Cabin Journal

Desperately Seeking Normal

Bit by bit the landscape is being put together again. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, where after the flood so many pieces were missing, bites out of the landscape, out of my life, some small, small huge.  I can see it piece by piece coming together to make a whole, although it will never be what it was.

When I walked down to Cabin Creek last week, the culvert that had been washed away two weeks ago had been replaced, making the main road out of Meeker Park suddenly accessible.

Last week in Boulder all the trails were closed because of flood damage. It’s been frustrating, because there’s no place to go except for city sidewalks. Later in the week, the city opened one trail by my house. When I hiked it, I thought, “My world is returning. Things are getting back to normal.”

Best of all, at the cabin this week, the sun had come out, the temperature was warm, and the aspen were just starting to turn gold (one to two weeks late, another sign of things not quite right). When I was stranded here two weeks ago, my place of refuge had suddenly become a place of discomfort and unease; with the roads out and the creeks flooded, the world had been set ajar, out of its natural order. But this week the world, the one I love, started to come back. Even my favorite pond (top) was saved, and the dragonflies were still active.

There are still pieces missing. As the creeks recede in Meeker Park, the damage is more obvious: creeks that have found new routes through the meadow and forests; side roads still obliterated by wide, still rushing creeks. In Rocky Mountain National Park early this week all the trails were closed, every single one, presumably from flood damage. Not even during the fires did they close the whole park down.

I want the world to return to what was familiar, to what is safe and stable, even while I know that change is one of the constants of life, that we can’t cling to the way things were. Yet I can’t help but feel that when the floods came and washed away whole canyons and hillsides, a part of me went with them. I lost places I love. They were a piece of me, part of my history. 

Those who have lost homes and their towns have suffered more, yet everyone here has lost familiar landscapes. At the same time, we’ve had to learn new ones—new routes through the mountains, new towns to go through. When I talked to people these days about the flood, I get a sense of unease, as if we’ve all gone through a trauma, the world ripped apart and changed so quickly.

At the cabin last week, I hiked up a once familiar road that now had four-feet deep craters in it (above) and up a trail that had been washed out in places. From the other side of the aspens I heard loud yelling from the meadow. I assumed it was people trying to clear the road so they could get their car out. But when I got high enough, I realized two people were trying to fly a kite. A  big red kite flying high above all the damaged roads, rechanneled creeks and ponds filled with mud—soaring against the impassive face of Mount Meeker.

 

Escape from My Cabin

Sometimes it takes a climate change event to really face the idea of impermanence.

I was at the cabin this week when the skies dumped at least nine inches of rain in two days.  Going out to check the damage in the morning, I found that the two creeks on either side of me had been transformed from small, friendly brooks three feet wide to turbulent, get-out-of-the-way-or I’ll-take-you-with-me brown rivers  30 feet across, spilling into the valley, up the hillside, taking out huge trees and many bushes (Cabin Creek, right, and Tahosa Creek, below). More devastating to the community here, the floods had removed the culvert over the main road, leaving a torrent of water that was uncrossable (two bottom photos). We were now effectively separated from those on the other side of the valley.

It rained again all night, while the ground grew more saturated, the water poured down the face of Mount Meeker and formed a hundred small rivulets down the hillsides, loosening whole forests and bringing down trees and boulders onto the highway.

After the phones stopped working those of us left in this small community—about 10 at that point, were effectively cut off from the rest of the world (there is no cell phone service, although those who had satellites could use email). When the sun came out on Friday, some of us ventured out and found that the only other road out of here was blocked, so we were effectively, maybe even officially, stranded.

At first, I had been annoyed. I had made careful plans to just come up here for a day and a half, check to see everything was OK (and, in fact, water was leaking into my ceiling and down into the living area). I had planned to be back by the next night, had work to do for the rest of the week. Maybe that was my first bump up against the realization that you can’t control life, no matter how hard you try to schedule everything just perfectly.

Most of the time I love being alone up here, but now it was forced. I couldn’t just get up and leave if I got depressed or anxious. Worse, most of the valley, with my favorite places to hike, was now closed off to  me, because of the now uncrossable creeks.

I had brought drinking water up only to last a few days, thinking that if I did run out, I could drive down to Allenspark, some five miles down the road, and fill up at the public springs. But I could no more get to Allenspark than across the country. Suddenly, my whole world had shrunk, with no escape. Always restless, I was now hemmed in by the forces of nature. Always my ally and refuge, it felt like nature had turned against me.

Of course, not just against me, but the whole Front Range of Colorado. It was only after I got home that I realized the extent of the disaster. We were “rescued” by the kindness of a nearby resident, who used his Bobcat to temporarily fix one of our closed roads, giving us access to the main road and a long route back home.

Back home, with access once again to newspapers, email and TV, I found out that a lot of people were still stranded, in towns like Jamestown and Lyons, where 15 inches of rain had torn apart homes and towns, left hundreds homeless with all roads blocked into town. I saw photos of people being evacuated by helicopter, able only to take what they could fit in backpacks, leaving their homes for who knows how long and for uncertain futures.

