Cabin Journal

Networking the Old-Fashioned Way

    When I try to figure out the appeal of Facebook and Twitter, it seems to me it’s about creating a community. We’re all reaching across the world trying to connect with other people, trying to find our place and our “people.” At the cabin, I was finding a community, too, although these were the type of contacts you ran into while walking down the road.
     When I give people directions to the cabin, I inevitably get to the part where I have to tell them to turn on the road that has  the signs posted on the trees (right), because there is no street name. On the trees are the names of the people who have cabins down that road — a literal rather than virtual community. Aside from two main roads that criss-cross Meeker Park, the network of dirt, often one-lane roads that lead to a smattering of cabins have no names, although sometimes people will choose a name they like, such as Blue Jay Lane. I like that kind of informality. No straight and narrow streets or signs but a loose network of roads and cabins. And a community that is just as haphazard but connected in many ways. 
    When I started looking for someone to replace the roofs on the cabin and garage, I started to get a glimpse of that network. First, I started making the rounds of my neighbors to ask them for recommendations. My immediate neighbors Claudia and Tom sent me to the Stewarts, a multi-generational family from Iowa, who had just replaced the roof on their cabin. Their roofer wasn’t an option, but while talking to one of the Stewarts, I met the woman who lived across the road from them. This woman, who wrote children’s books,  gave me the name of a local handyman, Chip, and when I called him, it turned out he had replaced the last roof on my cabin, which he calculated was more than 20 years ago. Although Chip didn’t do that kind of work anymore, he sent me to his friend Rich, who did a fine job.
    I could see that the Meeker Park and Allenspark community consisted of different social strata: the people who lived here all year round, who were the minority; and people who only visited in the warm months (summer, mainly but into the fall), which ranged from those who came for the whole summer to the infrequent visitors who came only on occasional weekends or holidays. But among the varied strata of residents, even those who opened up their cabin only for the July Fourth weekend, everyone seemed to know everyone else and their stories: who had cancer, who was having a new septic system put in, where people had spent the winters. Many of the cabins  have been in the family for several generations, so cabin owners may not see their neighbors much but know their family histories, remember their grandparents, remember playing with each other as children, know where they come from. 
    In that way, this place reminds me of the cabin in Wisconsin where my family spent summers, where the great-grandchildren of my grandparents, who originally bought the first cabin, now hang out with the great-grandchildren of my grandparents’ neighbors and friends on the lake—people they would fish with or play pinochle with.  In this mobile society, it’s hard to sustain that kind of continuity. It feels like a treasure, like something rich.
    If there is a core to the Meeker Park community, it’s the retired couples, in their 60s and 70s, who know each other, keep tabs on each other and help each other out. As far as I know, no one on Twitter or Facebook has ever delivered a casserole to a sick neighbor.

The Wisdom of No Distractions

    When I’m feeling depressed, the cabin is sometimes the hardest place to be and yet the best place to be.  
     When I talk to my spiritual teacher about how to handle my moods, her advice is always to stay with the feelings, not run away from them. It’s as if by plunging down to the bottom, I might come out the other side and be cleansed. 
     There’s a strong impulse to deny these feelings, to distract myself with other things, yet at the cabin, there’s few distractions. Without a TV, radio, CD player, or good Internet connection, the chipmunk that comes to the feeder is my biggest entertainment. I’ve even tried watching the traffic go by, but at the rate of one car per every three hours, it’s hard to stay focused, though I’m always happy to see the UPS truck pass.
      So when I’m at the cabin, there are times when I just sit and let the feelings flood over me, as if I’m giving myself permission to let go, not keep up some pretense in the real world that everything is OK.  And the longer I stay with the feelings, the more comfortable I am with them, stop running from them. I’ve never gotten through to the other side, but I have found some acceptance and some peace.  
     It’s easier to accept the depression when you’re someplace that is beautiful and peaceful, as if I can absorb the comfort of this mountain valley. And, usually, by my second day here, I  start to feel better, and by the time I have to leave, I start finding reasons not to.
    In my usual pattern in coming to the cabin last summer, on the day I’m heading home, I work in the morning, then leave after lunch to head up to the high peaks for a good hike. For all the years I’ve lived in Colorado, my summer hikes to alpine lakes are something I look forward to all winter. And yet at the cabin, I find excuses not to leave, start cleaning behind the kitchen sink or dusting the rims of the windows, something I don’t even do at my home. There’s something about this place that wraps me in its protective cloak, a golden haze, and I don’t want to leave, even for my treasured hikes. 
    When I finally pull myself away, get in my car and head up the dirt road, my head and heart are still filled with the sights and sounds of the cabin. When I get to the main road, it’s like coming out of a dream into reality, out of that protective space. It feels wrenching, and yet parts of the cocoon stay with me, there when I need it in the real world.

