Cabin Journal

Living Dangerously

I’ve been reading Paul Theroux’s book on traveling through Africa, Dark Star Safari. He’s not happy unless he’s in an uncomfortable situation: on a bus where the road is more like a track through sand, the truck is likely to break down any minute, and the area is known for marauding bands of militias who prey on people whose bus has broken down.

Myself, I’ve never been the kind of person who likes to willingly put herself in danger, and yet when I heard there would be 90-mph winds at my cabin, I didn’t hesitate to throw my computer and bag in the car and drive up there, with the wind pushing my car sideways on icy roads where blown snow had created drifts, obscuring where the road ended and the forest began.

I wanted to experience the strong winds, while hoping they didn’t bring the ponderosas down on the cabin. It’s like seeing nature when it’s stretched to its limits. 

At the cabin, all the trees were swaying, dancing to the rhythm of the wind, and I wished them well, fervently hoped they could hang on. Each pine tree is an instrument for the wind, which sets up a symphony through hundreds of trees, producing whooshes and roars that reach crescendos before the next lull.  

Inside, the cabin creaked and swayed, with gusts coming through the chimney, the old Coleman propane heater, and every crack in the house. I held my breath as I heard and felt the wind try to prop the roof off and kept my fingers crossed that the roofer knew what he was doing three years ago when he put on a metal roof.

Sitting at the table, I watched the wind drive the snow, creating small whirlpools of white dust all around the yard and on the hillside across the valley, where the white flakes spool across the line of dark pines. It felt like being under siege, like being attacked by a marauding army that comes at you from every direction: above and below, through the trees and under the house.

 Even the lulls between gusts were unsettling, waiting for the next one to hit. It blew all day and night, and when I woke up the next morning it was still blowing. Where does all this energy come from? What propels it? Doesn’t it ever get tired?

When I went out for my walk, I had to steady myself on the icy patches, as the winds tried to pull my legs out from under me. Mount Meeker and the surrounding peaks were hidden in the churning clouds of snow, although on the lower hills, the wind whipped up an occasional churning tornado of snow. When I walked back the wind had already erased my footprints.

As for birds, it’s the ravens that love the winds, as if they were a cushioned superhighway, a way to stay in the air forever without moving. Somehow the birds know how to ride the winds without being slammed to the ground, are able to keep their bodies in place so all they have to do is rest on the wind currents, hold steady, while the wind pulls at their feathers. I envy them this ability, wish I could float so serenely on the steady stream of gusts.

 

A Beautiful Blizzard

All winter long I’d been hoping to be at the cabin when it snowed; several times I arrived after a big snowstorm, with the sun out and the snow sparkling under a big blue sky. Last week, finally, I got to be in the middle of a good snowstorm.

When I arrived Tuesday, it was a warm day, with temperatures close to 50. But Wednesday morning, the temperatures started dropping, so at 10 a.m., it was only 16 degrees. The snow started falling lightly, but by the time I went out for a walk, around 10:30, it was coming down hard, and the roads had more snow than I anticipated, as if the plow driver had gotten stuck on the main roads and our minor dirt roads were a secondary consideration.

In the middle of a blizzard, everything becomes more difficult. Even wearing a heavy parka, I was cold, and my fingers started hurting after only 10 minutes or so. When I tried to take a picture of the swirling snow, my lens cap fell onto the road, and I had to scrounge around in the white flakes to find it. A bit farther up the road my camera batteries died, necessitating taking off my gloves to put in new batteries.

When I had looked forward to this snowstorm, I hadn’t thought about the cold, how the wind finds any crack in your clothing, leaving a gift of cold flakes on your neck or wrist. Or that cold hands are painful. I kept going up the road through the thick forest where the cabins were more hidden than usual. Even in the woods, the whipping snow was almost disorienting, as if the familiar cabins were distorted, so I couldn’t be sure of my bearings. The world had become blurred, so only the foreground stood out, like the red mailbox (above), a fixed bright object in a swirling world.

 More than usual, I felt exposed to the raw elements; no one else was out, not even a car humming down the road. At times like this, you think how easily you could disappear—a slip in the snow and how fast the snow would cover and obliterate you. There’s almost a cold fury at work here, one that you have to respect and be in awe of.

It seemed that in every direction I turned the wind was blasting me, spitting snow down my coat and into my ears—sometimes from the east and at other times from the northwest. Except for the magpie (brave or foolhardy?), I saw no animals. Everything and everyone else had taken cover under this winter onslaught, waiting for the snow to stop, the sun to reappear, and the world to settle back into something recognizable.

