Cabin Journal

Chaos Descends

It’s been at least a year now since I started discussing a septic system with Dan, the local contractor. There were many hurdles to cross: an engineering report, Dan’s own backlog of work, the county taking its time to approve a permit. Somewhere in there I let myself forget about it, lulled into thinking it would happen in some distant future, when it wouldn’t affect me.

But Dan came by last week to tell me they were starting up the next day. I tried to get him to hold off, at least until summer was over, when the thistles in the side yard had stopped flowering and the pine siskins weren’t pulling out shreds of seeds, when the hummingbirds were gone and wouldn’t be disturbed by all the noise, when autumn had reclaimed the land from the grasses and flowers, when I wouldn’t be up here at much, enjoying these last few days of summer.

But schedules are meant to be kept. I was slotted into the county’s and Dan’s time frame. The best I could do would be to disappear during parts of the day when activity was greatest: to Lily Lake for kayaking; dinner with friends; a long hike in the park. But every time I returned, I was greeted with chaos: my serene cabin life literally uprooted—aspen trees pulled out, grasses and flowers smashed by the larger-than-life bulldozer, the thistles run over and the pine siskins retreating to the back yard, looking and sounding a bit lost.

I think of the cabin as my fortress, the place where I can barricade myself in peace and quiet, but I had been invaded. Even when the bulldozer wasn’t digging 10 feet away from the window where I like to gaze out while working, there were people constantly underfoot: Dan, the engineer, the electrician, people looking for Dan.

In the first few days I wanted to block the whole mess from my vision, which isn’t easy when the bulldozer is almost bigger than the cabin. But my meditation practice teaches me to enfold everything into my practice, to not leave out the ugly, the disturbing, what I don’t want to see. So gradually I included into my reality this now barren side yard, the concrete underground tank and the very large hole. I let it be there.

When the bulldozer was quiet, I watched the animals explore this new being. A rabbit found shelter in the shade of its wheels, while juncos and sparrows poked through the furrowed blades looking for insects, and hummingbirds perched on its large yellow arm.  Yesterday there was a field of grass and flowers; today there’s a large new hulking structure; that’s life.

When we had first talked about the project I had asked Dan to try to save the aspens  that acted as a visual barrier between me and my neighbors. By the last day, when he came to cover up the hole, I had accepted the process enough that I had to smile as I watched him carefully avoid knocking down the trees, the huge treads just inches from one small aspen.

Today, the bulldozer is gone, and quiet has once again descended. Outside my window is a huge vacant patch of land that I need to heal. Fortunately, it’s the time of year when many of the grasses and flowers have gone to seed. I’ll go out in the meadows around Meeker Park, collect the seeds and lovingly scatter them across the barren dirt. In a few months, the snow will cover this wound. Maybe next spring some of the grasses will come up; in two years I may have a full lush, small meadow. Everything grows slowly here. I will learn to be patient and accepting.

I Give Up

I’ve been spending more time at the cabin lately, as the days of summer dwindle. In a little more than a month, the aspen leaves will start changing. As always, summer goes by too swiftly up here. Already the creek water is low, and the leaves of the flowers are withering, as the rainy weather of early summer has turned into hot and dry days.

Still, this corner of the world, surrounded by nature, is precious. When I start to feel that I don’t deserve such a heavenly place, I tell myself (and anyone who cares to listen) that I get a lot of work done at the cabin. There are fewer distractions to keep me from my editing and writing work.

But who am I kidding? How can I get work done when the hummingbirds are jostling each other right outside my window, their wings flashing in the sunlight and their small heads bent over the nectar, with their long beaks sucking hungrily from the feeder?

How can I get work done when the morning sunlight pours through the purple lupine and yellow daisies in the yard? When the tips of the grasses are caught by the first rays of the sun? When the warm breezes curl throughout the cabin, bringing in the sounds of chipmunks, house wrens and crows and enticing me away from my computer and out the cabin door into this vast and breathing landscape?

How can I look at my computer screen while billowy white clouds are sailing across the sky? How can I concentrate on Spanish history when the aspen leaves are trembling, as if life itself were surging through the trees?

Beavers Rule!

Last fall walking around Lily Lake I saw something a little odd in the water: willow branches that appeared to have been deliberately placed, not just branches that had accidentally blown over and gotten stuck.

Over the next few months sticks and aspen branches were added to the willows, with mud holding the whole thing together. It was becoming obvious that beavers had decided to take up residence in this lake, part of Rocky Mountain National Park. During the September 2013 floods, a large beaver colony was wiped out on Fish Creek, about three miles down the mountainside from the pond. Had some of the beavers survived and made their way up the creek to this lake?

However, the spot they had chosen was right next to the path that goes around the lake (left), and slowly over the spring the house of mud and sticks started encroaching on the trail. I wondered how the National Park Service would handle this: a beaver lodge on one of the more popular and accessible trails in the park, hindering a complete circle of the lake, especially for those in wheelchairs. Beyond the beaver house, the path is crumbling, as the marsh pond on the other side is undermining the path; beavers may be adding to the instability as they tunnel back and forth, carrying willow bushes and aspen branches from the other side of the marsh to their home sweet home.

Word about this very visible and accessible beaver lodge has gotten around, and on most evenings people gather, many with big cameras, for this rare wildlife opportunity to see the animals up close.

Lily Lake is not even a real lake but started as a marshy area that was dammed at some point to keep water from spilling onto Hwy. 7. Weeds constantly threaten to clog the lake and turn it back into a marsh. But in this rocky landscape of mountains and trees, ponds are scarce. In summer, muskrats criss-cross the pond, carrying grasses in their teeth (right),  fish bubbles dot the surface of the water, dragonflies flit over the surface, and ducks circle the ponds, some with their chicks. They don’t care that it’s an artificial, humanly made piece of water. For them, it’s life. They’ve claimed it as their own.

When I finally asked a park ranger what the park service was planning to do about the beavers, she told me that it was a conflict between meeting the needs of human visitors and beavers but that ultimately the beavers have priority.

Another park ranger at the lake told me about plans to reconstruct the trail on that side of the lake. They would probably move some of the sticks and logs off the trail but leave the mud house in the water undisturbed. But, he shrugged, the beavers will probably just put the sticks back on the path.

The park service may have met its match in an indomitable and determined animal, indifferent to the wants or needs of the federal government or the humans who may be inconvenienced by its intrusive home.

 Go beavers!