Meet the Neighbors

   As much as I wanted solitude at the cabin, I was also enamored of the idea of a community, of someplace where you knew your neighbors and shared some common bond—in this case a love of this mountain valley (below). There had to be something that drew us all up here, that overcame the lack of civilized comforts: no cell phone coverage, no grocery store and only one coffee shop and three restaurants in a 10-mile radius.
     The first weekend at the cabin, I had met my neighbors to the east: Claudia and Tom, who had retired to live here all-year long except for one month when they went to Georgia. I soon  found out that Tom was from a pioneering family that settled in eastern Boulder County, not far from my home. 
    But I didn’t meet my other  neighbors until a day last July when my friend Mary Jane visited me. It was a perfect summer day, temperatures in the 70s, and a special shimmering kind of light that I wanted to capture and keep for the rest of the year. Something about it signified the ease and beauty of summer, when everything is green and blooming—life at its peak.
    I wanted to show her around, so took her for a walk and almost immediately we met Jerry and Jan, who live across the road from Claudia and Tom, in a cabin partly hidden by a giant spruce tree. They weren’t up her much because Jan has bone cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy. Tom told us there was a bristlecone pine at the point of land where Tahosa and Cabin creeks come together. I felt grateful that he shared that piece of information, that he considered it significant. I get the sense that people are eager to pass on their love of this valley and of the special places that they’ve found. 
    While we were talking to them, Claudia and Tom came out, and, because Jerry had his binoculars, we started talking about birds. Claudia and Tom have a clothesline in front of their house with well-stocked birdfeeders that attract pine siskins, juncos and the striking stellar jays.  
    As most local conversations inevitably did, ours turned to the problem of the pine beetle, and Claudia gave me the name of the neighborhood couple who were responsible for monitoring the trees in the area, Michael and Ruth, and pointed down the road where they lived. As Mary Jane and I continued our walk in the opposite direction, a woman came from the direction of that road, and I impulsively asked, “Are you Ruth?” Indeed it was. While we started to talk,  a car came by, and she stopped to talk to them. I could see that everyone knows everyone else here. 
    Later, when Mary Jane and I sat on the front porch, a man and boy on bicycles stopped to introduce themselves. Gary is a retired lawyer who lives with his wife all  year on Cabin Creek Road. His grandson, an amiable boy of about 11,  was visiting from the Midwest. Gary told me more about late Bill Waite, who owned the cabin next to mine. As others had, he described Bill as a “character,” someone a bit eccentric who didn’t seem comfortable with  people. And the house on the other side of my cabin had been owned by a woman named Madeline, who was friends with Bill and who lived there after her husband died. 
    In one afternoon at the cabin, I met more neighbors than I had living for 15 years in my subdivision east of Boulder. I could tell that people felt tied to this place in ways that people in cities don’t. Bit by bit, my mental map of Meeker Park and its inhabitants began to be filled in: who lived in these houses I passed on my walks—not just names but who they were, where they came from, why they chose to be here. 
    When Mary Jane and I walked to the other end of the valley, we passed a line of horseback riders, customers of a nearby dude ranch, and we all waved, happy to be out on this beautiful summer day. I felt an unusual sense of giddiness, pleased to share my beautiful valley with  them. I wanted to tell them that I lived here, as if I were taking some pride of ownership, as if to say: I belong here, this is my valley, isn’t it gorgeous?

