Cabin Journal

A Final Note

Every year, I promise myself that I won’t write another blog about pasqueflowers, like I do every year at this time. What more can I say about these flowers that bloom early in spring, when everything else is brown and spring is just a glint in my eye, possibly from the sun getting higher in the sky?

Yet this year, I’ve seen more pasqueflowers than ever before, probably caused by the mid-April snowstorm that delayed their blooming plus providing moisture for even more to flower than usual. Every week on my walks around Meeker Park, I’m astounded by their profusion as well as their beauty.

Yet now, as we creep toward spring, with the aspen starting to leaf out, these flowers that for the past month have cheered me are starting to pass into their next stage. The petals are becoming more limp and drowsy, and fading from dark purple to pale gray. Soon they will go to seed, producing tassels that stream in the wind, and then they'll become invisible, burying back into the ground for another 11 months.

This is the story of all plants, and yet I can't help but wonder why. What is the point of their existence? Of their bravery in being the first plant to emerge after winter—before the lupines and columbines blossom, before the hummingbirds arrive and before the last snowfall?

During this pandemic, many people have been pulled out of the darkness of their isolation by the song of a bird or by seeing tulips and iris bloom. To see life emerging among so much suffering, illness and death seems somehow nothing short of a miracle.

And yet. Nature doesn't exist for us. The pasqueflowers don't bloom to make me happy but to ensure their species continues. The swallows don't soar in the sky to lift up my heart. The creek doesn't run full so I can enjoy the sound of rushing water. The clouds don't pulse across the sky to pull me out of my sadness.  

We're part of nature, part of the living and dying. When autumn comes again and nature pulls back for the season, we'll be part of that, too, perhaps witnessing more suffering. So now, as I say good-bye to the pasqueflowers for another year, I’ll hold their tenderness and light that they shed so easily and generously.

Discovering New Lands

I was supposed to be in Alaska next week but, like everyone else, I’m not going anywhere. And, like most people I know, I’m feeling desperate to see new landscapes, but the state government discourages travel beyond 10 miles of our homes.

As much as I love my walks around Meeker Park, last week my brain needed some new stimulus, even if it was just driving five miles down the road to the big metropolis of Allenspark—population 500.

Sometimes we just need to reorient our brains, jolt them a bit. From Allenspark I can look up at the southern side of Mount Meeker rather than the majestic eastern flank that I see from my cabin. It’s a slightly different view, enough to make me rethink the landscape a bit, to remind myself there is no fixed view of anything.

I’ve driven to or through Allenspark hundreds of times—to eat at one of the two restaurants in town or to get water from the springs. But I don’t think I’ve ever explored the town on foot. The “downtown” area is a cluster of a few commercial buildings, the post office, a tiny log church, an historic tourist lodge and many cabins. Realtors use the word “rustic” for these small log buildings that look like a good wind would topple them. One cabin sits precariously on tree stumps. Yet some have been sitting there since the late 19^th century, when Allenspark became more than a gleam in a prospector’s eye.

I walked west out of town on one of the main roads that dead-ends at a Forest Service trailhead. There were few cars, so I was free to let my eyes roam, without worrying about traffic.

Scattered throughout the hillsides and aspen groves are cabins, both big and small. One looked like the original cabin had additional rooms tacked on to it, but not in any cohesive manner, as if they were added by different people at different times who had conflicting ideas as to the best design. Another cabin was nestled up against a boulder three times as large as the cabin.

Like Meeker Park, instead of street signs, Allenspark residents tack boards onto the trunks of pine trees, with the names lined up vertically, like a ladder. They form a kind of group sculpture, each board reflecting the creativity or personality of the owner: different colors, shapes, lettering. Each assembly is unique, much more interesting than a government-issued street sign.

A bit farther down the road, someone had neatly stacked wood that could have won first prize for most artistic wood pile. And farther down the road, horses softly greeted me from a fenced enclosure.

Along the way, I heard hummingbirds and the lilting sound of a ruby-crowned kinglet. Water was running everywhere: through aspen forests, alongside the road, and forming pools in the fields, from which I could hear the sound of frogs. In these fields, popping up from last year’s dead grasses are this year’s first pasqueflowers, almost the only color now in this still barren landscape.

I thought of one of my favorite quotes, from Marcel Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

But one of the things I love about traveling is that I see everything with new eyes. In this newly closed world, even a trip down the road is enough to awaken me.