dilemmas I had after buying the cabin was how to protect the huge ponderosas on my property from the devastating pine beetle.
    On my first weekend at the cabin, it seemed everywhere I went people were talking about the bug that had already killed much of the forest on the Western Slope around Grand Lake, leaving behind whole hillsides of orange pine trees, strangely beautiful until you realize the trees are dead. At the Meeker Park Lodge, a historic lodge with small grocery store open only in summer, and where local residents congregate, I overheard many worried conversations about having to cut down trees that were diseased or about the cost of spraying the trees to prevent the beetle from infesting trees. People were worried about losing their forests, and already around Wild Basin I was seeing whole bunches of orange trees. The consensus seemed to be not if, but when, the pine beetle attack that had started on the Western Slope would arrive in the forests around Allenspark and Estes Park. The local newsletter, the Allenspark Wind, devoted a whole issue to the problem.
     I had three tall ponderosas right in front of the cabin (below). When I talked to my neighbor across the road, he told me that my trees were probably 100 to 150 years old, and that’s why he was spraying his trees, an expensive proposition at $100 a tree. But it was still cheaper than having to cut them down, at a cost of $500 to $1,000 per tree, if they were invaded by the beetle.
I started doing research on the Web, tried to find out what exactly was being sprayed on the trees (a chemical), and if it was safe for animals and plants. The evidence was sketchy; there didn’t seem to be a consensus of opinion. Two of my neighbors, who lived down the road a bit, Michael and Ruth, were on the Allenspark Anti-Pine Beetle Mobilization Committee, and Michael was opposed to spraying. He  believed it was harmful to the water supply, plants and animals.  He had a better alternative: BeetleBlock, a commercial product consisting of beetle pheremones. In my own (unscientific) way of explaining this,  the pine beetle flew to the trees, smelled that other beetles had already taken it over and left. At least that was the theory.
    I loved these ponderosas that seemed to protect the cabin, that soared dozens of feet above the cabin, that held all manner of wildlife: birds, chickarees, Abert’s squirrels, and chipmunks. I loved the sound of the wind through the trees and would do almost anything to save them. On one of the ponderosas was a birdhouse, and gradually, over several weeks, I started noticing birds going in and out and one day heard what sounded like babies cheeping. The birds were a brilliant blue with rust-colored patches: a western bluebird. One day, I happened to meet two of my neighbors who were out with their binoculars, and we traded bird stories. When I told them about the western bluebird nest on my property, they were amazed. Although mountain bluebirds—a brilliant blue all over—were common here, westerns were infrequently seen.
    That seemed all the more reason not to spray.  I had a family to think about—a family of western bluebirds. What if the fumes killed the babies? So I ordered the BeetleBlock (online), spent a Sunday afternoon nailing small white patches to the trees, and crossed my fingers. I have no idea if I made the right decision. The consensus on the BeetleBlock is that it works most effectively if the problem is just starting.  But already the neighbors behind my cabin had to cut down one of their trees when it started showing the telltale “popcorn”—a small yellow oozing that slightly resembles popcorn kernels—that indicated the beetle had invaded the tree, only 20 feet or so from my trees.  
    I think a lot about what will happen if all the trees die, like they have on the hills around Grand Lake.  For one thing, it will open up my view of Mount Meeker, now blocked by the trees. If all the ponderosas die, what will be left are a few spruce trees, aspen groves, bushes and more grasses. It will be beautiful in its own way, but I would mourn the loss of these trees that have been growing since the end of the Civil War. For not only would I lose the trees but most of the wildlife that calls them home.
    This summer, I’ll put a new round of pheremones on the trees and hope for the best.

