Cabin Journal

Life in the Slow Lane

 
Once while trudging up a mountain trail, a woman with gray hair coming down the trail stopped me to tell me triumphantly she had hiked to the lake in less than two hours. I congratulated her, but what I wanted to ask was: Why did you go so fast?  Did you notice the marmot sunning itself on the rock or the columbine almost hidden beneath the boulder? She was gone before I had chance to tell her that my last hike to the lake took five hours.

For myself, I like to go as slowly as possible, more of a saunter than a trudge. I want to spend as much time as I can in the mountains, and I want to notice everything: the waterfall across the valley, every conceivable combination of flowers (color, shape) and especially the gnarled roots of the bristlecone pine.

But I found that people look at you strangely if you’re just standing staring into space. Once, on a trail in Eldorado Canyon, I was admiring the red rock formations when a family stopped, trying to see what I was looking at so intently.  Surely, I had spotted a bear or the rare rimrock rose.  I had to admit that I was just looking at rocks, and they left, disappointed.

It helps to have binoculars, so it appears that you’ve spotted a bird that needs to be identified in the top of the pine tree. Or to have a flower guidebook, so people assume you’re leaning over the flowers the better to see how many petals. But one of the best decoys for me is my camera. I’ve taken more than my share of mediocre photos (thank goodness for digital cameras) in an effort to appear as if I’m doing something useful rather than just admiring the clouds floating by.

I may not be doing anything useful, but I’m enjoying everything around me. I’m a dreamer, staring at clouds or the shadow of an aspen tree on a large granite boulder. You can hurry up the trail as fast as you want, but I’m going to stay here as long as I can, admiring this field of purple asters waving in the wind.

Practicing Good Manners

I recently read a quote from the poet Gary Snyder, who says he tells his students that “good manners requires you to get to know the names of the plants and flowers and birds. That's etiquette." In fact, when a fellow hiker asks me the name of a bush and I don’t know it, I feel a little embarrassed, as if I’ve invited someone over and don’t know the names of all my guests.

 

When I first moved to Colorado, I bought Peterson’s Guide to Wildflowers, a small hardback book with color plates of common flowers, both their Latin and informal names, where they were found (subalpine meadows, for example), and when they bloomed. Over the years, the pages have become worn and watermarked, with an occasional dried flower as a bookmark, and the book has been supplemented with other wildflower guides, with bigger photographs and more detailed information.

 

In that time, I’ve learned not just the names of flowers but to recognize the families (pea or aster). Over the years, I’ve become familiar with the common birds, bushes, trees, and grasses, even a few fish and turtles. 

 

Names by themselves, though, don’t mean much. The house wren doesn’t know that we’ve given it such a prosaic name. Around the cabin, I know it more for its lilting, clear song in spring. The name is just a convenient label. But giving something a name forces me to stop and examine the number of petals on the flower or the kind of bark and needles on the tree, so I can identify it. It’s a tool for awareness.

 

And being able to identify the world around me is more than an ability to impress people with my knowledge.  Once I know the name, I can find out more about each living thing and discover how complex the natural world is. That’s not just a bird or a tree or a squirrel, but a ponderosa that can live to be 200 years old or a chickaree (gray squirrel) that feeds on pine cones in the tops of the ponderosa all winter long or the mountain bluebird that’s one of the first birds to return to the mountain meadows in spring.

 

With Gary Snyder’s encouragement, I’m determined to learn everything: what kinds of ants build hills around my cabin;  the name of the gray, papery lichen that clings to the boulders along Cabin Creek; why some of the willow bushes along the valley bottom have red bark and others have yellow; and the name of the butterfly (above) that feeds on the thistles every fall.

 

The more I find out, the more I see how all of life is interrelated. If the ponderosas are killed off by the pine beetle, the chickarees and birds that feed off of these trees will die, too. This web of life has been created over thousands of years. The more I learn, the more I’m awed. I guess that’s just good etiquette.

After the Fire

I can’t help but grieve for everything that has been lost in the disastrous fire in the mountains of Boulder County. About 160 homes have been destroyed and 6,000 acres burned in the Fourmile Canyon fire.   

