Cabin Journal

Surprise!

After the snowstorm in Boulder last week, I went up to the cabin not knowing what to expect. At 8,500 feet, I was greeted by at least three feet of snow and a scene that should be on my Christmas card—snow draped on the trees and fenceposts, covering roofs, piled on chairs and the picnic table. On the ground was a pristine blanket of snow, disturbed only by the tracks of animals. Adding a nice touch was snow lightly falling, glistening in the sun that had come out. But this was April 23, not December.

I saw a neighbor who told me the area had gotten six feet of snow in the last month, more snow than we had gotten all winter, as much snow as we get in a “normal” winter. But is there anything like normal anymore when December is warm enough to sit on the back deck, while April delivers walloping snowstorms, one after the other?

So miracles do happen, it turns out. All during this dry winter, every time we got a few inches of snow, hopes were raised that it would be enough to refill the reservoirs, dampen expected forest fires this summer and end water restrictions. And each time the hydrologists and water managers were always quoted as saying something like “we need at least six feet of snow” to end the drought.  How could we get six feet of snow in the remaining month or so of the snow season? It seemed impossible.

So I have to eat my words. And yet the effects of climate change—this unpredictable weather—is not something to cheer about. Low water on the Mississippi last winter turns into flood conditions in spring; farmers lamenting dry fields all winter now complain that it’s too muddy to plant. But closer to home, birds such as robins and blue jays died because their food source, insects, were killed in the freezing temperatures that accompanied the cold. Many of our fruit trees won’t have their expected huge blooms. At the cabin, the gophers, which I never see, only their mounds, have had to crawl out of the ground and deep snow to the surface, exposing themselves to predators. Animals and plants expect a certain schedule to nature, and when it is disrupted, sometimes they can’t adapt fast enough.

We can turn on the heat, put on an extra layer of clothing. I can even delight in this beautiful, pristine landscape, snowshoeing in unexpected snow. But the natural world is dependent on more regular seasons, and I hate to see it suffer.

A Dream Come True

 

This month it’s been five years since I first laid eyes on my cabin.  That day was  unpromising and gray with a somber cloud layer blocking the full sunlight. April is the most mundane month in the mountains. The snow has either disappeared entirely or hangs on in mud-encrusted patches, exposing a barren landscape that is a kind of raw brown that makes you ache for something green.

I had been searching for a cabin in the mountains for probably five years but every time I talked to a realtor, the prices were still out of my range. But that spring, a few cabins were finally affordable, and I had been driving around Allenspark and checking them out (with the help of my realtor and friend Shoney, to whom I owe a great debt). Most were either too plain, too cramped, too dark, or too deep into the woods with no views.

I think unconsciously I was trying to refind the Wisconsin cabin of my childhood where I had spent a few weeks every summer with my family, a place where I first discovered a deep love of nature (Thunder Lake, left). As a child, it was a place I loved more than anything, where I felt more at home than my family’s suburban house outside of Chicago.

When I first peeked inside the window of this small cabin in Meeker Park, I saw the same knotty-pine walls of the Wisconsin cabin, the same large stone fireplace and same intimate space—familiar and endearing. It wasn’t until I came back a few days later with Shoney and followed her lead  down the road that I realized right above me was Mount Meeker, looming, powerful and enticing.

The thing about dreams is that you’re always afraid they’ll never measure up to reality. Buying a cabin is not an impulsive act; if it doesn’t work out you can’t just walk away from it and decide you’ll try something else. When it came time to make a bid on the cabin, I got cold feet. What was I doing? My sister gave me the best advice: Imagine your life without the cabin. And when I did, it felt empty, disappointing, like something was missing.

How can something be missing that you don’t even know exists? Yet every year at this cabin has revealed something new. Even though I had hiked in the Colorado mountains for more than 30 years, living here, even part time, has shown me things I wasn’t aware of: like the  pollen released every June from the ponderosas—a green cloud almost smothering the landscape, or the frogs I hear every spring and the haunting sound of the screech owl across the valley. It’s being here through the night and able to stand on the deck and stare up at the countless stars in a black sky, framed through the tips of the poderosas, and feel like you’re touching infinity.

 Here, I’m immersed in nature, not just a day visitor, but one with a front-row seat to unfolding nature: black bears, moose and elk ambling down the road, a bobcat on my front porch, hummingbirds coming to the feeder; pasqueflowers emerging in April (above).

More than that, I didn’t know that I would find a place where my heart could settle, that in this place of peace and beauty, away from the distractions of the world, I could finally settle down with myself, become aware of parts of myself I had long ago buried, and even resurrect them, bring them to the light.

I followed my dream, but I had no idea it would take me so far.

 

Going Deep

At the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit at the Denver Art Museum last week, I was struck by how her paintings of northern New Mexico looked nothing like the photos of the same places, as shown in the short movie about her life. Of course, great artists take a subject as their own and translate it into something very different from what the ordinary person notices (see Picasso). But O’Keeffe gave these hills a power I’ve never felt, even when in New Mexico and admiring the sculptural and otherwordly landscape of almost barren hills, dotted by a few junipers.

In one painting, she portrayed the gray and black hills near her home in Abiqui as waves of black and gray forms descending to a silver line that coursed through these almost abstract shapes. She took a simple landscape and transformed it into something powerful, something deriving from her own place of courage.

But this painting also comes from more than 30 years of becoming intimate with this landscape. This is not a painting you could create in one day or even a week of visiting New Mexico. You would have to get to know this landscape very well before you could paint it with that depth and power. You would have to sit with your sketchbook or easel in front of these red and russet and gray and black hills day after day, wake up every morning to the light on the hills and go to bed every night feeling their presence.

Every day your connection to this landscape would grow more intense and deep. Every day you would see things you never saw before as you slowly absorb the energy of the hills, the rocks, the sky. After a while the landscape becomes part of you, and what you translate onto the canvas is part landscape and part you.

It will soon be five years since I bought my cabin in Meeker Park, and I get to know the landscape more intimately with each passing week. I see something I’ve never seen before: a cabin tucked in the woods, a certain light on the creek, the shadow of a tree on a boulder, the color of the lichen on a rock. Over time, the landscape has slowly gotten filled in. I’ve followed small ravines up the hills, discovered new groves of aspens, new bends in the creek, experienced every season of the year.

But it’s more than that. It’s as if the accumulation of every moment I’ve been here is experienced in the present moment, so looking at Mount Meeker today I can see the mountain in all its moods and in every season. It’s like O’Keeffe’s layers of hills—memories and experiences piled on top of each other and coursing through me like a river.