A Lesson from the Animals

    One morning, sitting at my computer, glancing up as I always do to see what is happening in the world outside my window, I saw an animal that at first glance I thought was a big dog. It was coming through the yard on the east side of the cabin, and, as it got closer, I realized it was a bear. 
     I’ve lived in Colorado for more than 40 years and only saw a bear in the wild once before this (at Roxborough State Park, south of Denver) and it was on a high peak across the valley, visible only through binoculars. But this bear was in my yard, heading for the road, almost getting caught in a tangle of barbed wire on my neighbor’s property. It stopped to sniff around the tree and I was able to get a picture.
    I knew there were bears here, because the locals had warned me that I should never leave food out, even inside the cabin, that bears could smell food from five miles away and could tear down doors to get it (a fact that caused me to sleep less well than I might have). 
    One of the big pleasures of this cabin is all the wildlife. Up to that point, I had seen chipmunks eating out of the feeder next to my window; ground squirrels posing on my front deck; rabbits eating the wild grasses in the yard; and chickarees, the small gray squirrels, running on the fence posts and up the trees, chattering at me. And there were birds everywhere:  juncos, siskins, chickadees, the mountain and western bluebirds, and red-tailed hawks flying over the valley. 
    Watching the animals gave me perspective on my own life. When I first moved in, I was faced with a number of issues that I wanted to resolve as soon as possible. One of the most urgent was getting e-mail access for my business, and I thought it would be easy to set up a cheap dial-up connection at the cabin, but it was more complicated than I thought. And I needed  to get a new roof before the winter snows came, but that turned into a long and frustrating process. 
    In addition to the maintenance issues, I was feeling anxious about work. As a free-lance editor, I never knew where my next job would come from, and I worried that I would not be able to find more work—work that would help pay for all my bills, including the expenses for the cabin. Had I overreached in buying this cabin? It didn’t help that gas prices had reached $4 a gallon, so it was costing me $15 to $20 just to drive up here,  some 40 miles from my home. 
    I started to realize that I wanted everything in place, to feel secure about all aspects of my life. It’s something I know everyone does, constantly shoring up our defenses, making sure there’s as little uncertainty in our lives as possible.  And yet, from studying Buddhism, I know it’s futile to chase stability, because everything is in flux and impermanent: changing as fast as the river moves downstream and as slow as the trees that drop their needles and die, making way for new trees that will change the landscape.  
    But the animals I watch at my cabin have more precarious lives than I do. Will they get enough food to eat and not starve? Will this chipmunk who comes to the platform feeder and stuffs his face be suddenly carried off by an owl? Or the deer that came, trembling, into the driveway, be attacked by a mountain lion? The birds that come to the feeder or peck from the front yard are always alert for hawks patrolling these woods and fields. And the rabbits that look so cute don’t stay out in the open for long but scurry quickly underneath my car or the trees, out of sight from predators. 
    And that bear that walked through my yard, that looks so magnificent and powerful, could easily fail in its efforts to find food and starve to death or start raiding garbage cans and be killed.
    These animals live in a constant state of awareness, and yet it is not fear, as far as I can tell, that rules their lives but an awareness of each moment, of where they are and everything that’s around them. They don’t worry about tomorrow, because there’s only today, and a struggle for survival. It’s a lesson I could learn well.

Looking for Something Familiar

    In my first few months of the cabin, everything was unfamiliar: my routine, the landscape, even being alone with myself for two days.  I had the sense of stepping into the unknown. For these reasons I was drawn to nearby places that were familiar.