Getting into a Routine

   In the first few months at the cabin, I gradually got into a routine of leaving my house late morning, after packing the car, and heading north and west toward Lyons. It always felt strange, as if there was a magnet from my home  trying to pull me back. It felt like I was leaving the circle of warmth and familiarity for something unknown and possibly frightening. But after I passed through Lyons and started heading up the St. Vrain Canyon, there would be another pull—toward the cabin and my two days of solitary life there.
       After unpacking, I worked most of the day on my editing project, kept company by the chipmunk on the other side of the window (right) and looking up often to take in the view from my front window (below). I  took breaks to empty the pail on the front deck that catches the rainwater from the gutter; refill the containers in the sink and bathroom with water from the outside pump; and caulk the holes in the wood shingles where the flickers and woodpeckers  drilled. I was happy to do these chores, which felt like simple acts of duty and love for the cabin. 
    Inevitably, the first few times I went to the cabin, I forgot essential things: a water bottle and my backpack for hiking, my camera. But gradually I figured out what I needed to keep up there: a fanny pack, an old pair of pants, a sweatshirt and jacket for the cool nights. Because I didn’t know if the water from the back pump was potable, I brought plastic jugs of water for drinking. 
      Gradually, I started setting up house. Even thought the cabin came well furnished, there were things I  needed. I brought extra plates from home and started cruising garage sales and thrift shops, where I found perfectly good pans for a dollar or two, what looked like an almost new tea kettle for $2,  silverware for 25 cents apiece. Because I had “inherited” the cabin and its furnishings from others, I wanted to only buy things that had been already used by others.
     There’s something appealing about having just what I need and no more.  At my home, I’m buried under the detritus of everything I’ve accumulated in my life: newspapers I’ve worked for; books; financial papers, boxes of photos and slides, folders of all the projects I want to do and will likely never get to. I sometimes feel like I’m drowning in debris. But at the cabin, there’s only a limited amount of room, and there’s even empty shelves and cupboards. I’ve vowed to keep them empty as long as I can. 
    Over time, I figured out how to keep my human impact to a minimum. With no plumbing, the water from the two sinks drains through pipes into the ground under the cabin, Because I didn’t want to pollute the ground, I kept basins in each sink and  emptied the water on the ground around the trees. Because I didn’t want to throw soapy water on the grass, I avoided using soap to wash my dishes, which meant the dishes sometimes had a slight greasy residue. And because I wanted as little food on the plates as possible when I washed them, I practically licked my plates clean.
    I was entering a new state of consciousness, one I didn’t need at my Boulder home, where uneaten or rotten food either went down the garbage disposal or into my compost. (I couldn’t keep a compost pile at the cabin because of the bears.) At home, I could flip a handle and hot water would come out the kitchen faucet, instead of having to boil water to make sure I got rid of any bacteria from the cabin’s pump water. At home, I could flush the toilet instead of having to peer inside my compost toilet to see if “things” were decomposing or if I needed to add something else to the mixture.
    It was a mindfulness of sorts, always knowing where things came from and where they ended up. And yet, it was also a pleasure to come home and have instantaneous hot water or flush the toilet and not worry about where it was going.

The View from My Laptop

 

    As much as I had been looking forward to being alone at the cabin, it was difficult. I knew that what I was doing was strange; most people seek to be with others; few choose to be alone, even to choose loneliness. Assembling everything I needed for the cabin,  I felt anxious. What was I doing leaving my comfortable home for something unknown? There were the practical unknowns, like what I would need for my two days up there. At home, I didn’t think about what I would eat that night or the next day, but I didn’t have food up there. So I had to think the meals out ahead of time, as well as anything I else I might need to be comfortable. And there were the other unknowns. Left alone with no distractions, what would I discover? 
     That turned out not to be a problem on my first day "alone." First were several phone calls from my brother about upcoming travel plans and then a visit from a friend who has a second house in Estes Park, just 10 miles down the road. Kathye and I went for a walk and sat outside on the deck, had some ice tea, while a small storm blew up but no rain. I wondered if the cabin seemed primitive to her, especially compared to her house in Estes Park, which has a furnace, real heat, a couple of bathrooms with real plumbing. 
    After she left, I sat at my computer and worked, although “worked” is not quite the right word. I was too distracted by my surroundings and by the newness of finally being here.  From the table that serves as my desk, I have a view, which  has become lovingly familiar to me, of the Bill Waite cabin across the field. It was built by a World War II veteran, who had been physically injured and came here after the war expecting to die but lived another 40 years. The house is empty now, and I spend a lot of time thinking about the man who lived here alone all year long. It’s smaller than my cabin, with cheerful red-checked curtains  and a rough pine exterior. It’s one of the first things in my view to receive the morning light from the east, the tin roof and stovepipe glinting, and in the late afternoon, the sun warms the front door and windows, with their red trim.  
    It’s been 15 years, I think, since Bill died, yet the house and yard are seemingly untouched. There’s two wooden chairs leaning against the front of the house, as if they are slowly embedding themselves in the ground, a cowboy boot nailed to the tree that serves as a bird’s nest, and an outdoor thermometer; even his metal bed pan still sits on the bench outside the house. My neighbors tell me that every morning he would empty the pan with a giant fling across the front yard.  Sometimes I half expect that I’ll look up from my computer and see old Bill emerge from the house, still intent on his daily practice.   
     In between my cabin and Bill’s is a small meadow where the grasses grow tall, and I’m happy just to sit and watch them flow in the wind. But there’s also a lot of animals, a constant parade, enough to keep me occupied so that I don’t get much work done. On the other side of the window from my table is a small wooden platform on which I scatter safflower seeds. Juncos come by to peck at the seeds, and a chipmunk crawls up the side of the house, carefully checks it out, and then starts stuffing his cheeks with as much seed as he can before running off to bury what he can’t eat.
     And on the “vanity” fence in front of the propane tank, a bird house is being used by a family of brown wrens. I watch the mom and pop wren fly in and out of the impossibly small hole, which looks too small for my thumb,  bringing food (insects?) to their young ones. Their song is beautiful, a contrast to their plain brown color. They are feisty creatures, too. Once in a while, one of them attacks the chipmunk in the platform feeder, just on the general principle that the chipmunk is too close to their feeder. The chipmunk runs off momentarily but comes back, undaunted, and the brown wren decides it has to reclaim its territory. And so the cycle continues, while the cursor on my laptop blinks at me and my editing project sits and waits. 
     All around me is so much beauty and life. How can I concentrate on this book I’m editing—about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—not just about  a place on the other side of the world but an almost unbridgeable distance from the peace and tranquility of this mountain valley?  
    At night, even in  June, it’s colder than I expected, dipping into the 40s, and I slept under a thick quilt. Away from the city, there are almost no sounds and no lights except for my neighbors’ outside light. When I woke in the middle of the night and pulled apart the curtains  above the bed, it was complete darkness except for a sky covered with stars, punctured by the tall spires of the pine  trees. Even at night the world is alive and full of mystery.

