Cabin Journal

Getting Deeper into Unknown Territory

I’ve hiked all over this mountain valley, bushwacked along the creek and up the hills, discovered cabins hidden deep in  the woods, and found views of Meeker Park that I didn’t know. It’s been deeply satisfying, like putting the pieces of the puzzle together, so when enough pieces are joined, I can see more of the whole picture.

 But there’s always more to discover.

One of my favorite views looking up from my cabin is the rock cap on the mountain to the north—layers of carefully delineated shades of rose, gray and buff; it’s where the last light of the day hits. Because neighbors had sometimes referred to this mountain as part of the Twin Sisters formation, which I can see from Lily Lake, four or five miles down the road, I had always been puzzled by how it was connected to the rock face behind my cabin. Just a week ago, I finally pulled my car over on Hwy. 7, at a parking spot where I could traced the Twin Sisters formation back to where my cabin sat. Finally, I saw that “my” the rock face was the southeastern part of a series of three connected mountains.

Just this week my neighbor John gave me the name for it—Cabin Rock (below)—and showed me the route to the top: hiking through the woods to a low saddle and then going to the left, up a steep incline. I couldn’t be more thrilled. It’s not just having a name but making a connection, as if you’ve finally been introduced to someone you had long sought to meet.

We were hiking the hill to the south of Cabin Rock, heading to a place he referred to as “the rocks,” which would provide a view of Meeker Park, one I had never seen before. He has his own route up there, which follows the road for a while, and he knows the history of each cabin’s ownership, going back 30 years. One man who had a wife and children, and lived in one of the cities down in the “valley” for most of the year, came up every summer, pitched a tipi on his property and lived there for two months alone—the life of a mountain man—and then returned to his wife and children, presumably satisfied.

At some point, indistinguishable to me, John left the road and turned into an aspen grove, and we started heading in a different direction, through dense aspen forests, low-lying boggy areas where our boots sank into the dark muck, meadows full of golden banner, purple penstemons, lupine and wild iris, and around and over fallen trees. Around us, the clouds drifted in and out of the tall peaks, obscuring Mount Meeker and the other mountains.

Although it sometimes seemed we were lost in the woods, with no sign of the rocks, we finally came upon a road, where we saw indications of civilization—the remains of campfires, burnt logs and gray ashes, and, somewhat shocking, a gravesite on a hill: a heavy metal cross with only dates, no names—1975-2007—and Tibetan prayer flags hung above it. We finally saw the rocks up ahead and climbed to the top just in time to see Mount Meeker poking through clouds— unveiled.

Below us Meeker Park was displayed so well that I could trace the road that wound around the southern edge, see the pasture where the horses graze, the road I walk up to get to the pond, the field there greener than anything else around, the small houses dotting the valley bottom. To the southwest were the peaks of Wild Basin, still covered in snow, and to the northwest was Estes Cone. Surrounding us were the lower hills covered with what seemed like an impenetrable, almost monotonous covering of pine trees.

I had gotten views of the valley from other perches, but this hike had filled in some of the holes in my mental map. My image of the hillside and forest above the cabin is not so simple and general anymore. Now I know there are aspen groves, dense green meadows, small streams, old roads and horse trails, hidden ponds, even a gravesite. And the cabins aren’t just buildings but dwellings inhabited by people who loved this place as much as I do. The world becomes more complex, more layered, richer.

John told me that he once walked to Estes Park on the jeep road near the trail we were on, and when I later looked at a map, I could see how places that were separated in my mind, because they were on different roads, were all connected: the Enos Mills cabin on Hwy. 7 was just over the hill from where we were hiking, and Hwy. 36, the alternate route to Estes Park, could be reached by driving to the end of my road and hiking several miles. I could see that there was a center to all these places, and that I only had been on the edges. It’s like discovering that the world is not such a big place after all and that everything is connected.

There are still gaps in my mental map, still corners of this small universe to be explored. I think how satisfying it would be to know every inch of this landscape, to become more rooted in this earth, my feet sinking into the same muck as the aspen trees.

Cabin With a Different View

From our cabin on Orcas Island in Washington state, I can see the silver blue waters of the ocean, framed by fir trees that rise higher to the heavens than any tree in Colorado: cedars and Douglas firs—four times as wide as the ponderosa pine that abuts my Colorado cabin. I get dizzy trying to see to the tops, to where the bald eagles perch.

But it feels like something’s missing here, some key component of my life in Colorado, and it takes me a few days to figure it out. There’s almost no wind here. Orcas is protected from the strong ocean currents and winds by a series of islands that extend west and northward, toward the mainland of Canada.

At first, I miss the wind, the one in Colorado that stirs life constantly, chasing the tops of the trees and the fields of green grasses, disturbs the surfaces of ponds. Especially in the old-growth forests on this island, there’s an almost unnatural calm that takes some getting used to, as if some essential component of life was missing.

Hiking amid the towering Douglas firs and cedars, I can’t even find evidence of animal life, like the loud Bronx cheers I get from the gray squirrels in Colorado or the raucous crows that loudly announce the arrival of a coyote at my cabin. No hummingbirds buzzing in frantic pursuit of each other. In these damp, almost impenetrable forests, if I'm lucky I'll hear the distant tapping of a woodpecker on a tree or the lone cry of a hermit thrush piercing this silence.

Yet, the deeper I get into these dark forests, I start to feel the quiet and peace. Everything is covered in green, as if some ooze leaked out and froze everything in place: rocks and downed tree limbs. From up high, a pale green light is filtered through the tops of the firs and big-leafed maples, while the ground is covered with different shades of ferns.  Gradually, my heartbeat slows to the slight waving of the cedar branch, to the slight stirring of the fern frond. Life becomes measured at the pace of the slug that inches its way through the pine needles. What need is there for speed? These trees are thousands of years old. Time, they tell me, is nothing to be rushed, but something to be enjoyed, to be savored. 

After a few day of talking to the locals, I can see that the island residents have adapted themselves to the same measured pace. When we ask them where they go for diversion and supplies —what mainland city or other island to visit—they look at us with some incomprehension.  Once you’re here, there is no other place to go; this is where you want to be; there’s no reason to go anyplace else.

On an island only 57 square miles, with one grocery store, bank, hardware store and several restaurants and gift stores, and spotty Internet and cell phone service, that means slowing down your life to an almost unimaginable speed to those of us accustomed to the frenzied pace of modern life.

Indeed, after three days of probing every corner of this island and doing every activity offered (sailing, kayaking, canoeing, biplane riding), we finally realize we have everything we need at our ocean cabin. 

Every evening, as the sun slowly descends into the sea, the same parade of creatures passes by our beach cabana: families of geese, with the same squabbles every night; a solitary pigeon guillemot peering intently into the sea before diving in; the rounded heads of harbor seals poking up from the flat water. When a river otter hauls up on shore one evening with its catch of the day and proceeds to chow it down three feet from us, it’s almost more excitement than we can stand.

Even the waves are subdued, polite, rolling in to smack the shore with loud wet kisses, nothing like the storms I’ve seen on the California coast. Sunset lingers until 10, the reds and oranges stretching out into the sky, fading so slowly it seems that darkness will never come. As the sun goes down, I can see more clearly the serrated peaks of the mainland of Canada in the distance, with strings of lights along the shore.

 The waves uncurl through the pebbles on the beach, a hissing sound that gently unfolds up and down the beach. Slowly, slowly, I unwind.