Cabin Journal

A Very Fine Winter

Already I’m missing winter—even while there’s several feet of snow on the ground, Mount Meeker sparkles from top to bottom, and spring is at least a month away. It won’t be until April that the pasqueflowers, the first flowers of spring, grope their way out from under the snow and dirt, and the aspens and willows start flowering.

But there are unmistakable signs that winter is loosening its grip. On the creeks, the ice and snow are starting to melt, revealing running water that’s been hidden all winter. I can hear it, this welcome sign of life, as it heads downstream.

The gray squirrels have reappeared from wherever they were hiding for the winter; at least one has a nest in my neighbor’s open shed. All winter they’ve survived on the pine cones and other food that they cached last fall, but they must be running out, because I see them now leaping across the snow, leaving their small footprints behind.

With the warmer weather, the picnic tables at Wild Basin are starting to emerge from under the snow, so I can see their tops (below). The six-foot pile of snow in my driveway is starting to draw down, so I can see my car from the cabin.

But I’ll miss a lot of things about winter. With fewer people on my favorite trails, I can experience nature more intimately. And I don’t have to worry about making on-line reservations with the Park Service before I head out.

At the cabin, I can stand outside and yell back at the Steller jays who want me to put more bird seed out, without anyone (hopefully) hearing me and thinking I’m the crazy lady who talks to birds (even if I am). On my walks, I can wave to my favorite Highland cattle when no one’s around.  

In town, with most of the tourists gone for the winter, a friend and I have no trouble finding a parking spot at our favorite restaurant, where we are often the only ones having an early dinner. This gives us time to get to know the waiter, learn where he came from and his plans for the future. In a month or so, we’ll have to wait for a table and scrounge for a parking spot.

In February, thinking I was tired of the cold and snow, I tried to make plans for a vacation someplace where grass was growing, trees were leafed out, and the air was humid. But when my efforts failed, I accepted winter and then I started to love it: the bracing cold, how the landscape changed with each new snowstorm, the beauty and malleability of snow.

I’ve come to appreciate that it’s been a good winter, especially when compared to California’s, with too much rain and snow, or the Midwest, where winter brought too little snow. Not only have we got plenty of the white stuff in Colorado, which lowers the risk of wildfires this summer, but here in the northern mountains it’s come in moderate amounts—5 or 6 inches at a time—so we weren’t overwhelmed and had time to dig out the car and driveway before the next snow arrived. The temperatures were colder than normal, with highs of 10 degrees on some days, but that felt good, too. While Europe was suffering from warmer than normal temperatures and bare ski slopes, we were getting an old-fashioned freeze.

I learned to love the snow and cold, love the nights sitting in front of my wood-burning stove watching the flames curl up around the logs. But what I’ll miss the most when winter leaves and the tourists and summer visitors return—with their dogs, their ATVs and their chainsaws—is the peace and silence. When I step outside, I can feel it—the absence of human stimulation like car noise or electronic devices.

It's not just me that appreciates the silence. I’ve read that wildlife will avoid human corridors; maybe all the noise and commotion we make keeps them from hearing what they need so they can survive.

On my walks around Meeker Park, where on a winter day I can convince myself that I’m alone in this partially wild landscape, I start to sense something outside of the human realm. Maybe it’s not silence I hear but the earth quietly going about its business.

Gems of Nature: Look Closely

The technician from Century Link was taking apart the old cable box in front of the cabin as he installed a new Internet connection. “Look at this,” he said, showing me an old paper wasp nest. A symmetrical whorl of delicate layers of paper, it’s a smaller version of the larger nests that I find under the eaves of the cabin. But attached on the bottom was an even smaller piece  (below, on the left) that resembled the spinning tops I played with as a child. I can only guess that the wasps were trying to create another nest inside this cable box but ran into space limitations, so it’s only half formed or a miniature nest, long abandoned. But the larger question for me is: how can an insect with such a small brain create something so perfectly shaped?

Everywhere I go in the natural landscape I find small bits of beauty that surprise and delight me. If I look hard enough, I’ll find something I’ve never seen before, that makes me appreciate this natural world and realize how much more complex it is than I ever imagined. Even an object as common and simple as a pine cone is something to admire: a perfectly symmetrical structure with layered and spaced scales from which the squirrels pry out the seeds for eating.

 

 

 

On one of my walks, I found a skull (left) that likely comes from a small mammal, perhaps a weasel. I love the simplicity and shape.  It’s also a reminder of life and death, a totem of something that once lived but is gone. In Georgia O’Keeffe’s home in New Mexico hangs a cattle skull with curved horns, a skull she painted many times. It was a thing of beauty to her, and I think of power also.

 

A tree is a good place to find nature’s handiwork. It’s always a treat to find bird nests— each one a different size and shape, a display of a bird’s inventiveness in using whatever it can find in its environment: weaving together grasses, loose string or downy seeds. I have one sitting on my mantel, where my resident mice occasionally appropriate some of the nest for their own.

I always stop for dead trees, especially if they’ve been stripped of their bark. The insects that once lived below the bark left behind their tracings (right)— circuitous routes up and down and around, deeper into the trunk than I could imagine a small insect making. I admire their steadfastness, although I’m not sure of the purpose of their travels. That’s another mystery of nature.  

 

 

 

 

Nature effortlessly provides abstract paintings. This aspen leaf (top) landed on a boulder with different shades and patterns of lichen, and then raindrops fell on the leaf. This accidental juxtaposition is a combination of the trajectory of the wind that dropped this leaf, fragile and short-lived, on this boulder, which has been sitting here for hundreds of years at least and plays host to the lichen, one of the oldest organisms in the world. Everything came together perfectly.

In summer I’m dazzled by the dragonflies (left) who swarm my kayak on Lily Lake. When I look closely, I can see the parts of their tiny bodies, the different shades of blue, and their gossamer wings that look so fragile. If they were in an art museum, we would be dazzled by just one. But there are hundreds on Lily Lake.

So much in nature is circular: ponds, aspen leaves, flower heads, the eddies in a river, sea shells, clouds, mushroom caps. Time goes in spirals and is not linear, writes Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass, when she talks about  the indigenous perspective. Like this tree trunk (below), where the tree’s patterns form almost a spiral. The older the tree, I’ve noticed, the more delineated are the lines in the bark.

I'll keep taking my circular route around Meeker Park, keeping my eyes open, waiting to be surprised and dazzled by what I find.