All the roads to the west, in the canyons that connect the plains to the mountains, that brought me to my cabin every week, are damaged, and it’s unclear when they will be reopened, probably months, maybe a year. It feels like a shift in the world, like something has broken.

The headline in the Denver Post said it perfectly: “Normal has changed.”

It’s too early to know whether this extreme weather was an “accident” of nature or related to climate change. But seeing whole landscapes gone or forever altered, I can’t help but wonder if the forces of nature have been unleashed by our extreme recklesness in using the resources of this planet.

My heart breaks. Over and over.

 

Fall Migration Starts

I ran into one of my neighbors on Labor Day, as a large, boisterous group went down the road. When I asked how he was doing, he looked glum. “I’ll be glad when Labor Day is over.” I knew what he meant. As much as I love summer up here, I’ll be glad when the weather turns cooler and the summer visitors and tourists start to pack up and disappear as surely as the aspen leaves from the trees.

Living here all year long (albeit, part time), I’ve come to prize the solitude and quiet, where the loudest noise is the wind through the pine trees. For most of the year, I can walk on the roads and see no one, take shortcuts through people’s property without intruding on their privacy.  I find out what cabins are down the road, where the road leads,  discover intimate aspen groves and spectacular rock formations, views I didn’t know existed.

But then starting in May, the summer troops  (many who own cabins) start descending, and it feels a little like being invaded. On my walks I’m seeing lines of horseback riders, groups of visitors out for walks, dogs running free and people wearing helmets riding on ATVs; and hearing loud music emanate from cabins. Except for the ATVs, I’m glad to see all these people enjoying this beautiful valley, but it doesn’t feel like the same place as it does the rest of the year. Maybe I see it differently because I lived through the winters, when 70-mph winds flattened the landscape into one big whiteout and the temperature dropped to 3 degrees. I know with certainty that these warm ripe days won’t last forever.

At the same time the human visitors are departing, a lot of animal transients are heading  for better climates. Last week, I counted one hummingbird among the willow bushes that were thronged all summer with the small irascible birds. Last week, I saw only one ground squirrel, and the swallows that criss-crossed the sky over the meadow all summer have headed for warmer places, as apparently have the bluebirds. Meanwhile, the yellow-rumped warblers are migrating through, minus their brilliant blue plumage. But new guests just arrived: A flock of 10 to 15 wild turkeys have been quietly munching their way through my yard, their heads down to look for food, not even seeing me sitting on the porch watching them.

In truth, we’re all visitors. Some of us get to spend more time here all year long, while some just drop in for a few months, but eventually we’ll all move on, and a new bunch of residents will take over. We’re all migrating through, on our way to a different place, hopefully one where the aspens stay green, the creeks sing and the hummingbirds dazzle forever.

Beyond Acceptance

It’s hard to go back to place I once loved so ferociously that I cried every time I left, a place that has changed over time in ways that have been wrenching. Thunder Lake is the original cabin, where I spent part of my childhood summers in what seemed to me then the utter wilderness of the north woods of Wisconsin.

When I went back last week to the family cabin, I was prepared to be disappointed. Almost all the original cabins around the lake, small and almost primitive (no showers and heated by fireplaces, such as the one below), have been replaced by big, modern houses. The newest one takes up almost the whole piece of property and imitates someone’s idea of a French provincial house with a stone patio.

These new residents ripped out the native vegetation and planted lawns (boosted by fertilizer that seeps into the spring-fed lake). Not only are many of the pine and birch trees and blueberry bushes gone, but the frogs have disappeared, as have  most of the chipmunks and birds.

Until this year, one house sat high on a hill above the lake, empty and remote, which I saw as a kind of white castle, unreachable, when I was growing up. Now it’s become a rental, and last week a large, noisy group had taken over the beach below the house, with country-and western-music as well as profanities spilling out across the blue water to reach us across the lake.

I sat on our pier and watched speedboats and a Jet-Ski make what seemed endless, pointless circles around the lake, a repetitious onslaught of noise, drowning out the sound of the birches in the wind.

But I knew I had to accept all these disturbances. The lake had changed; it wasn’t the remote, wild place it once was. There was no use wailing about losing something I loved. I would enjoy the lake on its own terms: take the kayak out in the morning when the lake was still calm and I could maybe see the loon floating on the water, and at night just before sunset, when only the big pontoon boats were out circling the lake. I would enjoy swimming in the clear blue waters. I would sit on the pier with my family and talk about the old days.  

And something unexpected happened. By the second day at the lake, I started to relax into this place, that relaxation that goes so deep you realize you forgot you could feel that way.  Without being aware of it, the lake’s softness took hold of me, and I became captivated again by the gentle breezes through the birch and pine trees, by the waves lapping against the sandy beach, by the rich smell of the pines and sandy soil, by the crystal blue waters.

In my own way, I had returned to Thunder Lake. Or it had returned to me.