Cabin Journal

Sky, Clouds and Aspen

While people flock to the mountains this time of the year to admire the golden aspen, the trees themselves are exhausted and ready for a good hibernation. According to fascinating book, The Hidden Life of Trees, deciduous trees in autumn are expending the last of their energy breaking down chlorophyll and storing energy for winter.

Somehow I sense their exhaustion. Maybe it’s that the colors this year are lackluster, fading into a pale yellow rather than erupting into brilliant gold, orange or even red. Or the fact that so many aspen died off a week or two earlier than usual, as if they had enough of this hot, dry weather and are ready for a good, long snooze.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still, I’ve let myself enjoy every single minute of the aspen’s last hurrah of the season: the light that pours out of the aspen and into every pore of my body, the soft clacking of their leaves, the smell of ripe vegation, or how the wind stirs everything—the branches, the grasses, the hair on my arms.

This year, instead of being awed by whole hillsides of quaking aspen, I’ve been drawn to the smaller views: how the aspen drape over the rusting well handle and prayer flags behind the cabin; how the ripe colors mix with the peeled wood of the shed; how an aspen glows at the end of a  dirt road among the somber ponderosas.

 

 

I take photos, even though I know they won’t capture the totality of the light, the wind, the smells, the sounds. Sometimes I just soak it all in, letting myself feel the sadness of another summer season gone, knowing that time is fleet-footed and the best I can do is pause and feel it all.

 

And if that moment includes a few luminescent aspen framed against a depthless blue sky and some pure white wispy clouds, that’s enough.

Out of Control

Five years ago, the skies opened up and dumped 18 inches of rain in the mountains here, more than we get in a whole year. The flood wiped out the roads in three canyons extending from Estes Park, including the South St. Vrain, my route to and from the cabin. The flooding isolated at least three towns, destroying homes and lives.

When I think back to that time—I was stranded at the cabin for four days—what sticks with me is the power of nature to alter the landscape. Our small Cabin Creek, usually four to five feet wide, had spilled its banks (above) and cut off the main road leading out of Meeker Park.

Up close and personal, I learned that we are powerless in the face of nature’s forces that are far beyond our control. The first day I arrived at the cabin, after only a day of rain, water had already gotten into the attic and was seeping down into the living room, destroying the floor, furniture and ceiling. There was little I could do but put out pails and watch the water permeate the wood.

I just wanted the rain to stop—although not as much as my neighbors who lived directly on the creek and watched it rise with each passing hour—and day—while storing their valuables in their car, so they would be ready when the time came.

It was on the third day of the relentless rain that nature couldn’t hold up anymore, and everything came loose—hillsides, car-size boulders, roads, ponds, houses—anything in the flood’s path. I can’t imagine the force of the water that pushed its way through South St. Vrain Canyon and removed whole chunks of the road, gouged 100-foot holes in the hillside, tore trees out of the riverbed and carried boulders miles downstream. The stream bed was permanently altered, although in our current unstable weather mode, nothing is permanent anymore.

And now, five years later, we’re facing the opposite situation in the mountains: drought. (The photo above, taken this week, is in the same location as the top photo of a flooded Cabin Creek.) There’s been no measurable precipitation for at least a month, and temperatures were in the 80s this week, when they should be in the 60s. The ground is so dry it feels as if my hiking boots hitting a rock could spark a fire. To make things worse, the winds have been strong all week,  enough to blow over the metal chair on my front deck.

I just want the winds to stop and for the heavens to open up again. Two inches of rain, even an inch, would help. But, as we learned five years ago, and as the people in the rain-soaked Carolinas are learning now, we’re powerless. In a time when the climate is changing faster than we can keep up with, maybe that’s a good lesson to learn.

Gratitude

I’ve decided to stop lamenting what’s missing this summer and start appreciating what there is. On a walk on the hill behind my cabin last week I found a single gaillardia. Since blanket flowers emerge mostly in July,  I felt a tenderness for this lone flower’s fortitude in blooming when everything else is dying. I felt the same way toward the single fern growing on what seemed a dry hillside (below). What force propels these plants to keep going?

 

 

And although the summer’s dryness deterred the usual August mushroom crop, I found three mushrooms nestled in a rotting tree trunk, where they were able to gather enough moisture to grow.

The hummingbirds are gone now, fled to lower elevations or else started their long migrations. But the ground squirrels appear to be on their second brood of the season. I’m having fun watching the young ones do silly things that the wiser adults wouldn’t do, like run right up to me when I’m sitting on the porch, curious about what I am, or slip and slide down the side of the wood garage (kudos for trying, kid).

I’ve haven’t heard of any bear sightings this summer—perhaps they didn’t survive the winter or have stayed up higher in the mountains—but there’s the flock of turkeys, including 17 young ones, that roam Meeker Park.

Although a male moose was found dead at Lily Lake last month, a mama and her two young ones surprised a bunch of us last week, when they softly slipped into the lake on an early summer evening.

 

 

 

 

 

After a summer of hazy skies from the fires to the West, either the blazes have lessened or the wind pattern has changed, because suddenly our brilliant blue skies have returned. The whole landscape feels different, as if a curtain has been lifted and I can see clearly now—for better or worse. Everything is vivid—from the sharp gray outline of Mount Meeker to the grasses that have now taken center stage since the flowers are gone, each grass seed clearly illuminated, bending and dancing in the clear, strong light.