The First Weekend

    My first morning at the cabin, still dark, I was awoken by something tapping on the small window on the other side of the room. It was a junco, a small grey and rust-colored bird, throwing itself against the window, over and over, as if it were trying to get in.  Though curious about its behavior, at that time in the morning I  just wanted it to shut up, so put a blanket on the window, thinking maybe it was seeing its reflection. But that didn’t stop it, and over the next few weeks, I had to put up with this crazed junco, which not only threw itself at the house windows but took to tapping on the rear view window of my car (and leaving bird poop down the side of the car). 
    I came up with all kinds of theories about its behavior. Maybe it thought the reflection in the window or mirror was another bird that it had to fight with. Maybe there was something inside the cabin it wanted. Or, while other birds were tending to their nests of babies, my junco had failed to mate and was throwing itself against the window in frustration.  Ultimately, although it seemed intent on driving me crazy, I felt sorry for it. Juncos, which eat seeds from the ground, are sociable creatures, but my crazed junco was alone, seemingly ostracized from the group.
    On my first night at the cabin I had been joined by two friends visiting from Illinois  It was strange to have guests my first time there, because I didn’t know what to expect of the cabin and couldn’t be the perfect host with everything prepared. Would we be able to make dinner on the two-burner hot plate I bought? Would the compost toilet work? Would the electricity be turned on? We got to the cabin late in the day, after picking up groceries, around 7, still light out. We had a good dinner, they loved the cabin,  and I let myself relax.  After dark, when we closed the blinds and curtains and turned on the lights, I discovered the cabin’s magic at night, like being enclosed in a pine box, cozy, warm, the light from the lamps reflecting off the wood walls. 
     The next morning, after the junco got me up, I made breakfast, standing at the kitchen counter, watching  the first light hit the  columbine by the water pump in the backyard. Later, the three of us walked  down the road, to the east, where there’s a small meadow, green grasses and purple flags, the wild iris that is more delicate than the domesticated kind, which is almost garish in its lushness. The road skirts the edge of the park/valley that surrounds the creek and then dips down to another small creek (right).  So bit by bit my knowledge of this place widens. Already, I could feel that I would love this cabin, started to absorb that sense of quiet and peace and beauty.
    Carrie and Karen needed to be back in Boulder that afternoon, so we had to leave, but I was to come back later that afternoon with my friend Lynn. This second time up, I needed to bring  more supplies for the cabin, so there was a lot of rushing around, trying to decide what we needed, packing up the car again and stopping at the grocery store. This turned out to be the irony of owning the cabin: before I could reach the desired peace and quiet of the mountains, I had to spend a lot of time getting together all the necessary items. My desire for the cabin had been to slow my life down, simplify it, but that first weekend everything felt hectic. But as we drove back to the mountains, especially going through the St. Vrain Canyon, with its spectacular orange canyon walls and the river tumbling over the boulders, I started to relax.
    That night, after a dinner of salad and nuts, we sat in the small living room and read. It’s one of my favorite pleasures, but I never seemed to have time for reading. At home, I work on my computer into the early evening and then watch a little TV, often falling asleep later with a book in my hand, while next to my bedside books piled up. But at the cabin, there was no TV and no radio, nothing to do but read and talk—a rare and precious thing. I was beginning to realize that what I wanted most in my life was more time—not to do more things but to do less, to slow down and appreciate such simple pleasures as eating a good meal or reading. 
    We found a book on the shelves left by a previous owner, which appeared to be a catalog of 25 models of outhouses. In “Gems of American Architecture,”  which looks like a real pamphlet, from the Wm. A. Flatt Co., of Denver, “distributors of Minneapolis-Honeywell Temperature Controls Bryant Gas Fired Heating Systems,”  the language was high-brow, accompanied by drawings that looked to be from the 1930s, and without the word outhouse ever being used. One of my favorite models was the “Fourposter”: “By replacing the conventional hole-equipped seats with a log over which the patrons may hang, we have reached the utmost in efficiency. This feature eliminates the depreciation of toil holes and allows all sections of the vault to be used. It is equipped also with a sapling backrest which makes it safe for a patron to fall asleep.”
    It was silly, I know, but it struck our funny bones, and I couldn’t remember when I had last laughed so hard. Our lives were too stressful, too many deadlines and work that never seemed to be done, never enough hours in the day to accomplish everything. It was a rare treat to sit down and let ourselves become engrossed in something frivolous.

