Cabin Journal

Sharing Space with Wildlife

At the Rocky Mountain National Park visitor center, which sits at at almost 12,000 feet, not much animal life thrives at that altitude: marmots, pikas, white-capped sparrows, that’s about it. Most animals seek a gentler climate down in the valleys, where there’s more food and shelter. But last June, a pair of mountain bluebirds had built a nest in a chink in the side of the wall by the women’s restroom. As they brought sticks and grasses to reline the nest, I could hear the young ones inside. Meanwhile women passed by on their way to the toilets, just inches from where the bluebird couple were raising their young.

If this artificial structure wasn't there, would the birds survive? Would they even be up at that altitude, but perhaps be lower down the mountain where there are more trees and possible cavities for nests?

 

While we have intruded into nature, we’ve also provided shelter for wild animals, at least the smaller ones. At the cabin, the ground squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits take advantage of the artificial spaces that humans have created in this landscape. They hide or live in the woodpiles and  underneath the cement pad for the well pump.

I’ve seen them go under and into small holes in the roofline of my garage/woodshed and into the shed next door. When I step onto the porch, rabbits and chipmunks scoot under the cabin and under the garage. Nuthatches look for bugs in the debris that collects in the gutters, and woodpeckers have poked holes in the side of the cabin, searching for insects. They even drink my water (left), although fortunately not my wine.

A few years ago I had a packrat living in the garage/woodshed, as evidenced by missing paintbrushes, cans and other assorted stuff, as well as mysterious mounds of sticks. Several people advised me how to trap it and get rid of it, but as long as it wasn’t in the cabin helping itself to forks, pens or other possibly interesting and shiny things, I saw no reason I couldn’t share the space with it.

These artificial shelters also benefit predators. This week, I saw a short-tailed weasel (right) run across the front porch and then underneath. Shortly I heard a squeal, probably from a ground squirrel or chipmunk meeting its untimely end. The next morning, sitting on the back deck, I saw a whole family of weasels—five!—running around the yard. Though small and slim, these animals are ferocious killers and can bring down a rabbit three times as big as them. Now I know why I haven’t been seeing chipmunks and ground squirrels around recently.

Two of the weasels found a small hole in the garage, and soon I heard a chase ensuing from inside. Sometimes I feel very fortunate to be near the top of the food chain.

 Weasel photo from Internet

 

Earth Set on High

With a wildfire raging about 20 miles south of the cabin last week, no substantial moisture for at least a month and hot, dry weather, I walk the land here with trepidation. I’m suddenly newly aware of the fragility of this landscape. More than any news article could tell me, a video of the Cold Springs fire north of Nederland showed how whole hillsides of pine trees were being consumed in a matter of minutes by the quickly moving flames fueled by the high winds. In just two or three days, the flames had destroyed almost 600 acres of forest and eight homes.

What the video and photos don’t show are the fleeing animals that no longer have homes or the underbrush of bushes, flowers and grasses now nothing but blackened ground. What’s gone is a whole interconnected web of life. When I walk these mountains I’m passing through a landscape that has taken hundreds of years to evolve. Water has coursed down through these hills and mountains, forming streams, rivers and meadows, where aspens and water-loving plants, like mountain bluebells, have taken shelter. Where the land is dryer and rockier, ponderosas took hold. Everything accommodated itself to what was there, growing in and around the boulders and rocky cliffs; grasses emerged around the ponds and in the meadows, the dragonflies (above) somehow finding the ponds. The squirrels survive on the cones from the ponderosas, and the weasels, coyotes and other predators sustain themselves on the squirrels.  It’s not a landscape that can easily be restored.

Hiking up the road behind my cabin, I knew that all this could be gone in minutes. It was otherwise a beautiful day: an almost cloudless deep blue sky, winds brushing the aspen leaves, the meadows still green. But a closer look revealed drooping aspen leaves, some already turning orange (right), and the leaves of flowering plants curling, withering in the heat. On Mount Meeker only a tiny sliver of snow remained (top). Under my feet the ground was crunchy; it wouldn't take much more than a careless match to unleash a fiery destruction.

After May, which brought snowstorms and rain all month, suddenly the spigot had been turned off and the thermostat set on high. It felt ominous, like something happening beyond our control.  I wanted to water the yard, keep all the columbine and lupine blooming rather than drooping, and save the young aspens that are just establishing root systems and the young ponderosas only two feet high. But I can only carry so many pails of water from the well. I can’t save everything—or anything. I just have to hold my breath and wait—and pray.

All the World’s a Stage at Lily Lake

Lily Lake is an ongoing piece of theater, a place where the stage—Longs and Meeker peaks to the south, the range of snow-covered mountains to the west, Twin Sisters to the east and Lily Mountain to the north—stays the same but the actors change. That could be said of anyplace, but at Lily Lake I have a front row seat to theater in the round. I sit in my kayak in the middle of the lake, which is really the size of a pond, while the world circulates around me. I guess it’s actually theater in the round in reverse, because I’m the sole member of the audience as well as its sometimes unwitting and unwilling star.

People on the path that circles the lake sometimes point to me, smile or wave.  I’m part of their drama, along with the ducks, muskrats and damselflies on the lake.  I think there’s an envy, too, besides the curiosity. Kayaks look calm and serene on the lake. Two young women yell out to me to ask if I rented the kayak and look disappointed when I tell them it’s my own.

Last week, I first kayaked in early afternoon, under sunny skies, with people scattered around the shorelines. A group of teenage girls was trying their hand at fishing, and there was a lot of giggling and screaming. At the far end, a loud, boisterous group had a barbecue, the chef yelling out questions that drifted across the lake: hamburgers or dogs? One or two? Ketchup?  A group of bicyclists had stopped to rest on the trail. At a picnic table a father was talking to his young daughter about the blue dragonflies on the lake.

They are damselflies, actually, smaller than dragonflies and they are everywhere, males depositing their seeds on the heads of the females, holding them down, so it seems the females  will drown (and according to the articles I’ve read, sometimes do). When my kayak moves slowly through the frenzy of mating insects, I feel like I’m paddling through the clouds of blue ethereal creatures. When I come back in the evening, the damselflies are gone, not a hint of their early existence.

When I paddle by the beaver den, it looks abandoned. More than a year ago, I had seen the den,  in the water at the edge of the path, get bigger from month to month. When the path started crumbling, the Park Service decided to close off that part and constructed a detour into the woods. But a ranger told me that two beavers died from tularemia, a plague-like disease; he had seen a third one a few weeks ago, but now the place looks empty. It breaks my heart.

As a constant visitor, I see a lot of changes at this lake. All year along I walk around Lily Lake, so I see the progression from the snow-covered lake and icy winds to summer paradise, the hillsides green with aspen, sumac bushes, yellow banner, blue and yellow warblers: from the cold emptiness  of winter (right) to a place filled with life.

When I come back in the evening for a second kayak ride, the lake is quieter. A boy of about 9 is intently watching the ducks along the shoreline, and I apologize for putting my boat in there and scattering them. “That’s OK,” he says, and points out to me how the ducks lower their heads under their wings, perhaps to shut out the world and get some sleep. A budding naturalist, I think, and wish I could talk to him longer. But the sunlight that had briefly appeared between storms is swiftly disappearing.

Dark clouds have descended over Longs and Meeker peaks. When I finally decide I’m too cold and head for the shoreline, a final ray of sunlight hits the top of the Twin Sisters peak, bathing the rocks and pines in a pastel light. But it’s not the end of the day—or the play. As I drag the boat out of the water, a new group has arrived, and the children run toward the water, “Look, ducks! Mom, Dad! Ducks!”

And the drama continues.