Cabin Journal

Expecting the Unexpected

Last weekend, a friend and I returned to Eldorado Canyon where for the last two years, we had been privileged to see swifts darting in and out of the sandstone cliff walls. I say privileged because this year they weren’t there.  Was it because it was too windy? Had the swifts come and gone? Were there no bugs for these acrobatic birds to catch?

Maybe it’s a human tendency to want things to stay the same, to expect these birds to be there when we arrived to see them. I was disappointed but it also felt like an emptiness, that something was lacking in this spectacular landscape of soaring red cliffs dotted with rock climbers.

At the cabin, the first year I arrived, I was delighted to find that a house wren couple had taken up residence in a nesting box right outside the window where I sat at my computer. Not only could I watch the two fly back and forth with nesting materials and then food for their babies, but I could listen to the male sing, one of the sweeter songs in my neck of the woods.

But last year, the fence holding the nesting box fell down, and I had to move the box to another spot, not in direct eyesight. As far as I know, the wrens have never returned. At least, I don’t hear them. I miss them and the singing. It feels like something is missing, even though right now there’s a lot of life returning.

After months of seeing little animal life, almost overnight there’s rabbits (left), chipmunks, and ground squirrels scurrying everywhere. The young ones, especially, seem unafraid and let me get close, giving me a slightly deranged look as if they are still trying to figure out what they are doing here.

In Meeker Park, spring is still tentative, just a hint of green among last year’s brown grasses. The aspens in my yard are still bare, although down in the meadow the leaves are just starting to unfurl. There’s water everywhere, coursing through the fields and forming ponds in any depression in the land, where frogs have taken up residence, croaking night and day. The mountains are still deep in snow (above, Longs Peak), as if it were January, not almost June.

The pasqueflowers are usually gone by this late in May but the snow and rain seems to have given them a second life, and they are sprouting anew everywhere, providing color among the piles of pine needles.

At night, standing on my deck, I hear the frogs in the ponds but also a western screech owl, calling across the meadow to another owl, a tremulous haunting cry. And later, I’m startled from my reading by the sound of coyotes howling close by, from what sounds like on the other side of my neighbors’ house. It sounds like at least a dozen, their howls overlapping, and something in their voices makes me think they include young ones, a higher pitch. I imagine all those young chipmunks and rabbits getting chills down their spines.

It’s a slow start to my favorite season when my cabin world is teeming with life. I need to learn to be patient and lose my expectations. The summer will be full of expected and unexpected surprises.

The Thrill of Real Animals

I recently took my two nephews to the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, where butterflies of all sizes and colors fly freely in a room full of plants and moisture, meant to mimic a rain forest. After two minutes, the 8-year-old decided it was too hot and left, while the older one got bored after 10 minutes.

I shouldn’t have been surprised because last winter I took them both to the Wild Animal Sanctuary out on the Colorado plains where rescued lions, tigers, bears and wolves, among other animals, roam in huge pens. My older nephew loves animals, especially wolves, and yet the sight of real wolves and tigers didn’t interest the boys as much as the wildlife video playing on an indoor set. While real tigers basked in the sun, lazily chewing on pieces of meat, and real wolves howled nearby, the boys sat in front of a giant TV set and watched a documentary made about one of the big cats that was rescued by the center.

I can’t blame them. Real life, it seems, can’t hold a candle to what’s on our TV and movie screens. I’ve seen all the new animal documentaries, starting with Planet Earth, and the photography is incredible: whales tossing seals in the air, lions bringing down a wildebeest, penguins swimming underwater. Real life is more boring and moves a lot slower.  A whale cruise I took last month off San Diego yielded, in the course of about four hours, no whales, a few dolphins, some pelicans and gulls.

At my cabin, I’ve seen more wildlife in my three years there than in the 40 years I’ve lived in Colorado but nothing as action-packed as the wildlife documentaries. Once a year, I see a bear, but it’s not engaged in hand-to-hand combat with another bear or leading a line of cute cubs but merely ambling through. I saw a bobcat once, but it wasn’t chasing a rabbit in a life and death struggle.  I’ve seen several deer (above, photographed last summer), one moose, lots of chipmunks, ground squirrels, chickarees, and several wild turkeys (left), but none were doing anything more exciting than walking down the road, sniffing the air, or chewing on grass.   

And yet each of those encounters was more thrilling than anything I’ve seen on the big screen because they were personal. Part of the excitement is in spotting the animals, being alert enough to see the first bluebirds of the year, or the turkeys that blend in with the background, or the coyote that ambles through the dry grasses.

But I also believe there’s a connection between us and animals, one that can’t be made through a TV or computer screen. It’s a silent communication between something still wild and something too civilized, a transfer of that wildness. It’s a glimpse just for a minute of another way of life, one we humans left long ago, but that’s still there, just outside the cabin door. To me, that’s pretty thrilling.  

 

 

The Curious Case of the Clothespin Bag Nest

When I walked into the shed/garage at the cabin last week, something immediately was not right. Sheets of paper towels were on the floor, and the roll had been knocked from the counter. An animal must have gotten in, which would have been easy enough because this old wooden structure is full of holes that need to be tarpapered over. But why did the animal want the paper towels?

As I looked around the garage, which serves as a storage area for fire wood, tools, and paints, I noticed that the bag that holds clothespins had been strangely altered. Protruding from the hole on top were bits of paper towels, creating a flowering clothespin bag. Something had made a nest in it, although when I poked my fingers below the towels and into some bits of grass, I couldn’t find any eggs.

Unfortunately, I don’t yet have a webcam in my shed, so I can only imagine the building of the nest. Was it one of the local bird residents—chickadees, juncos, Stellar’s jays, nuthatches?—or could it be the pack rat that a former owner told me once lived in the shed?

I consulted a few local wildlife experts, and the consensus was that the nest belonged to a rodent, perhaps a deer mouse or chickaree (grey squirrel). Most people thought the nest was too messy to be a bird’s. In fact, previous owners of my cabin had collected two birds’ nests, both of which are round and compact. One nest is braided with a narrow golden ribbon (left), a nice touch, but nothing like the clothespin nest, embellished almost beyond recognition, something more than just a safe space to sleep, almost a work of art.

If it were the chickaree, one of the most frenetic creatures around, I picture it stuffing the bits of paper towel in the clothespin bag even after they were spilling over the top. How else to explain this nest that goes beyond functional into something else, something almost out of control and a little wacky?

I’m constantly amazed by adaptability of animals that take advantage of the places and things we humans leave lying around. Most people in Meeker Park have piles of logs/tree scraps on their property, waiting to be sawed and used as firewood. These piles have a way of sitting around for years, so the chipmunks and ground squirrels have found them to be perfect homes because most predators can’t reach into the tight spaces. Often I see rabbits disappearing under my front deck, a place I hope is safe from predators.

And I just read an article in the Allenspark Wind about a couple who found that an enterprising chickaree was using their engine blocks to store mushrooms over the winter. Did it ever wonder why its food source would disappear for part of the day and come back, slightly warmed?

Because I’m living on their land, I’m grateful to be sharing my cabin and land with these wild animals, so they’re welcome to use my log pile, my deck, or my clothespin bag anytime they want.