Cabin Journal

Abundance of Riches

Last April, starved for some life and color after the muted tones of winter, I welcomed every bit of green, even if it was the kinnickinick  becoming a darker green than its more somber winter hue.

But now, all the flowers are blooming at once. In the meadow, the fields are carpeted with color: golden gaillardia, purple harebells, creamy angelica and wild parsley, lavender asters, white bistort, bushes of the yellow potentilla, wild pink roses, dark purple thistle and crimson penstemon—at least 50 different flowers.

So now my problem is being overwhelmed, wanting to sit down in the field and let the colors and smells wash over me. Either that or to become jaded, stop seeing it because it’s become so common. I think of the columbine growing in such profusion two weeks ago, and now it’s hard now to find even one; in my yard, there’s no evidence that it even existed.

And the grasses are coming into their own now, too. Whole hillside of one of my favorites: the needle and thread grass ( left), with silvery narrow threads that catch the sunlight and light up the whole hillside. In the meadows are the deeper greener grasses.

To see wildlife, all I need to do is sit at my cabin, and they parade by the deck. Two deer, young with shiny new tawny coats, quivering, listen for any sound (in this valley the deer are easily outnumbered by the coyote) before something scares them, and they bound off; a young rabbit, about half the size of a

grown one and too young to be wary of humans, sunbathes on the rock in front of the deck; and a young ground squirrel snacks on grass by the cement pavement by the water pump.

I spot something else in the grass, too long to be a ground squirrel or chipmunk, although the same golden fur, but with a long tail with a dark band toward the end: a short-tailed weasel (ermine), which I have never seen here before; it slithers low through the grass, checking chipmunk and ground squirrel holes in the ground and is out of sight before I know it.

There’s evidence of other animals. A drainpipe stashed alongside the cabin has been pulled out and somehow mutilated: flattened on one side and seemingly chewed or clawed on the other. My only conclusion is a bear trying to reach a small animal that took shelter inside.

The next day it rained, both the animals and me taking shelter while the world turned a monochrome gray. It felt good. 

A Fire Too Close to Home

Fires burning all over the West can be an abstract thing. At the same time we can feel horror and sympathy at all the homes burned, the thousands of acres of forest gone and the hundreds of people who lost their homes, the full power of fire’s destruction doesn’t hit home until we see for ourselves.

One of my favorite trails is Cub Lake (right) in Rocky Mountain National Park. All winter, I anticipate one of my first hikes through an aspen forest, when the trees start leafing out in June. The aspen groves below the lake are equally precious in fall, the last rush of gold before winter descends.

Last Octotober a fire started in the Fern Lake area, one drainage over from Cub Lake. I was in the park the day it started, hiking Deer Mountain, and could see the gray and pink smoke across the valley. The fire burned all winter and wasn’t officially contained until  three weeeks ago.

When I hiked the Cub Lake trail two weeks ago, I thought I might see some evidence of the fire but I wasn’t prepared to see one of my favorite landscapes forever altered. In the valley bottom, the willow bushes and aspens that bordered the trail are gone, so the valley is now wide open, full of grasses greener than I’ve ever seen and ponds that were previously hidden in the bushes.

As  a friend and I hiked farther up the valley, I started to see burnt ponderosas on the hillsides and then next to the trail the charred earth, still blackened. Among the charcoaled tree trunks, amazingly, green ferns were emerging (above), taking advantage of the rich nutrients released by the fire.

I hoped this was the worst of it, that once I got higher, I’d find the aspen forest I loved, with some of the tallest aspen on this side of the Continental Divide. Being in this hillside grove  of aspen never fails to make me happy: the light filtered through the green leaves, the small stream that makes its way through the aspen among wild rose bushes (left), the sounds of the leaves in the trees way high above me. Although one patch had been saved, it was now just a bit of green among the charred black stumps and black earth. Above that, a small campground and privy were destroyed.

At the least the lake will still be there, I comforted myself as I headed up through the blackened landscape, the smell of burnt wood pervasive. The lake was was still as blue as I remembered, with the same lily pads and yellow flowers, ducks circling through the pads, but the hillside across the lake had been burnt, the dead trees still standing, black and orange. As we tried to find a place to sit by the water’s edge, we were surrounded by burnt trees that had fallen, blocking our path.

Missing in action were the ground squirrels and chipmunks, the ones that would boldly jump on your pack or even lap trying to find a crumb fallen from your lunch. Gone were the stellar’s jays that waited in the trees for a piece of food.

I couldn’t wait to leave; not even the sight of the distant tall peaks, still partially covered in snow, could comfort me. I wanted to get away from this ugly place and the smell of smoke. It almost felt like a betrayal, a place I had depended on to make me happy now ugly, changed forever.

I know that my loss is nothing compared to those who have lost their homes. I know that losing one of my favorite landscapes is a good lesson in impermanence. I know that this fire is part of a natural cycle, albeit aided by global warming and the pine beetle. Eventually, the aspen will start filling in among the dead pines, followed by the ponderosas growing again on the hillsides. But not in my lifetime will I see the landscape return to what it was and what I loved.

Columbine Time

Among my favorite wildflowers, I  once ignored columbine; it was too gaudy, too popular, drew too much attention to itself. I prided myself on liking more more modest flowers, like the purple asters, with purple petals radiating from a yellow head. In contrast, the showy  blue columbine has five white flowers surrounding a yellow center, framed by five purple sepals, draped by five descending spurs. Who or what came up with that design? What in nature would appreciate such over-the-top beauty?

And yet over time they’ve won me over; how can a flower so complex and yet so delicate and fragile survive? Last week I was hiking a trail in Wild Basin, and the columbine were growing all over this dry hillside, a difficult place for these flowers that like moist places. Close to the trail, they could easily be crushed by a stray hoof or careless hiker from the caravans of horseback riders and Boy Scout troops that were on the trail that day. That anything of such complex beauty could survive the world seems a small miracle to me.

The calypso orchid (left) is another complex and showy flower, but it hides from the world, keeps to itself. If you want to see it, you have to actively look for it,  get down on your hands and knees to really appreciate this small flower.

In the hills west of Boulder, this has been a record year for wildflowers. Because of a late winter, spring flowers didn’t emerge until early summer, bumping up against flowers that didn’t start growing until the weather was warmer. So the waxy yellow flowers of the prickly pear cactus are emerging at the same time as the cow parsnip, while purple lupine share fields with the tall creamy yuccas.  

 But here in the mountains, where the growing season is later and shorter, the hot weather seems to have slowed or halted flowers’ growth. Only a few are emerging tentatively, which is why I have to admire the columbine’s gutsiness in taking on this harsh world.