Cabin Journal

The Wisdom of Animals

Whenever I start to despair about the state of nature, I learn to be cheerful by watching the animals. Every time I glance up at the hillside across the valley and see that more of the pine trees are turning reddish-brown, killed by the pine beetle, or walk through the woods and see more trees dying, or see that the grasses have died already, that the aspen leaves look like they’re wilting, or see the hazy skies from this summer’s forest fires, I start to sink into some black mood, feeling that we’ve unleashed some force, with climate change, like opening Pandora’s box, something that we can never stuff back.

And then I notice the ground squirrels chasing each other through the grasses; the new chickaree, still bright-eyed, looking at me, trying to figure out what or who I am and how I fit into this otherwise known world; see the hummingbirds flying straight up and then plunging back down; the  hairy woodpecker climbing the dead aspen, rapping on the wood and looking for insects. Or the rabbits, who on average live for only a year—being on the bottom of the mammalian food chain—and yet bound with such joy and eat tufts of grass with such comical looks on their faces that I can’t help from laughing.

Nor are the birds encumbered by thoughts of the world ending but do what they always did: comb the trees for insects and the thistles for seeds, and sing as lustily as ever.  On the ground, the chipmunks and ground squirrels run with abandon, as if they had not a care in the world. Although now the chickarees, the only squirrel that doesn’t hibernate, are busy, with a fierce self-determination, rounding up pine cones and taking them to some secret stash to feed on once the snows come.

Nature takes what it’s given, doesn’t question it, doesn’t whine, doesn’t throw dramatic fits about the end of the world. So, like the animals, I will be hopeful. I will be content with what I have—this day, this sky, these trees blowing so gently in the wind, these animals—especially these animals.

Farewell, my Lovely Hummers

 

Already the temperatures are getting cooler at the cabin, especially at night, reaching the low 40s. And with the cooler weather, the hummingbirds are leaving, along with many of the summer residents.  While the summer people are returning to Iowa, Kansas, Illinois and Nebraska, the hummingbirds are heading for Central America. And, while most human travelers will speed back to their homes in the comfort of their cars, ruby-throated hummingbirds, our most common hummer in Meeker Park, will take 18 to 22 hours to cross the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of about 500 miles.

These birds that we love to watch all summer, as they drink from our feeders and zip around in their furiously fast flights, which we view as cute and endearing, are something to be admired for their endurance flights, which many don’t survive. Their journey across the country and a huge body of water seem an Olympian feat more impressive than swimming 200 meters in 2 minutes or running 100 meters in 9.5 minutes. Amazingly, the birds will return next May to not only the same place but to the same feeders.

The birds leave us as the days get shorter and their food supply—nectar and insects—start to disappear. The sun is setting earlier every day now, too. One day a week ago it was at 7:15 p.m., the next night at 7. By November, it will be dipping below Mount Meeker at 4.

And yet we might want to say good riddance to this summer. Between the fires in Colorado earlier this summer and the fires from the northwest in August, the skies have been hazy. Only for a few weeks did we see the brilliant blue sky that Colorado is known for.

The weather has been hotter than normal, and there has been less rain, so the flowers bloomed later and there were fewer. In my yard, only one or two columbines bloomed this year and they were smaller than usual. Even the purple asters, sometimes filling the fields in the bottom of the valley, were few and far between. If seemed like if you blinked, you missed them.

So goodbye summer and godspeed to you, hummingbirds. May the wind be at your back.

In the Green of the Moment

What a difference a couple of thousand feet make.

Driving up to the cabin this week, the fields down on the plains were brown, the grass short with patches of dirt showing through, everything parched from weeks of no rain. The trees were still leafed out, but they drooped sadly, as if ready to give up in this dry, hot summer.

But once I got up above the South St. Vrain Canyon, where the mountains delineate this valley, it was a different world. Up here, amazingly, it felt like spring, the grasses green and tall, waving in the wind, the aspens looking vigorous, everything looking fresh. It was a different world, two thousand feet higher and one that had gotten rain. It was a little like stumbling upon paradise when the rest of the world was going to hell.  

Of course, it works the other way, too. When it’s spring on the plains, the trees and grasses sporting a shiny lime green, it’s still winter up here, still brown. And by the time the trees are turning red and gold on the plains, snow is starting to fall at the cabin.

So for now, all I can do is enjoy this last bit of summer up here. All across the valley, the potentillas (also known as cinquefoil left) are blooming, bushes with bright yellow flowers, while the angelica are starting to fade, although their stems turn a dark maroon. I find the angelica in the marshy areas, floating above the sea of waving green grasses.

One evening I sat on the porch to watch the last light, that hour before the sun goes behind Mount Meeker and the darkness returned. The hummingbirds whirred through the air, their small motors humming. They’re the last birds to settle down for the night, and I hear them until at least an hour after sunset in their insatiable quest for food.

With the air temperature a balmy 70 or so, the air felt silky. A slight wind made the aspen leaves tremble, while the wind chimes truck a single note, almost church-like, a note repeatedly calling the faithful, those of us who worship nature, to be here in this luscious present moment.

How the View from Above Is Different than the View from Below

A few weeks ago I hiked a trail I had never been on, although it was surrounded by trails and mountains that I had hiked many times, places that I thought I knew like the back of my hand. When I reached the top, with views in every direction, I had a hard time situating myself, could see familiar landmarks, but I was looking at them from a direction I had never seen before. It’s like looking at something upside down or backwards. (That’s Isabelle Lake, above, from below and the same lake, bottom, looking down on it from above).

To the south was the old Rollins Pass road, which I’ve traveled on in a jeep and which I’ve viewed from the valley below. There’s a trestle that hangs over the valley, one that was once used by trains but has now fallen apart. It’s a landmark, something for me to figure out where I am, but it took several minutes of coordinating all the other places in my viewscape to comprehend where I was in relation to all the other places I had been. It took me a while to realize that one of my favorite hikes was in the valley below, where I started at the old ghost town of Hessie and headed up to a meadow from which I could look south and upward and see the old trestle and the road.

I’ve been slightly disoriented lately, anyway, so I wasn’t sure I wanted my fixed landscape to be altered. I needed stability, one view that I could rely on. And yet I could see that there is no such thing, that every angle, whether from above or below, from south looking north or from west looking east, was different, made up of different planes of reality, like looking at a Cubist painting where the image is layered and your brain has to work to put all the layers together into something coherent.

And yet there was also a sense that my awareness of the world was getting larger, that it was encompassing new aspects of the landscape, folding them into my knowledge base. I just got more pieces of the puzzle, but the pieces, I’m starting to realize, are limitless. That’s both exciting and scary.