Cabin Journal

Learning to Breathe Again

I was in a place last week many people consider paradise:  San Diego has temperatures averaging 70, sunny and dry days, light breezes to ruffle the palm trees, the Pacific Ocean  right outside your door. At the house my family and I rented, we could sit outside and eat, admire the pink flowering bushes, the brightly colored hummingbirds, the shimmering turquoise blue of the swimming pool. For our meals, we picked lemons off the tree in the backyard. Every morning I woke to exotic bird cries.

Of course, there’s a downside to paradise because everyone wants to live here.  The roads are clogged, as are the beaches. It felt like we spent most of our time sitting in traffic, endless bumper to bumper cars. This was complicated by the fact that our group of six necessitated two cars and constant communication on our cell phones: make sure you turn here, did you miss the signs for the highway? You’ll have to go back. We’ll pull over and wait for you.

Even harder was navigating the difficulties of six people with different ideas about the best activity, best route and what to eat for lunch. By the time I got home, I had too much of driving, never having enough time,  negotiating our plans endlessly each day, never being able to find a parking spot, everything taking three times longer than it should. And when I got home, I had deadlines to make. After a few days, my mind rebelled. I didn’t want to do anything that I was supposed to do.

So I headed to the cabin, and as soon as I saw the buff-colored granite rocks of the St. Vrain Canyon, I could feel myself breathe again. Traveling the 15 miles or so through these steep rock walls, I saw only four other cars.  At the cabin, all was quiet except for the birds, a few new springtime cries, and the drip of the melting snow off the roof. When I sat to meditate, I saw a coyote trotting down the road. When I went for a walk, it felt like the world had been vacated. I saw no one, not even a car, and heard not a voice, only the barking of a distant dog.

March and April are not beautiful months up here. The still huge piles of snow have become crusty, pocketed, lost their luster. Where the snow is melted, the grass is brown and matted. The landscape is various shades of brown, with dark green thrown in for variety. It’s a far cry from San Diego’s pink bougainvillea, lush green lawns and the sparkling turquoise of the ocean. Instead of pelicans flying low over the water, Stellar’s jays squawk at me.

But at the cabin I can hear myself think, slow down to the pace of the water dripping from the roof, open myself to the sun filling the valley every morning and have a wordless conversation with the rabbit I surprised behind the back deck, its nose twitching madly.

I’ve been to paradise and back, and I’m glad to be home.

 

 

How the Mighty Have Fallen

I’ve never seen a giant cottonwood fall, only seen the aftermath, but it must have been a crash that shook the earth, awoke all the birds in the middle of the night, sent the owl flying off to find another roost. When I’ve come across them, the trunks are wrenched from the roots, the branches still dangling in the air, the massive tree, helpless, like an old warrior, lying defeated in the fields.

There is something ignominious and sad about the trees’ fall from grace, like seeing a beached whale, out of its element, and doomed.  But, like the whale, it’s an opportunity to view up close something that has remained aloof, too far and inaccessible to embrace. It’s only when they’re down, on the same level with us mere mortals, that we realize their massiveness and complex architecture.

Spread out on the ground, where they’ve succumbed finally to gravity, you can see how their branches aligned themselves, spreading out from the main trunk of the tree. With the strong winds we get around Estes Park and Allenspark, there’s no shortage of downed pine trees, their roots brought to light from underground, easily yanked from this rocky ground that gives way easily. The exposed roots are massive—sometimes four feet across— and tough, still grasping rocks that failed to hold the tree up against the winds.

Last spring, after a week of heavy winds, one of my favorite trees near the cabin, a huge, gnarled ponderosa that was twisted in so many ways it was like a signpost pointing in 10 directions, as if to confuse the traveler, came down, and I felt wrenched in as many ways seeing it lying there.

It’s not just winds but water. After our September floods, whole groves of ponderosas were ripped from their roots and carried downstream.  It breaks my heart every time I drive by and see these massive trees lying sideways on the ground or caught cross-wise in the branches of other trees.

Even the aspens, which shelter together for protection and are so much lower to the ground than the pines, are not immune from the forces of wind or gravity, often pulled down hillsides by land- or snowslides.  I’ve seen a whole hillside of aspen trunks, their barks peeling, lying like bones in parallel formation.

After years of  wind, snow, rain and sun, the old ones are reduced to their bare essentials. Stripped bare of leaves, needles and bark, the cottonwoods are bleached white, the pine trees mellow into rich hues of red and brown, and the aspens a mottled white and tan. Their trunks are etched with the paths of long-gone insects, their footprints incised in the bark, like some illegible hieroglypics.

With their broad trunks, the cottonwoods and pines invite me to sit down, on their smooth surface, or curl up against the trunk and offer myself up to the sun, enjoy solace and protection in their solidity and warmth. It’s not just me. Rabbits, mice, coyote and foxes find shelter and build nests in the carcasses of these trees.

Sometimes, even after the trunk has been brought down, is laying seemingly dead, there may be enough roots to keep one branch or limb going, life still surging through this complex and amazing being.