 

Appreciating Smaller, Gentler Landscapes

When I first came to Colorado, I was drawn to the high peaks and tundra, which seemed otherworldly to me, something wild and remote, untrammeled by humans. Any place else seemed boring. In those early years, I once hiked on a lower elevation trail, the Sandbeach Lake Trail in Wild Basin, and went only went a few miles before I decided it wasn’t nearly wild or interesting enough and turned around. But a few weeks ago I decided to give this trail another chance, this time with snowshoes, because it’s not far from my cabin and would be a quick and easy place to go.

In the intervening 30 years, apparently, I’ve lost some of my impatience for instant gratification, learned to appreciate other sides to nature—like the tall, majestic ponderosas on this trail, which not only shoot straight to the sky but are spread all over the ground, toppled by the high winds that hit this ridge from the west. (Last year, a hiker was killed on this trail by a falling tree, a reminder to be alert.) And while the trail doesn’t go above treeline, it does provide glorious views of the valley below, with the North St. Vrain running through willow bushes, as well as the hillside across the valley and the cirque of mountains to the west.

As I’ve gotten older, and perhaps under the influence of owning a cabin surrounded by aspens and ponderosas, and on the edge of an open meadow filled with grasses and flowers (in the summer), I’ve come to appreciate smaller and gentler landscapes.

One of my favorite walks in Meeker Park, especially in summer and fall, is along Tahosa Creek (top photo, taken last fall). There, different elements form a perfect small landscape: the creek rippling under the shade of the aspens, embroidered all around by tall green grasses (above photo, taken last summer), and backed by the hardness of the granite ridge on the other side. For a full sensual experience, throw in the soft yielding light, the quicksilver movement of the creek and aspen leaves, plus the sounds of the water running and the wind through the aspen leaves. In such a rich landscape, I want to sit quietly by the creek and not move again. There’s a sense of being protected here deep in the woods among the boulders and aspens, a different feeling than being on the tundra, exposed to the winds and sky.

I generally don’t like bushwhacking through the forest; it’s much easier to follow a trail, where the woods have been cleared. But I’ve found that following the creek puts me in a close, intimate contact with the woods, as I brush against trees, clamber over rocks, grab onto the trunk of a tree to steady myself on a rock. 

Last summer, I found a valley that I didn’t know existed, down the road from my cabin and up another road. In the valley bottom was the most perfect of small landscapes: an oval pond that reflected Mount Meeker, surrounded by aspens on one side and grasses on the other, while beyond the pond, the valley opened to Mount Meeker in the distance.

I still love the high mountains, still find it uplifting to stare at the broad, empty flanks of Mount Meeker and know that the mountain exists outside of the world of most human endeavors. But, increasingly, I’m happy to be looking up at it rather than climbing the mountain; I don’t have to be on top to enjoy the view.

My Neighborhood Walk

Although I have my usual walking route around Meeker Park, every week I see something different or in a way I’ve never seen it before. Last month, the sun was hitting the ridge on the west side of the valley, a rocky ridge where a few trees had taken hold among the rocks, silhouetted against the blank face of Mount Meeker (below). It was a view I had never noticed before, but I had arrived at just the day and time when the light was hitting the ridge. Another five minutes later or earlier, a different day, where the sun had moved just slightly, and I wouldn’t have noticed that view. But every day the light changes, and the landscape moves subtly from one season to the next. Or my mood is different, primed to see some things but not other things, ready to notice the clouds but not the cabins or the sky but not the ground.

Or one day a bird appears that I’ve never seen before. It’s colorful, with orange on its chest, like a robin, but smaller and speckled with striped wings. It’s practically right at my feet, on the ground pecking at something and doesn’t seem inclined to fly away when I try to take its picture. When I look it up in my bird guide, I discover it’s a rosy finch (in its winter plumage, bottom), which are somewhat common here. So why have I never noticed it before?

My weekly walk takes me from the valley bottom—with open fields, the creek, and  willow bushes—to up on the hillside, among the ponderosas and aspens, so I see the world from two directions and attitudes: that small, insignificant feeling you get looking up at the something larger—in this case, the mountains—and the opposite feeling of surveying your kingdom: the valley with the small ranch and cabins scattered along the edges, above the marshy areas where the willows grow and aspens form a border between the road and fields (top).

Along the way, I have my favorite spots, my totems to reconnect with, but also I’m curious about how the landscape has changed since I last saw it. Is the creek frozen yet? Or, in spring, are the aspens starting to leaf out?  How does Mount Meeker look with the new coat of snow? In April, I’ll look to see if the pasqueflowers that grow on the hill next to the road are starting to bloom, or if the mountain bluebirds have arrived in the field next to the ranch. If the two horses are out, I’ll pause to see if they notice me, sticking their heads up from the pasture.

There’s something to be said for knowing and loving one place well, for seeing it in every season, every mood, every change of weather. Because I know Meeker Park so well and because I love it so much, every change seems momentous.