The Closing

    The day of the closing what I was most nervous about was how much furniture and other household items the sellers would leave us, and whether I would need to buy a lot of things in order to live there. On our way to Estes, where the closing would be held, Shoney and I stopped at the cabin, and when I saw the two metal chairs  (below) still sitting on the front porch, my heart lifted. Inside were all the furniture, dishes, pots and pans, plus brooms, mops, dustpans, and fireplace implements. They had left everything. Even the books remained on the shelves: "Paradise Lost" by John Milton and the old nature classics—Watchers at the Pond by Franklin Russell, which still had its library card folder and the stamp of Smiley Junior High in Denver; and "Wild Animals I Have Known" by Ernest Thompson Seton.
      The kitchen drawers held silverware, and the upstairs dresser had drawers of sheets and pillowcases. In the bathroom was a print of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” and in the bedroom window hung a stained glass frame of dried flowers. All the curtains were on the windows. It was like stepping into someone else’s life, but it took me a while to realize it wasn’t Beth and Ken’s, who sold me the house and only lived here four years. I eventually discovered that Beth and Ken, who had two young children, had barely inhabited the place and that all of the furnishings were there when they moved in. The life I seemed to be stepping into had belonged to someone who loved to read and was a nature lover, like me, who collected pine cones and rocks and displayed them on the shelves. It was someone who was thoughtful and cared about the cabin and all the little details: hung antique metal tools on the garage walls, left a ceramic water jug on top of the refrigerator, nailed pegs in the back room to hang things on, and put a stopper on the back door so it wouldn’t hit the cabinets. It would take me a few months to find these people and learn why they had sold something they so obviously had loved.  
    When I thought about the furniture staying with the cabin, I thought it must be a mountain tradition. For one thing, it’s hard to get the furniture up here in the first place, so it’s better to leave it where it is and let someone else use it. And there’s a sense that the furniture goes with the cabin, that the pine frame bed and dresser are as much as part of the house as the knotty pine walls. Not only had the previous owners left us the furnishings but there was a note from Beth and Ken with receipts and information about the cabin, including a letter from the previous owners passing on practical details about the house: how to light the propane stove and how to get a fire started in the wood-burning part of the propane stove (stick newspapers in the back, light the match, and then use the hairdryer in the bottom bathroom cabinet to direct the fire and smoke through the convoluted chimney pipes).  It seemed a loving gesture—from one set of owners to the next and to the newest, as if there was a bond to this cabin that could be passed on.  
    Even before I signed the final documents, I let myself claim ownership, really believe that I was going to be able to have this cabin, to start the dream. Already, I could feel the tug of the cabin, of my life shifting in a different direction.