Cabin Journal

Collecting Seeds, Anticipating Spring

Wandering the roads of Meeker Park, collecting seeds, I sometimes wonder what the people in passing cars must think, as I feel up the dried stalks, checking to see which ones are ready to be plucked. For the past few weeks, I’ve been gathering flower and grass seeds to plant on the bare ground where the septic system was installed last summer.

There’s an art and skill to this practice, I’ve discovered. Since August, I’ve been watching the flowers in the front yard go to seed, so I know which flowers match up with their seeds. I pay attention to which plants grow in drier places that are exposed to the sun most of the day. I’ve had to ignore the beautiful seeds of the angelica that only grow in wet areas and the columbine that prefer shade.

I’ve discovered that the seeds aren’t ready to be picked until they have completed their growth, like the tomatoes or blackberries in my back yard that don’t fall from the vine until they’re ripe. So I’ve been gently tugging at a lot of seed pods before finding one that is ready. When I do, there’s a satisfying feeling, a sense of something letting go. The rye grasses are especially pleasing to pluck, the long column of seeds that release with one pull. Less easy are the white feathery seedheads of a daisy-like flower (below, right) but their softness just as satisfying to pull from their flat dried platforms.

I read that the seeds don’t open until the first freeze, their signal to send their shoots down into the ground, and I wanted at least some rain to help anchor them from our strong winds. In September, I waited through several weeks of warm and dry weather until one day clouds and moisture blew in, and when I saw the first raindrops, I ran out and started scattering them.

However, a week after planting the seeds, I noticed a lot of birds—juncos, blackbirds and others—out on the dirt, which seemed strange because there are no plants for them to eat. Then I realized that by scattering the seeds over the whole yard, I had essentially created a large buffet of delectable seeds for the birds to choose from. I may as well have put up a sign: Free buffet! All you can eat!

This week, with a forecast of rain and snow, I scattered more seeds. Now I can only hope that the birds don’t eat all the seeds or perhaps redeposit them so as to naturally fertilize this sterile soil. Nature has its own way of proceeding, I’m learning, and will do things on its own time and when it sees fit. Already, the ground dogs, which disappeared when construction began on the septic system, are back, leaving holes for me to trip over.

I’ll have to wait, bide my time, be patient. But already I’m imagining next spring and a yard full of wild grasses and flowers. Especially with winter closing in, a person can dream, can’t she?

A Death in the Community

When I bought my cabin, I wanted a place to experience nature and solitude. Yet, at the same time, I wanted a community. Not friends necessarily but a place where people were connected to each other, where I felt part of a larger group.

At my home in Boulder, I live in a subdivision with big lots and wide streets, which is wonderful for cars but not so good for neighbors talking to other neighbors. I see very few people around; many come and go through their garages, and once the garage door is closed, so is any chance for a neighborly chat about the weather.

Yet in Meeker Park, I know neighbors up and down the road and onto the next one. I think this camaraderie is due partly to the fact that everyone walks—with their dog, as exercise, with friends and to their mailbox, which is at the entrance to our road. With homes scattered throughout the woods, it has the feel of an old village.

One day this summer particularly stands out. The man who plowed my driveway in winter and was putting in my septic system, Dan Crane, came by to update me and stayed to talk. We had been in communication for the past two years, discussing soil type, pumps and the ever popular topic of the county’s unreasonable requirements—conversations that often extended into discussions of the weather, vacations and retirement.

When I went for a walk later, I ran into a neighbor down the road, and we discussed our mutual septic systems: when he had his built, how far from the house, and how deep. As we were talking, two other Meeker Park residents joined us, two of the older women who anchor this settlement, and the four of us got on the topic of the 2013 floods and how it had affected his house. When I escorted one woman home, helping her across my weed patch yard and avoiding the two big test holes for the septic system, my next-door neighbor came out, and the three of us discussed the new addition to his cabin.

That kind of accidental, small gatherings would be rare in my Boulder subdivision. But in this mountain neighborhood I think we’re more bound to each other because of its remoteness and isolation. During the floods and in big snowstorms, we make sure to check on each other. But we’re also connected by our love of this place, our willingness to put up with inconveniences—dusty roads, no easy access to Internet, no cell phone coverage, no gas stations or restaurants nearby.

Maybe that’s why it was such a huge shock when Dan was killed in a motorcycle accident a few weeks ago. He was well known in the larger Allenspark community, someone who always stepped in when help was needed. During the 2013 floods, Dan had done some heroic acts—rescuing people stranded on Coyote Hill above me when the creek took out the road (grateful residents renamed the road in his honor, adding a yellow ribbon after he died, above), and building a raft to extricate logs that had dammed a pond by Saint Malo, so the road could be opened.

In this small village, hundreds attended his funeral. For many people, myself included, it felt like a huge piece of this interwoven fabric of community had been torn out, leaving a giant hole. At the same time, I’m grateful to be part of a community where one person’s absence sends shock waves through this mountain enclave of cabins, forests and fields. It seems a rare thing.

Ode to Aspen

This time of the year, there’s nothing else to do but praise aspen because the mountains are radiating with their color, as they give their all, put on the final show of the year. There’s not enough time to hike every trail where these elegant trees grow,  each trail with a different mood, although I do my best. I've gotten very little work done these past few weeks.

On the Hallowell Trail in  Rocky Mountain National Park (right), the aspen form a radiant canopy over the rocky trail, as it squeezes between the steep hillside on one side and the creek on the other.

It’s a small creek with a large presence, plunging down the hill, forming waterfalls that slip over dark rocks covered with moss.

Bordering the creek are maroon and green striped fireweed, pale yellow ferns, the shiny red of the chokecherry, and green grasses shading to gold.

 

Up farther, past the meadow, is a thick grove of aspens that are taller than most seen here on the eastern side of the Rockies, each tree reaching farther upward for the sunlight.

Sometimes the most beautiful aspen trails have the fewest trees.At the Finch Lake trail  in Wild Basin, they blaze out among the darker pines, as if the sun had broken into bits and fallen among the more somber trees.  

 

On this narrow steep trail, aspens frame the hillside across the valley, the Twin Sisters to the northeast and the massive block of Mount Meeker to the northwest.

At the top, the trail turns to the south, where the rocky terrain turns into a gentle meadow, where the white sensuous trunks emerge from the grasses and the air is filled with the rich smells of decaying leaves and pines. With the sun shining behind the aspen it looks like the forest is on fire.

I could sit here forever, leaves gently floating to the ground, the sky a dark blue, nuthatches scrambling up and down the trees.

There’s such a peace here, underneath the soft, sweet shelter of aspens and ponderosas, that will slip away soon, as the leaves slip from the trees.

When the aspen leaves flutter, my heart goes pitter-patter. Is it love? Must be aspen love.