Cabin Journal

Walking Toward Spring

All winter long, when I hiked the usual route around Meeker Park, I stopped and turned around at the spot where the sun went beyond the hillside. During these cold months, I shrunk from the cold shadows.

But now the sun is high enough that most of the road is in the sunlight. This week I had a yearning to get out of my rut, to push past that invisible barrier I had set for myself all winter. Maybe I sensed spring in the air, even though the temperatures were in the  high 20s. But there were new bird songs I hadn’t heard all winter, and the light seemed brighter.

I wanted to walk to the slight hill where I could turn around and see Mount Meeker framed by a grove of aspens next to the creek. When spring arrives, sometime in early May, it’s a beautiful sight, with the aspens a lime green and the mountain often still cloaked in white. I think I wanted to get a small preview of that view, just a feeling that spring might not be too far off.

Perhaps it was delusional, because the snow keeps piling up, as waves of snowstorms come through. When I first arrived, a whopping blizzard practically hid the road and cabin across the way (left). The sun came out briefly in the afternoon, but the next day another band of snow came bearing thick, heavy flakes.

The creek is covered except for one small hole, like an eye that offers glimpses or the promise of spring. Otherwise, it's a white landscape: white road, white fields, white roofs, white hillsides and mountains; along the road the fence posts are nearly obscured under the piles of snow pushed by the snowplows (top). Even the sky shifts between gray clouds and white snow.

 

 

Last year’s stalks of green gentians, now a brittle beige, poke from the snow (left), as do the tips of young ponderosas. At nearby Wild Basin, the St. Vrain River is mounded with piles of snow, with small hollows where the creek sucked snow into the cold water (above).

Yet, on my now extended walk around Meeker Park, I can see small patches of bare ground, where the sun managed to melt the snow in open areas. In Colorado, the seasons often blend together, so a warm day in February can feel like spring, while May can bring big snowstorms. There’s an easy slipping in and out of seasons here that I appreciate; nothing is permanent.  Today is more winter than spring but who knows what tomorrow may bring.

The Tree I Saved

Several years ago, soon after the septic system was installed at the cabin, I noticed that a young pine tree at the edge of the septic field was not doing well—a lot of needles had fallen off, and other branches showed dying needles that had turned orange. When I investigated, I could see that, in the process of creating the septic field, the bulldozer had dumped rocks on the ground around the tree, probably smothering its root system.

So I cleared away some of the rocky soil and created a small channel around the base of the tree where water could collect. Over the following summer and fall, every time I came to the cabin I would make sure to water the tree, carrying buckets from the pump behind the cabin.

I wasn’t sure the tree would make it, or even if what I was doing made any difference at all, but four years later, the tree is thriving and has grown another several feet, its branches reaching out farther each year.

In the scheme of things—where whole ecosystems are being destroyed around the world due to fires, human encroachment and other disturbances—my nurturing of the ponderosa is a small thing. Yet it feels like an act of hope, like there’s something small but significant that I can do to help nature, especially in this age of climate change, where I can partially compensate for humans' destructive tendencies.

It’s like feeding the hummingbirds (left) in the spring when they arrive at the same time as a major snowstorm, or putting out sunflower seeds on the front deck for the jays, chickadees and juncos after a big snowfall. It’s like the time after the 2013 flood, when floodwaters had landed a small fish in a ditch that was drying up, and I carried the fish to the main creek. Maybe I’m just pretending to play god, but it also strengthens the connection I feel to the world around me, of which I’m a part.

If the world is a giant web of interrelated parts, so a butterfly flapping its wings in the jungles of South America can cause weather disturbances in Europe, perhaps keeping one tree or one hummingbird alive could tip the balance of our small ecosystem in Meeker Park and even affect the health of the surrounding area. If we can nurture the small parts, maybe the whole will survive.

When I look out my cabin window at the growing ponderosa, it feels like the tree’s branches are soaring upward, as if embracing life. I can’t but help raise my arms in a fellow salute.

Disturbances in the Upper Atmosphere

On a windy day with new snow covering the ground, it seemed the whole landscape was in turmoil. It started with a new blanketing of snow, about 5 inches, following by temperatures that dropped below zero and only rose to a high of 18 during the day. So it was fine snow, easily persuadable, easily moved in any way the winds sought to carry it.

It cascaded from cabin roofs and enveloped trees. In every direction, curtains of white would obscure parts of the landscape and then moments later lift to reveal an aspen grove, the meadow, a cabin, the road or the range of mountains rising to the north. It was like a stage play, with new revelations at every turn.

It felt chaotic, because the winds weren’t moving in a steady pace from west to east, the dominant direction, but creating whirlpools that rose up suddenly from the ground, as if prompted by some invisible forces, and spun uselessly before dropping to the ground, exhausted.

There were periods of relative calm, when the winds would slow, and the landscape became familiar. But then the winds would gather speed again, sending more plumes of snow into the air, sometimes lifting them into the sky, like fairy dust reaching for the edges of the earth.  

There was only one thing to do: let the clouds engulf me. Maybe I could lose track of myself--and the world.