Cabin Journal

The Collapse of Autumn

This year’s early frost deprived me of enjoying my favorite time of the year, of the brilliant fall colors, both in Boulder and in the mountains. On a hike to Gem Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park last week, the leaves had already been stripped from the aspen trees, leaving a bare, ready- for-winter landscape.

And down here on the plains, instead of a palette of reds, yellows, and oranges, the trees are  pale greens and beiges. I felt like I wanted to find a cheap fare to Green Bay and fly out for a long weekend of brilliant falls colors in the north woods of Wisconsin. But I didn’t really have the money or the time.

And there was that insistent voice that said: sit still, stop hopping around trying to find something better. We live in a world where, if we don’t like the weather or the view or the landscape, we can hop a plane to someplace that better suits our fancy or get in our car and drive. Even if we can’t leave for fairer climes, we can ignore the weather, watch TV, stay in our offices, put down the blinds.

But it’s a good feeling to accept what’s happening in my world and to stay with it, not fight it. It almost feels like a solidarity with nature. I’ll stick with these trees that are going through early withdrawal from summer and fall. I’ll watch the  abundance of summer slowly dwindle: as the trees and bushes become bare, the tall grasses start to collapse and flatten under the weight of the snow, the milkweed plants become dry stalks and their seedheads start to spill out of the pods.

This is what the world offers, and I want to be part of it, not to judge whether it is good or bad but accepting it as what is. For now, I’m happy to watch the winds carry the silky milkweed seeds off, watching them float down into fields or streams or into the blue depths of the sky.

 

Cabin as Container

A few years ago, I did a week-long meditation retreat at Buddhist center in the Colorado foothills.  All-week long I rose at 6 a.m. in the dark of winter and walked in the cold from our lodging across a field and through the woods to the meditation hall, where about 100 of us spent most of the day. We even ate our meals there, although in the afternoon there was a break to do our assigned daily chores and sometimes there was time for a walk on the paths that wound through aspen groves, where prayer flags hung, and along the creek. At night, we didn’t finish until 8 or 9 and so I retraced my steps to the lodge in the dark and snow.

After a few days, I got into the rhythm of the schedule: the meditation, the talks, the meals where you sat in silence, eating your rice and vegetables. It seemed what like monastic life might be like: beauty found in the simple cycle of contemplation and work. Gradually, as the week continued, the outside world diminished, and there was just this small circuit of our daily lives: the meditation hall, the lodge where I slept and the woods and fields in between.  Nothing else seemed to exist, as I got deeper into my mind and this place where I found myself.

And then the day came when we had to leave, wrench ourselves back into the real world, into noise and crowds and people driving fast, after we had slowed our minds to a crawl and closed out the rest of the world. There was even a session to give us tips on how to re-immerse ourselves in the world (when heading home, take the back roads instead of the highway). I remember walking to my car, stepping out of the cocoon that had been created in the week’s time. It was like breaking out of web, out of something protective and sane to return to a sometimes insane world. On the other side of that bubble, the world felt different; even the sun’s light seemed more raw, too bright.

The Buddhists have a term for it: container. In setting up these retreats and classes, the idea is to create a place where people feel safe enough to let their guard down, to let their minds and beings go deeper than they ever have before.

In many ways, my cabin feels like a container, where it’s quiet, where no one bothers me, where my thoughts flow uninterrupted. In this safe environment, I open myself more to what’s around me—the sun moving across the sky and into the nooks and crannies of my cabin—but also what’s inside me—feelings that arise unbidden.
And then when I have to leave, I feel that same wrenching as when I left my meditation retreat. I think of a dozen excuses not to leave, finding more chores to do around the cabin that keeps me there another 10 minutes or half hour. Finally, I drive up the dirt road from my cabin to the main highway, where I enter into the traffic that suddenly seems too fast, as if everyone had important places to go and things to do. Gradually, as I drive down the mountains and into the canyon, I’m pulled back into the real world of daily commerce, where everyone is caught up in their daily lives with no time to admire a sunset or slow down for a deer crossing the road.

Maybe, if I ever get good enough at this, I can bring a part of my cabin world into the other world, keep that openness and tender feelings as long as possible. Maybe that’s the ultimate dream: to combine both worlds. Or maybe to make the real world as sane as my cabin world.

