Cabin Journal

As the World Shrinks

Every year, usually in early July, a columbine appears next to the front deck of the cabin (right). I had seen its leaves in late June and wondered if the otherwise lush plant would flower after weeks of almost no rain. It did but at only about half to one-third its normal size (below). In this time of drought and heat, I see how nature survives: by shrinking back, doing what it needs to do to maintain but not able to grow or thrive.

 

The grasses around the cabin are about half as tall as in years of plentiful moisture. In the valley bottom, where there is no shade, the grasses have already gone brown. In years past, they’ve stayed green through August, at least. On the younger aspens, the branches are drooping, and many of the branches on the conifers are dying—their needles turning brown and dropping off. Flowers that usually bloom later in the summer, like the purple asters, are flowering now, as if the lack of precipitation has triggered some survival mechanism: bloom while you can because you don’t know if the situation will be any better next month.

In the past  few years, a few aspens have started to grow in a somewhat dry area  between my and my neighbors’ cabins (right). I’ve tried to encourage that growth as a small but natural privacy screen between us. The tallest aspen appears to have established a strong enough root system to survive, but the younger ones are limp, like they’re struggling to stay upright.  With almost no moisture for at least three weeks and record-breaking heat, I’ve been watering the young trees in the hopes they’ll survive.

Because I have no plumbing at the cabin, watering means using the hand pump behind the cabin to fill a bucket and then carrying it to each tree. Needless to say, it’s labor intensive, and there are probably 50 trees, many of them aspens, on the property. All summer long I’ve been keeping my eye on them while studying the weather forecasts for any promise of precipitation. Occasionally, I'll invoke the weather gods, but to no avail. I’ve tried to rationalize the situation:  nature knows how to take care of itself, how to conserve water and store it in wetter times.  

But this weather is not normal. In past years at the cabin, the hottest temperatures in the summer were in the 70s during the day, and that usually cooled down into the 40s at night. But now daytime temperatures hover in the 80s, with night-time temperatures lingering in the 60s.

I feel helpless watching the plants struggle (above, like these aspen saplings),  just like I feel helpless viewing the state of world affairs. I can’t do anything to help separated immigrant families or prevent any more orcas from dying in the Northwest seas. But I can start watering my thirsty aspens and ponderosas—pail by pail.

Call it a labor of love or a futile gesture. But I can’t just sit and do nothing.

 

National Parks: Sharing the Awe

The summer hordes of tourists that descend on Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park arrived early this year. In early June on a weekday, I went for a hike at Wild Basin, one of the lesser known parts of the park that is just down the road from my cabin. But even that early in the year, the parking lot for the main trailhead was already full, and cars were parked up and down the road.

For those who want to visit the popular trails in the park around Bear Lake, the situation is more intense.  Last week friends who wanted to hike to Mills Lake had to wait through four shuttle buses before they were able to board for the popular trailhead.

Driving in Estes Park, with its multitudes of hotels, shops, restaurants, is a traffic nightmare. Cars circle through parking lots, waiting for a car to pull out, or sit in long lines of traffic.

Predictions are already being made that this will be a record year for attendance in national parks across the country. Already, Rocky Mountain National Park is the fourth busiest national park in the country, partly because it is so close to a major metropolitan area and easily accessible to those coming from other parts of the country (and world).

After a winter of having most of the trails in the park practically to myself, of always getting a parking spot right next to the trailhead, of being seated immediately when I visit my favorite Mexican restaurant, I often feel impatient with all these throngs—taking pictures of themselves at the park entrance, getting too close to the park wildlife (above) or stuffing themselves with ice cream and popcorn on the streets of Estes.

I have to remind myself that people are drawn to the parks for the same reason I am: to experience something outside of our daily lives, something wild and unknown. In her book on the national parks,  The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks, Terry Tempest Williams describes national parks as places that wake and fill us with awe:

Wildlife in wildlands appear without notice. Awakened is what we become in their presence. Curiosity leads us forward on an unknown path. . . .  For a precious moment we touch and taste life uninterrupted. Awe sneaks up on us like love. We surrender to the ecstatic outpouring of life before us.

I’ve seen that awe many times. Two weeks ago, on top of Trail Ridge Road, hikers stopped my friends and I to point out a lone elk on the hillside, his magnificent rack of antlers illuminated against the sky. There was awe in their voices, the way they described him, like being close to something god-like and from another world.

On another part of the trail, a girl of about 4 was skipping her way down the trail, repeatedly bragging to her family, in a sing-song voice—“I saw a pika.” She had the rare luck of seeing one of these small, secretive—and oh so cute—tundra creatures (right).

I think of the campground at the park where people from all over the country share space, as well as cooking pots, flashlights and tips about where to get a good view of the elk herd in the meadow. Williams says:

I see our national parks as our ongoing struggle as a diverse people to create circles of reverence in a time of collective cynicism where we are wary of being moved by anything but our own clever perspective… The nature of our national parks is bound to the nature of our own humility, our capacity to stay open and curious in a world that instead beckons closure through fear.

Maybe our national parks are one of the last places where people of different religions and politics can come together to worship the same thing: unbounded nature.  Liberals and conservatives alike, we’re all awe-struck by the herds of elk, dazzled by the flowers and made happy by the pikas.