Cabin Journal

Too Hot for Comfort

In Rocky Mountain National Park this week the signs of early spring were everywhere. The ranger at the entrance station excitedly told us he had seen bluebirds and woodpeckers and even a butterfly. My friend and I told him we had just passed a herd of deer, some of which were sitting in the shade of the pine trees, as if the March sun was already too warm.

On the trail to Dream Lake (above), despite the presence of 42 inches of snow (according to the ranger), people were hiking up the slush/snow-covered trail in shorts and T-shirts in this 50-something degree day. We ran into a photographer who had been taking photos of and on Haiyaha Lake and suddenly found his feet sinking in the lake. He had been taking pictures in the park for 25 years, and never had the high alpine lakes started melting this early.  For the first time, he was seeing robins who stayed here through winter rather than migrating to warmer places.

On the trail, there was almost a spirit of revelry, hikers greeting each other with smiles.  And how could you not be happy on such a day: the warmth, mingling with the coolness of the snow under the vastness of the shockingly blue sky.

Yet there’s a disturbing undercurrent, a feeling that things are not right, that we have altered the climate in ways that could prove unalterable. Over thousands of years, animals and plants adjusted to nature’s dependable seasons, but that calibration is being sundered now, as warming temperatures produce earlier flowering seasons and food that arrives at the wrong time.

To sit here on a March day in my cabin and have the windows open, so I can feel the breeze and the sun is wonderful. But I rather have the snow we usually get in March, which means the streams and reservoirs would be full in summer, the fish will have enough water in the streams to survive and there will be enough berries for the bears to eat in the fall.

The nature photographer we met on the trail to Dream Lake said he would give up 20 years of his life to make nature right again. I feel just as passionate, that I would be willing to put my life on the line to save the planet, to keep the glaciers and icecaps frozen, to save the polar bears from drowning in oceans where ice floes have melted. But my life is insignificant compared to the massive forces of progress and greed that ravage the environment in pursuit of cheap food, gas, and wood, among other things. 

I want nature back: the snow that we used to get every March; the flowers and fruit tree blossoms that didn’t emerge until April; the time when we didn’t have forest fires in March. Is it too late?

Learning from the Trees

Last week’s warm spell, with temperatures in the 50s, suddenly revealed what’s been hidden for these last three months. For the first time since December, I can see what was underneath the piles of snow. The solar driveway lights, which were buried up to their tops, giving off a strange glow in the snow at night, now shed full light.  The trash that got blown into the yard last November and was forgotten about is now available for me to clean up: cardboard and beetle kill patches from the trees. The path to the water pump is clear, and the benches for the picnic table in the back have emerged from the once four feet of snow.

I can see where the rocks from last summer’s campfire ended up after the snowplow driver inadvertently pushed them to the back of the driveway last December. Most gloriously, I can see and smell the earth, still brown and covered with needles and flattened grasses, but breathing.

This winter, when I went for my walks around Meeker Park, it was always with difficulty. As much as I love the snow, climbing up the hills in snow up to my knees was hard work, especially when it was blizzarding. But with the snow now melted from the south-facing hillsides, I feel like I’m bounding up the hill, unencumbered, as if my feet suddenly got lighter.

I’m hearing more bird calls, and I saw my first bluebird this week. Unexpectedly, there was a fish swimming in Cabin Creek where the snow still lingered around the edges of a small pool.  The top half of Mount Meeker is already stripped of snow, its wide flanks open to the sun, but its lower half still has slivers of snow, especially in the wide gullies that run down its side.

Near the creek, I found a small pine tree growing from a boulder (above)—a seemingly improbable place to take hold. I’ve seen this before, with even fairly tall trees existing on the water that collects in the cracks that the tree’s roots have managed to force open in the hard granite.

None of us knows at birth where we will land: in loose soil nurtured by decaying pine cones and needles, on top of a ridge where strong winds try to constantly pull us down, or wedged in a granite boulder.

We all land someplace different, and we work with what we’ve been given. Some of us will have easy lives and others will struggle. The trees don’t complain but go about working to survive. They inspire me.  All I can do is hope that this small promise of a tree will grow strong.

