Cabin Journal

Farewell to a Fellow Traveler

I only talked to Tom a few times but I feel like I knew him well. His imprint is all over my cabin, which he and LaVerne lived in for 15 years.

It was Tom who put in the luxury outhouse: wood-paneled with not only a lamp to read by but a small heater; why be uncomfortable if you didn’t have to? He was apparently enamored by outhouses, and in the collection of books they left behind was one that made me laugh until I cried, as it must have affected Tom: “Gems of American Architecture,” a spoof of an outhouse catalog, possibly from the 1930s or 1940s, complete with drawings (below). (For example, the “Fourposter” is described: “By replacing the conventional hole-equipped seats with a log over which the patrons may hang, we have reached the utmost in efficiency.”)

Tom and LaVerne made this cabin the livable place it is: putting in a compost toilet (even though Tom continued to use the outhouse), a wood-burning stove, and front and back decks (top) that offer the best vantage to absorb this landscape; and tearing down the wall between the kitchen and living room to open up this tiny cabin a bit more.

So many things in the cabin work well because of his efforts: small things, like the backstopper for the  back door, so it doesn’t hit the kitchen cabinets; hooks on which to hang pots and pans.

The old bottles Tom and LaVerne collected when they took their young family on drives up Rampart Range Road still decorate the bookshelves, as do the bird nests they found. Tom’s books, from when he was a librarian at Smiley Junior High in Denver, still sit on the shelves: nature classics like Watchers at the Pond by Franklin Russell and Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thompson Seton.

A  nature lover who put up bird houses all over the property (several of which are still  used by house wrens), Tom also kept a written log over a nine-year span of when he saw the first flowers, birds and animals,. In 1992, the first pasqueflower didn’t emerge until May 10, while the year before it was April 17. (They were late again this year, buried under May snows until about May 23.) In 1994, he spotted his first bluebird on April 3 and his first wren on May 11.

It was Tom who hung on the outside of the shed various historic mining implements that he and his family found on their excursions into the mountains: a huge metal wheel (above), the thick metal top to an old water main, a rusted wrench, what looks like maybe an animal trap, and items I’ve never been able to identify.

Last December, Tom lost his battle with Parkinson’s, but his spirit remains at the cabin. I can’t help but feel that he and LaVerne passed on to me—someone who didn’t discover the cabin until four years after they left—their love of this place, evident in every loving detail in this house.  Rest in peace, Tom.

 

Through the Lens of Time

Hiking one of my favorite mountain trails this week, I envied the younger people who could bound up the trail with no problem, while I laboriously climbed this steep hill covered with loose rocks. I also envied the fact that some of them would be seeing this beautiful place for the first time. I remember when I first stumbled upon the high meadow full of purple asters and golden grasses, where the forest finally opens up to a view of Arapahoe Pass and the gray granite peaks (above). I was overwhelmed; it was a gift I hadn’t expected.

And yet I see landscapes now not visible to those younger hikers, because I’ve been hiking this trail for some 35 years, sometimes twice a summer; in the winters, when there’s enough snow I’ve skied up the road. This trail is layered with all the other times I’ve hiked it; image upon image, memories stacked up. It’s like looking through a prism, seeing not one landscape but 10.

When I see the waterfall that spills over the rocks, I remember the first time I saw it, after one of my college roommates urged me to get up here; I see it in its springtime fullness, obscuring the rocks that now lie exposed in summer, and in winter when it’s buried under snow, and in fall when the aspens on the hills above the falls illuminate the rock walls.

I’ve felt such joy on this trail that even during those times when life has felt heavy, seeing the hillside of flowers and aspens and, the water slowly carving out the rocks  has lifted my spirits, taken my spirit to places I forgot I could reach.

But there’s a lot of sadness, too. I’ve seen changes over the years that have made me want to cry: pine trees felled by the pine beetle and now littering the hillsides; in the high meadow, three ancient bristlecone pines have died since the time I started hiking—trees a thousand years old gone in the 30 years since I’ve been coming up here; the streams, once so clear, have rocks covered with green algae; and most of the aspens in my favorite grove at the bottom of the steep rocky hill are now pale brown skeletons.

Even the trail has changed. The first part of the jeep road I once hiked is now flooded, after beavers dammed the creek, and the new trail now goes through the woods. It’s lovely in the dark woods, but a different feeling from being out in the open.

But as long as I can, I’ll still keep climbing up, past the old cabin now boarded up, over the creek that jeeps once forded, up the steep, rocky hill and past the waterfall. On top the meadow will be waiting.