Cabin Journal

The Unbearable Cuteness of Chipmunks

      

Most people who spend time in the mountains have this experience. You’re in a beautiful mountain setting—tall peaks are reflected in a lake surrounded by pine trees—yet all eyes are trained on the ground, with occasional cries, “Where’d he go?” “There he is. Behind the tree.” And another group of tourists have been caught in the seductive web of one of the cutest of animals: the chipmunk.
     I have chipmunks, ground squirrels, and chickarees (as well as the occasional Abert’s squirrel) at my cabin, although most people lump them all together as chipmunks. But it’s the ground squirrel that gets the most attention in the mountains, especially in places like Rocky Mountain National Park, where they are accustomed to tourists throwing nuts and pieces of bread at them. 
    There is something very appealing about these animals, almost human in the way they sit up and hold a piece of bread in their claws, or how they are able to utterly relax how they interact with humans, imploring us with those big brown eyes that we can’t resist (“Just one more nut, sweetheart?”). Even the way they stuff their cheeks with food fondly reminds us of our own gluttony. It’s easy to become smitten with them. You want to pick them up and snuggle. 
     On a hike to Mills Lake in the park last week, after one ground squirrel had its fill of food, it went to a nearby rock and calmly posed, standing tall, looking around and out over the lake, with its hands folded in front, an elegant and stately pose (right). What kind of consciousness does this animal have to so clearly and calmly regard its surroundings? 
    Yet when they’re not posing for tourists, ground squirrels (and chipmunks) are busy foraging for food and avoiding predators that could come from the sky or behind the rock. Despite having to always be alert for danger, they are seemingly able to enjoy each moment and relax completely.  Maybe that’s why we’re so captivated by them, why our hearts go out to them: In a parallel universe to us, they offer some vision of a richly lived existence.
    There’s a couple of ground squirrels at my cabin who stand on the front deck, peering through the window, curious, I guess, or as if they want to engage me. It almost feels like an invitation: Here’s my world, and you’re welcome in it.

A Song in My Head

    I’m on the trail heading for Blue Lake or Cub Lake and yet my thoughts are a million miles away. This is what happens when I first start hiking. I’m replaying the events of the past few days, or having important conversations in my head with important people, or thinking about what I need at the grocery store. It all goes on ad nauseum, blocking out the sights and sounds, even though I want to be here on this trail amid the scented pine forests, next to the creek, climbing over boulders to get to the silvery lake. But I can’t seem to turn off the flow of chatter in my brain.
     With great willpower, sick of the incessant noise, I’ll start cataloging what I’m seeing—willow bushes along the creek with their white cottony flowers, huge boulders on which flowers are blooming among the cracks, a field of purple asters and yellow daisies—and slowly I’ll start to feel my breath and footsteps becoming aligned with my surroundings. Sometimes a bird’s call will pierce through my mental chatter or the sensation of my footsteps on the rock will bring me back.
    For a while, I’m in step with my surroundings but at some point, something in my brain will shut down again. Maybe it’s an uncomfortable thought, the realization that this experience is transitory, and when that unwelcome news hits me (why can’t it stay this beautiful forever), I pop in a soundtrack to block out the realization. It’s like sticking my fingers in my ears so I don’t have to hear bad news.
    Last week, it was something from “Porgy and Bess” (“There’s a train that’s leaving soon for New York”), a piece of music I love, yet I could tell it was some distraction. Sometimes, I feel the beauty and urgency of summer so strongly, I can hardly bear it, and that’s when Porgy starts singing to Bess about her being his woman now.
    When I reach my destination (the lake, the aspen meadow, the view), I often sit as long as I can, doing my landscape meditation. I breathe in the surroundings—the rock in the middle of the lake, the glassy waves, the sound of the black-striped sparrows—and breathe out the disjointed, chaotic thoughts in my head.
    By the time I start back down the trail, I’m feeling calmer. But it’s more than that. I’m feeling a part of the landscape, in tune with the trees and the rocks rather than the song in my head. Finally, blessedly, the music stops.
    Some people sit on a psychiatrist’s couch, others get acupuncture, others drink wine. But hiking is my form of therapy. It’s what brings me back to reality and back to myself.

Nature’s a Mess

    My neighbor told me recently that, in preparation for selling his cabin, he wanted to cut down some of the tall grasses around his cabin. I was horrified. I love the sight of wild grasses.  Not having an ocean nearby, I consider a sea of grasses waving in the wind the nearest thing. From my laptop perch at the table, I can see the grasses, tall and still green, and the sight stirs my soul.
    “They just look messy,” he told me.
     It’s a great mystery to me why humans apparently worship  nature but then want to impose order on it in their own yards. We ignore the natural vegetation and instead create artificial landscapes: orderly rectangles of short grass anchored by a maple or locust tree, a few bushes around the border, with a group of flowers. I have a yard in my Boulder home, and in deference to my neighbors, keep it as neat as I can. Yet here in the mountains, I don’t want  to have to maintain that order. I want nature, with all its unruliness, to dominate.
    On my hikes in the mountains, I’m struck by how many dead trees there are, falling randomly, some stuck between two other trees, others forming a mosaic on the ground. On a hike this June to Bridal Veil Falls, on the eastern edge of Rocky Mountain National Park, I saw logs laying in a hillside of green grass, as if a flood had deposited them. They were scattered in odd patterns,  and that’s what I love about nature: its disarray, that there’s no straight lines but that everything is random. 
    If this were a city, all the trees would be cleared out, creating neat and tidy spaces. But here the dead trees are fodder for birds’ nests, protection for plants that grown underneath and along the sides of fallen trees, and for the colorful orange lichen that clings to the underside. When a tree falls in the woods, several new trees spring up to take advantage of that open hole of sunlight. Where water collects between boulders, plants nudge themselves in. There are no city workers planting neat lines of flowers and bushes, only rambunctious nature filling in where it can find opportunities and places to thrive.
    It’s messy, yes, but it’s teeming with life, and I would never want to try to control it.

Still Notes on a Gray Day

     

 

       Last week, on an overcast, cool day on Tuesday, I wanted to go for a small hike before heading home from my cabin. At Wild Basin, there’s a trail that goes up the mountainside across from Mount Meeker, and, with all the swirling clouds and storms moving through, I figured it would make for some dramatic vistas. 
     But when I got to a point on the trail where the view was unobstructed by trees, there was no Mount Meeker, only a low cloud cover. Instead, as I trudged up the hill my focus went down to the small things along the trail. It had rained, and everything on the trail seemed saturated, glistened: the lime green moss on the pinkish boulder, a flattened mushroom sticking to a log, raindrops on the flowers and bushes. Something about the gray, wet day made the colors and textures more intense. The boulders themselves were like sculptures, each a different shape and heft—massive and graceful at the same time. In the gray suffused light, every rock, tree, and plant stood out; even the smallest flower along the trail seemed significant, as if I could feel or sense each one’s presence.
    It’s been a hectic summer, and I found myself appreciating a day where not much was happening. There was no wind, so nothing was moving; the trees and grasses stilled on this hushed day. Even the birds were quiet; only the chickaree (right )intent on harvesting pine cones. It felt like the world was closing down, that there was nothing else but this trail and me slowly trudging up the mountain. It felt like a breather, like a long sigh amid tumultuous storms.