     Only a few miles down the road from my cabin is Wild Basin, at the southern end of Rocky Mountain National Park, a place I’ve hiked and skied for decades. It’s a landscape I knew well: the trail that follows the St. Vrain River and heads up to Calypso Cascades, named not for the rollicking creek that cascades from one pool to another, but for the tiny (and increasingly rare) calypso orchid. With the creek spreading over the hillside, everything is wet: the glistening grey and black boulders, and the trees and bushes alongside and in the cascades.  It seems a lush, dripping landscape among these dry hills. 
    From there, the trail from Calypso to Ouzel Falls offers views of the peaks to the west, due to a fire from 1978 that burned hillsides of pine trees and opened up the view. At Ouzel Falls, named for the bird that actually dives into the creek, the water descends several dozen feet over a rock lip, crashing onto the rocks below with such fury that it seems the force of the water could shake the whole hillside loose. But on a hot day, the spray from the falls is a great pleasure.
    In years past, I would have headed straight for Ouzel Falls or one of the higher lakes. But now, because Wild Basin is now in my backyard (practically), when I’m at the cabin I’ll take short leisurely walks there and enjoy places that I would have sped by on my way to the falls.  One of those places is Copland Falls, only a half mile or so up the trail, where several falls tumble between rock walls holding bushes, flowers, and trees. It’s where worlds collide: the bedrock and the water. Sitting on the bank, I can feel the power of the water rushing so fast it’s a blur. 
    After a storm came through one summer day, my friend Lynn and I went for a walk. There were still puddles on the path, and everything was glistening: drops on the bluebells hanging over the creek (above) while the woods were dark and somber, rich smelling. I’ve hiked this trail so many times, but when I slow down and really look, there’s so much here: a thousand sensations and observations—fleeting and elusive. 
    Once again, I’m caught in the moment, and all the questions and fears stop.

Cabin Envy

 

 

It was inevitable, I guess, that once I found my dream cabin, I started seeing other cabins that had features that my cabin lacked. On my walks around the valley, I always found cabins that seemed perfect, where I could imagine myself happily living.
    One cabin, with a bright red trim, had a screen porch that overlooked the creek, and I could picture myself curled up with a book, maybe on a nice wicker chair, reading while listening to the sound of the water spilling over rocks. 

    Another was constructed of thick yellow logs placed in alternating patterns, sitting almost hidden in the woods, so I didn’t notice it until I walked by it. Someone had made an effort to craft this cabin, so it seemed to me like a piece of art, and every time I pass by I admire the handwork. 
     Another cabin I coveted was small, perched on a hill above the valley and facing Mount Meeker. From the back porch, the whole valley was spread out, and I imagined myself there, watching the clouds move across the peak, seeing the first pink light at dawn hit the top of the peak.
    This wasn’t exactly buyer’s remorse, more like a restlessness. I’m always looking for something else, something better, even when it seemed I had gotten exactly what I desired. I loved my cabin, but as reality set in, I had to deal with both mundane issues (getting a new roof) and less mundane issues, like facing my own fears. The cabins I encountered on my walks were still unencumbered by any real issues, had no baggage attached. It’s like when you’re on vacation, and the places you’re visiting seem so desirable. You imagine your life there, but it’s always without the things that weigh us down in reality: making a living, paying your bills, getting your car fixed, dealing with a sick pet. 
    On my walks, I rarely saw people at these cabins, which made them more mysterious and remote, as if I could assign lives to them, as if they lurked in the woods ready for me to attach my imagination. From talking to my neighbors, I got a sense that many were family cabins, passed down from generations, but that some of the newer generations didn’t love the cabins as much as their parents or grandparents who originally bought them.
    So most of the cabins sit empty, owned by people whose lives are too busy, I think, or who maybe are bored by the simple pleasures of mountain living. Yet something prevents them from getting rid of these places that have been in the family for generations. So the cabins sit there, holding their secrets, their decades of silences interspersed with short bursts of activity, usually over the summer holiday weekends.    
    My favorite cabin (above) is just down the road from me, where the road ends at a bridge across Tahosa Creek. The cabin, not particularly remarkable, backs up against the hillside on one side, and a yard on the other side ending at the creek, dense with willow bushes. To the west are thickets of trees and willow bushes and, off in the distance, the hills that rise up to Mount Meeker.
    As much as I loved my cabin, I always feel slightly exposed, surrounded by four or five other cabins (although only two are used year-round). But this other cabin, tucked against the hills and at the end of the road, is by itself. I wonder if there’s a yearning in all of us for someplace that feels safe and protected, where we can be ourselves, where we can dream without being disturbed by life’s realities. And maybe it’s impossible to find, which is why I’ll always be looking down the road for the (really) perfect cabin.