Cabin Journal

The Solitude of Winter

In the cabin next to mine once lived a World War I veteran named Bill Waite who lived in a small cabin (below), less than 400 square feet with no insulation,  for 40 years.

When I first bought my cabin, I wondered how he survived the winters here, not physically but emotionally. Although a few of my neighbors live here all year round, back in the 1950s and ‘60s it was less common, so Bill would have had few human companions in winter, no one to chat with about the weather or the coyotes he heard howling at night.  

For a long time, I wondered what he did all day. I've been told that he was a reader and that he had a dog. And there’s always work to be done: chopping wood, keeping the fire going, maybe hunting, making meals, hauling in water.

But it was mostly a solitary existence in winter. And it’s only now, in my third winter at the cabin, that I’m starting to get a glimpse of what it would be like to be here all winter every day, rather than my two-day forays from my Boulder home, where I can be endlessly entertained by email, my cats, lunches with friends, or news from NPR.

On my winter walks at the cabin, I rarely see anyone out, so there’s a sense of solitude but also of spaciousness, as if I could walk or wander anywhere or let my thoughts go in any direction. But more than that, everything slows down, so things I wouldn’t ordinarily notice in a more urban and chaotic setting become apparent. Subtle things, like the pattern of the wind-whipped snow, the murmurings of the chickadees coming from above me in the aspen trees, the muffled sound of the creek under ice and snow. And always, the sound of the wind rushing through the trees.

Gradually, life slows down so I’m hardly aware of being separate from anything around me; it’s as if my heartbeat matches the rhythm of life around me: the streaming clouds, the horses that look up from eating, the flock of crows flying overhead in the blue sky. The slow, subtle undercurrent of life pulls me along so I don’t need to do anything but let myself flow with it. It feels like a state of altered consciousness.

I don’t know why Bill Waite decided to live here alone.  I heard that one of his neighbors offered him a radio to keep him company, but he said he preferred to listen to the wind in the pine trees.  As he gradually absorbed the rhythms of life in this high mountain valley, he must have slowed down, as we all do when we're here, so all you want is to keep feeling this: the silence and sense of openness that fills your heart.

When Fences Make Poor Neighbors

 

Fences make good neighbors, poet Robert Frost once famously wrote. Maybe humans need demarcations of their property so as to keep order and prevent the world from running amuck, but animals don’t find them friendly.  Once, sitting in my cabin, I saw a bear get caught in my neighbor’s barbed wire fence. It managed to extricate itself, but I wondered how many times animals hurt themselves when trying to get free of a fence.

Last week, I was driving south of Buena Vista in south-central Colorado and saw a herd of pronghorn in a field surrounded by a wire fence. Pronghorn can’t leap over fences like deer; their legs are too fragile and could break. While the older ones had figured out how to get under or through the fence, the younger ones were frantically running back and forth outside the fence, and another  younger one was on the other side of the road, trapped behind another fence. When I got out of my car, with some crazy idea that I would try to help them, some of the younger ones desperately threw themselves through an opening in the fence, while others continued to pace back and forth. I left, hoping they would eventually figure it out.

The Arkansas River Valley is full of ranches, and the fences keep in the cattle as well as separate one ranch from another. In Meeker Park, if there were cattle ranches at one time, there are none now, yet there are wire fences everywhere. A lot of the fences go straight up the hill among pines trees and over boulders, places where cattle are not likely to frequent. So I have to think these fences were installed merely to declare that this is where my property ends and yours begins. I guess it’s important to maintain our separateness, to establish what is ours and what you can’t have, lest you try to take what is mine.

My neighbor has since replaced his barbed wire fence with a wooden fence that is much more attractive and easier for animals to cross without hurting themselves. In fact, the chickarees (gray squirrels), in particular, use the wooden fences (above, photo taken last summer) as highways; it’s easier than having to slog through the snow.  On my walks around Meeker Park, I’m drawn to the wooden fences, which frame the landscape in unexpected ways.

A lot of them are falling down, becoming part of the landscape, perhaps as their reason for existing disappears—fewer horses or cattle to keep penned up—or maybe people found it too difficult to maintain, especially with no reason to keep them up. It would be wonderful if the wire fences similarly disintegrated over time, leaving a landscape with no boundaries—open and friendly to both humans and wildlife. 

Fun With Snow

Another half foot of snow, at least, fell at the cabin last week, enough that I had to shovel out part of the driveway before I could get my car in. On the front deck huge piles of snow had fallen from the roof, while the back deck, which is more protected from winds, had at least a foot of snow. I don’t mind the shoveling; in fact, I’ll take any excuse to be out in the snow.

I love the snow, especially when it’s fresh, before it gets windblown and dirty. When the sun is out, the combination of warmth from the sun mixing with the cold and moisture seeping up from the snow is invigorating. Snowshoeing in Glacier Gorge in Rocky Mountain National Park last week, I never wanted to stop. Coming back down, I got off the path and plowed through the deep snow, feeling like a kid again, breaking through this soft, yielding material that feels like nothing else. It’s like getting permission to have fun. I’ve noticed that when adults suddenly find themselves in snow, they start making snowballs or throw themselves down into the soft stuff to make snow angels.

I like how the snow changes the landscape, exaggerating the shapes underneath it, so they become something else, almost something humorous, like the wooden chair next to the shed (below), which looks a little pregnant with the new snow. The snow enlarges and softens boulders, making the hard outlines of the rock into something totally different—soft with voluptuous curves. It dresses up the pine trees and turns the Bill Waite cabin across from my cabin into a gingerbread house. It softly distorts the straight outlines of the fences (left) and creates white baubles in the aspen trees. On the creek, it etches the open circles of water in blue and white.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw the Martin Scorsese movie, Hugo, and I loved the scenes of Paris at night covered in snow. With the 3-D effects, the snow comes drifting out into the audience, and you remember how beautiful falling snow is, how it’s been celebrated in art, in movies, in Christmas cards, in advertisements for Coca-Cola. And then I remember how, almost anytime in Colorado in winter, I can just walk outside and experience it. Aren’t I lucky.