Cabin Journal

The Season of Firsts

In the mountains, spring comes tentatively—and in fits and starts. Two weeks ago, I saw my first pasqueflower, those tiny purple buds of light that slowly repopulate the earth after winter, signaling light, new growth, the earth reborn. Then winter returned, dumping a few inches of snow and burying them temporarily.

This week, while the pasqueflowers start to fade, the spring beauties appear—small whitish/pink flowers, low to the ground, that light up the dark forest floor (below).

Two weeks ago, the first aspen seeds appeared, dangling like earrings from the tips of the branches, and this week, on the Sandbeach Lake trail in Wild Basin, just a few chosen stands of aspen started unfurling their leaves (above), even as the weather forecast is for more snow. Two weeks ago, I heard my first frog from down in the ponds along the creek. But this week I heard a whole chorus, singing lustily, their voices filling the whole valley.

Sitting outside in the warm sun, I didn’t see but heard my first hummingbird of the season, the only one it seemed with the courage to venture north in this time of uncertain weather—rain one day and then snow that melts the next day in the warm sun. The newly arrived swallows, dipping and soaring above the valley, don’t seem to care that bugs are still scarce. At night, standing on the porch in the dark, I hear the lonely cry of the Western screech owl, another summer visitor, reverberating across the valley.

“Smells,” my  neighbor pronounced on our walk this week, and we inhaled deeply of something rich, something buried deep within the earth—dirt, rocks, pine needles, the roots of trees and grasses—as life rouses itself, responds to the light and the warmth.

Over the winter, our senses go dormant—there’s little to smell or feel and not as much to hear—like the creeks finally shorn of the layers of snow now noisily rushing to the plains. One morning I watched two handsome coyotes walk down the road, sniffing for whatever was on the wind—perhaps a tasty chipmunk or ground squirrel.

In these times of so much uncertainty, it’s hard not to rejoice that life renews itself right (or almost) on schedule. So I’ll keep my head up; there’s a lot to sniff out now.

Naked Ground

When I went to the cabin last week, I was met with a surprise:  the ground now visible. All the snow had melted, whisked away by temperatures in the 50s. Gone was the large mound that the snowplow driver had piled onto one end of the driveway—the pile I had to climb over for the past few months to get to the front door. In the backyard, the deep snow that came up to the top of the picnic table, which I thought wouldn’t melt until May at the earliest, had disappeared, exposing the table’s plastic covering blowing in the wind. And no longer did I have to gingerly step between the deep snow banks to get to the water pump.

When you don’t have to watch out for ice, slush or hidden puddles, one’s step is lighter.  With the onset of the equinox, the light has changed from winter’s harsh glare to something softer. The kinnicinick that stays green all winter, that never dies, has a brighter tinge to it (above). I can feel something opening up in the world and in me.

But with the snow’s clearing, I could see the destruction and damage from the windstorm a few weeks ago. One neighbor lost 20 trees in what another  neighbor estimated were 100 mph winds—a microburst of power that pulled pine trees out by the roots, sent decades-old trees crashing to the ground.

Everywhere I walked they lay silently on the forest floor and blocked paths and roads. Their huge root systems were exposed, tangled up in soil and rocks. In their hasty descent to earth, some trees had taken others down with them or sheared off their branches. Some still standing were leaning precariously, waiting for the next big windstorm to hasten their demise.

Some of these downed trees were probably 100 years old and had stood in that spot for decades, weathering snows, rains, floods, the birth of new trees and the death of old ones. And within a matter of minutes they had been yanked from their tall upright positions to being prone on the ground—from life to death with no warning. What did that feel like?

I can’t know, but I paused before each fallen tree, trying to gauge this loss. I took in the enormity of the tree, the complexity of its branches and its now abject position. I couldn’t just walk by. I needed to acknowledge their deaths, their sudden downfall and my utter sadness at the absence of these once living beings.