Life Without Animals

 

For the past two weeks, I haven’t seen any rabbits at the cabin. Because I see so few animals in the winter, I miss the rabbits’ presence. In the winter, it’s just the chickarees and rabbits that stick it out, while the ground squirrels and chipmunks hibernate.

The chickarees keep me entertained with their rushing to and fro, while the rabbits have a sweetness and calmness that belie their predicament. I read recently that scientists studying hares in the northern Rockies found the animals live on average one year. Being on the bottom of the food chain makes for a short life. Have all the rabbits here been eaten or starved to death in a winter where the snow has remained on the ground since October?

I miss them; they’ve kept me company all winter long. I know their deaths are part of the natural process, but around the globe animals are disappearing at alarming rates due to less natural forces—loss of habitat and climate change, among other reasons.

What would the world be like if we lost our wild animals?  Strictly speaking, we don’t need wildlife. Most humans, aside from some indigenous people, live in a totally domesticated world that provides all our biological needs: water, food, shelter.

And yet I think we emotionally need wildlife; it takes us out of ourselves and into another world that is different than our own. People are drawn to wild animals. You can see that every autumn, when thousands come to Rocky Mountain National Park to see and hear the elk bugling. Last summer, while hiking in the park, a friend and I discovered a moose standing in a pond right off the trail (top), and within a few minutes a crowd had formed, all of us whispering excitedly to each other, as if something unbelievable had descended from the heavens.

Maybe we’re drawn to things that are wild because we have lost our wildness and want to rekindle that extinguished part of ourselves. Or maybe we’re drawn to wild animals because their lives are so much closer to the edge than ours. For most of us, life is predictable, while most wild animals struggle daily to eat or be eaten. So when we cross paths with an elk or bald eagle or even rabbit, we can vicariously feel the thrill of that other existence (without being eaten).

A couple of weeks ago, I was excited to see a red fox in my backyard in Boulder (above), even though it could have eaten the birds and squirrels that I tempt with bird seed. But it was something from the other side of the fence, from the open space beyond my suburban yard and too tamed life. If we lost the wild animals, it means we lost whatever shreds of wilderness are left. And that would mean that there would be no chance of existence beyond our everyday and increasingly programmed lives.

An Agreeable Day

 

When I came to the cabin this week, I was hoping for spring but got blasted by winter. More 50-60 mph winds were whipping up the snow, forming small tornadoes, and obscuring the landscape in total white-outs, as if a giant hand was smearing the landscape in white.

In this wind and cold, with snow still piled high, not many animals were out. The only animals I saw were the chickarees (gray squirrels) and Stellar’s jays. The chickarees sprint across the snow as if it would collapse any minute, and I wonder how they know whether it’s safe. In soft snow, surely they would drown, while this tough snow, constructed of weeks of thawing and then freezing, with some additional blowing, can even hold me up.

I worked all morning and then went out into the blizzard, desperate for some exercise, after sitting and staring at my computer screen all morning. It felt like a full-force assault by the wind and snow, as I struggled with every step, especially on the icy parts of the road. It felt like nature was trying to shake me down, wanted to force me to crawl into a hole or behind a big boulder or under one of the dancing pines. To stand up to it felt like some act of courage or craziness. But there’s a beauty to it also, especially in the whirlpools of snow, which danced across the landscape like phantoms.

  That night, watching the flames in the wood-burning stove, I was happy to discover a kindred spirit. For almost a year now I’ve been reading from the journal entries of Henry David Thoreau, dipping into them while I’m at the cabin, letting myself read only a few pages per visit, as if they were treats, and if I ate too many, the pleasure would be gone too quickly.

On a January day, he writes:

“even in a bleak and, to most, cheerless day, like this, when a villager would be thinking of his inn, I come to myself, I once more feel. . .  that cold and solitude are friends of mine. . . .  I am aware that most of my neighbors would think it a hardship to be compelled to linger here one hour, especially this bleak day, and yet I receive this sweet and ineffable compensation for it. It is the most agreeable thing I do.”

On a day like yesterday, most sane people would stay inside, curl up with a good book or TV show. Yet being outside in the mountains, even in these strong and cold winds, is one of the most agreeable days I can have.