 

While structures are easily replaced, if you have the insurance money, the landscape will never be the same. It’s not just the trees, grasses, and bushes that were destroyed in the fire, but the complex interweaving of human and natural factors. Over time, new growth accommodates itself to what’s already there.  A sapling anchors its roots under a boulder, while other plants find water at its base. Another tree manages to grow in the leeward side of the first tree that provides some protection from fierce winds. Aspen trees, bushes and grasses lean against and wind their way through the wooden fences that mark property perimeters.

 

At my cabin the human and natural landscape are intertwined. Raspberry bushes have nestled up against the Bill Waite cabin, where they get water from the rain that drips off the roof. In my backyard, grasses and other plants have grown under the protection of the aspen trees, and rabbits and other small animals feed on these plants. And the ground squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits find safety under my decks from predators.  

 

Most everything here has taken several decades at least (and more than a century for the ponderosa) to form this landscape, most of it haphazardly. It could never be replicated if destroyed. Something else, over decades, would emerge, equally as haphazard but different.

 

I’ve grown to love this tangled chaotic landscape. Every part is precious, perfect just the way it is, even the pile of logs on my neighbor’s property that the ground squirrels and chipmunks hide in, or the rusted water pump or weathered slabs of wood that comprise the shed. Everything has been left to evolve into a perfect state of equilibrium.

 

It’s just things, people say, but we each have a landscape we hold dear, where our hearts go especially when we’re in pain or sorrow. If we lose that, we find new places and new homes, but it takes times to discover the subtle things about the new landscape: how the setting sun lights up the aspens, where the rabbits like to hide, where I can stand to hear both Tahosa and Cabin creeks, how the morning sun hits the top of the ridge on the other side of the valley. You come to love these things, they become a part of you, and to lose them is as wrenching as losing a friend or lover.

 

And that’s why my heart goes out to those who have lost their homes in the Fourmile Canyon fire, because it’s not just a structure, not just trees; it’s a whole web of life and memories.

The Deep Gloom of the Blue Gentian

Because of all the rain we received in early summer, it’s been a banner year for flowers. One of the best spots is the Fourth of July trail west of Nederland, which steeply ascends to Arapahoe Pass. Rock and snow slides have left these hillsides open, and purple monkshood, white cow parsnip, bluebells and harebells, pink fireweed (right) and yellow sunflowers crowd each other. This profusion of color is framed by the dark somber pine trees and even darker mountains to the west. It seems a perfect landscape, filled with every conceivable color and form, one ripe for a painting or photo. It’s easy to forget that these flowers do not bloom for us but have another purpose: reproduction, all of them jostling for the attention of bees or hummingbirds to spread their pollen.

 

I love to follow the progression of the flowers through the season, starting with the pasqueflower, the first one to appear in spring just when the snow is melting, and ending now with the blue and green gentians. So dark is the blue gentian that D.H. Lawrence called it a “deep blue gloom.”

 

One of my best wildflower sightings this summer was the calypso orchid, a secretive flower that has an old-fashioned intricate beauty. Last June, I was hiking in Wild Basin in the southern edge of Rocky Mountain National Park up to Calypso Cascades, named for the orchid. As I was coming down, I realized I hadn’t seen any of the orchids, which are only a few inches high. Just as I had that thought, I saw two men crouched by the side of the trail, admiring something. Could it be? Yes, a whole clump of orchids. And since I was alert for them, I found an even bigger clump shortly down the trail, hiding in the dark woods, tucked among the piles of pine needles, glowing like little candles.  

 

And while other flowers have their moment in the sun and then fade away, the columbine just climbs higher with the season. In July, it’s growing at 8,500 feet at my cabin, but in late August I found the flowers above 10,000 feet on Pawnee Pass, taking refuge on the windswept tundra among the boulders, where water is collected and they are protected from the winds. The columbine, like the orchid, looks as if were designed by an artist, with its carefully layered purple and white flowers, and the protruding spiral, like an exclamation point. They are most beautiful at this high altitude, because their lush beauty stands out in contrast to the harshness of the boulders.

 

And now, with winter returning to the high country, the blue and green gentians emerge. While most other flowers have gone to seed—their dried husks all that’s left—and the meadows are shades of yellow, brown and red, the gentians start to flower, as if they had all the time in the world, as if it weren’t the end of the summer and snow will start falling in a few weeks. So I’ll take my cue from the gentians and pretend that I, too, have all the time in the world to enjoy the high peaks and that summer will never end.