Why I Love National Parks

    Last week, while hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, I was surrounded by elk.  One agitated bull kept crossing back and forth on the trail, while another had its head down as it drank from the Big Thompson River. As a friend and I hiked up the Cub Lake Trail, we could hear the elk bugling their challenges from all sides of Moraine Park.  

It was a supreme wilderness moment and yet not unusual this time of the year when elk mating season draws thousands of people to the park to watch this event. And because the park is so close to my cabin and I’m here almost every week, I have to remind myself what a rare treat this. There’s nowhere else in Colorado (and probably in the West, outside of Yellowstone) that you can see so many elk—and almost close enough to reach your hand out and touch them.

In watching Ken Burns’ documentary about the national parks, I’ve gained a new appreciation for them, even as I’ve scorned the crowds that sometimes make them feel less than wild. Yet, we’ve managed to preserve whole ecosystems and animals, such as the buffalo that would have been exterminated by hunting. It was shocking to find out how close we came to losing several national treasures, including Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. Shocking how vested interests, not just mining and timber but people who didn’t want the federal government in “their” back yard and would have let the last buffalo disappear and  the last redwood be cut down.
     

Yosemite could have become a playground for the rich and the Grand Canyon a mining pit. And what would we have lost? Practically speaking, we don’t need wilderness. We don’t need to go out into the mountains or forests and forage for plants and hunt deer or elk. It’s been a long time since humans figured out how to control food production.

We don’t really need snowy egrets or bear or pikas, the tundra dwellers now threatened by global warming. They are superfluous to our daily lives, existing in a parallel universe where survival is often precarious. But, on another level, I think people are drawn to wildlife. That’s why we hang paintings on our living room walls of an elk buck, standing stiffly and proudly, a symbol of strength and fortitude; why there were traffic jams in  Rocky Mountain National Park in the last few weeks, as people flocked to get close-up views of the elk; why Boulder residents speak with reverence about the bear that was in their backyard. 

I think we need something that is non-human, something outside of ourselves. Some people call that God. To me, it’s recognizing that we are not the only creatures worthy of life; that there are other kinds of wisdom in the world: of a hawk that knows how to ride the thermals; of a buffalo that knows how to survive temperatures of 50 below zero; of a bear that knows how to hibernate. It’s acknowledging that we humans don’t know everything. 

It also means there’s something unknowable out there, something outside of our small and sometimes narrow lives. There’s a vastness that we can only imagine, millions of acres of wilderness that most of us will probably never see and untold riches among the mountains, forests, lakes and rivers. It’s something I feel every time I stand on my cabin deck at night and see all the stars in the black sky or hear the elk trumpeting among the wide and wild mountain valleys.

 

Life in the Fast Lane

Although humans sometimes make life more difficult for wild animals (such as the bears), sometimes we make it easier.

Sitting on the front deck of my cabin, I’ve been watching a chickaree run back and forth on the rails of the fence that separate my property from my neighbor’s.

Carrying a pine cone in its mouth, half as big as the animal, it runs quickly along the rail, a much faster route than plowing through the grasses below. On this chickaree highway, this gray ground squirrel  can  carry the maximum amount of  pine cones in the shortest amount of time. 

I can almost time my watch by its commute. In about five minutes, it’s up the ponderosa tree to grab a pine cone, then down and over to the fence rail, a quick sprint and jump to the ground, where it heads around the corner where I can’t see it from my front porch. A minute later it’s back on the highway, moving so fast I have a hard time snapping a picture. 

Curious about where it was taking these pine cones, I walked to the corner of the house and saw it go into the open shed on my neighbor’s property. There among stacks of wood, an old chipped bathtub and miscellaneous items, it’s storing food for the winter. So not only is the chickaree taking advantage of our fences but also our buildings.

The chickaree is one of my favorite animals up here and the most industrious, never stopping to pose for photos or look around but constantly on the move. (“Sorry, no time to chat.”) Of all the small animals here, it’s the only one that doesn’t hibernate in the winter, so the chipmunks and ground squirrels can take a more leisurely approach to life, enjoying the moment, sprawling on a tree branch in the sun, looking forward to several months of uninterrupted sleep. But the chickaree doesn’t have that luxury, has to make hay while the sun shines.

It takes life seriously, and I can’t help but respect its single-minded pursuit.