Cabin Journal

Listen to the Wind

I come to the cabin to clear my head but also to ground myself. After a hard week of getting my parents moved, hiring and training caregivers, dealing with different drug plans, and consulting with doctors and nurses, my brain felt over-stimulated, constantly on high alert, trying to figure out the next step in a plan of action to make my aging parents comfortable. I couldn’t turn it off.

When I left Boulder for the mountains this week, it was a beautiful spring morning, daffodils pushing up, robins and meadowlarks singing, the fields brushed with a faint green. But when I got to the cabin, it was winter once again, snow squalls followed by brief periods of sun, and with strong winds that bent the trees and made the whole cabin creak. Across the valley, the winds created a curtain of snow that partially hid the opposite hillside.

Rare for me, I didn’t want to go out into it, even after three hours of sitting in front of my computer. Instead I wanted to curl up in the chair, wrap myself in a blanket and watch the wintry assault from safely and warmly inside the cabin. But I needed to move, couldn’t sit still anymore.

April is an ugly month up here. Remnants of snow are crusted over and covered with pine needles and dirt. Everything is raw; last year’s grasses have been beaten into submission by the wind, tangled and matted in the dirt. There’s nothing pretty now, nothing pleasant and hardly anything that would give one hope for spring except the rushing of the creek.

I hurried on the road, and through piles of slush, trying to avoid getting blasted by the wind, keeping my head down. My usual sources of inspiration were unavailable. Mount Meeker was hidden in gray clouds, and my favorite pond (above) was colorless, covered with sheets of melting ice.

But there was something insistent in the air, something tugging at me, something else beyond my jumbled thoughts: listen, it said, be aware, pay attention. And when I let go of my obsessive thoughts, I could hear it. It was in the wind (that sounded sometimes like a jet roar), but also in the small chirps of the juncos feeding on the ground (right) and in the blackbirds’ raucous calls as they circled above the pines. It was in the creek, free now from the ice and tumbling joyfully and playfully down the valley.

It was the voice of another world, another reality from the one I had been locked in for a week. It was spacious and open, not bound by the rules of the human world but of another dimension. You could call it the natural world. Whatever it was, it pulled me out of my small, constricted life and propelled me into something else, something unconcerned with Medicare, wheelchairs, even old age, sickness and death, because the sky, the earth and the winds felt eternal, never-ending.  Whatever this life force is, it heals me and makes me whole again, sets me back on the ground that I must trod.

It’s Blowing in the Wind

 

What our society is most lacking, I believe, is a sense of community. Maybe that’s why I love reading the Allenspark Wind, which calls itself “a journal of the life and times of Allenspark, Ferncliff, Longs Peak, Meeker Park, Peaceful Valley, Raymond, and Riverside, Colorado.”

In an age where most people get their news from the Internet, it’s a pleasure to hold the Allenspark Wind in my hands and read about the barbecue lunch held at the Hilltop Guild or the most creative costume at the Halloween party (dressed as the Allenspark Wind) or read about the pet of the month.

 

You won’t find the kind of news you find in most newspapers: new laws being passed, people being arrested, or tax revenue down. Instead, local groups, such as the Hilltop Guild, report on their latest activities, which usually center on quilting, garden programs, and planning for future events, such as classes on decorating gourds and making sugar-free jellies and talks on horticulture in the mountains. This is not trivial stuff. This is the stuff that knits the community together.

 

The Wind (named for the ferocious gusts that drop over the mountains from the west) usually has one or two obits, written in depth and with love. In a community as small as Allenspark, this is important news, because this is someone you know or a neighbor or someone who had a vital role in building and maintaining the community.

 

Any real “news” comes in the form of lengthy articles about the pine beetle, its progress, and the latest theories on how to fight the bug that is killing off our forests; or in the “AFPD emergency calls” column (“September 6, 12:55 p.m. Lost party, party found on Lab Road, 9 Allenspark personnel responded. Incident terminated at 1:45 p.m.”).

 

Most of the Wind, which is in the form of an 8 ½-by-11 inch newsletter, consists of columns. One of my favorites is “Weather Talk” by Dr. William Rense who tracks the temperatures and precipitation on a daily basis in the valley, compares it to historical patterns and comes up with a prediction or conclusion about our current state, such as whether we’ve received enough precipitation to make it through the summer.

 

The pastor of the New Covenant Church writes a column about religious matters, touting, in one issue, the benefits of prayer, while a local rancher relates stories, written in a folksy cowboy style, about ranching life in the valley—like the time he helped reunite a mother cow and her calf, even when it made no economic sense.

 

My favorite articles are about local history, like the one in the June 2009 issue by a woman who spent childhood summers at a souvenir store run by her parents, just down the road from Allenspark.   “We played outside all day, building forts, damming the nearby creek to make splash pools and just wandering through the woods.” These stories evoke for me a different time, when life was slower and simple things, like playing in the creek, were fine amusements. 

 

Another issue related the life of a local photographer who took photos starting in 1913 at age six and didn’t stop until  one week before his death  in 2000. In the intervening time, he documented decades of change in the Estes Park-Allenspark area.  The picture of Lily Lake, which graces the cover of the December 2009 Allenspark Wind (above), was taken in 1922 and shows  a very different lake than the present one: a lot fewer trees and what looks like a beaver house on one end, which is no longer there.  I know this because I walk and kayak around Lily Lake frequently.  

 

So these photos are a reminder that even nature changes. And these articles about Allenspark’s  history not only give me an appreciation of what life was life but add to the complexity of this place, add layers to my knowledge of people and places no longer here.

My favorite column is by David Steiner, a thoughtful and elegant writer: In “My Mountains,” last April, he talked about the founding of the Allenspark Wind 35 years ago, spurred, it seems, by the Estes Park papers ignoring Allenspark and the surrounding area. The paper’s readers consist of 160 local subscribers and 500 from all over the country.

 

“It’s safe to say that the WIND fills a need in our community, a need that cannot be filled by any other entity at the moment,” he wrote. “A non-profit volunteer monthly journal in an unincorporated village of fewer than 300 souls? And yet, thirty-five years later, here it is.”

 

I find it intriguing that the number of readers outside of Allenspark exceeds those living in the area by almost four to one. I’m guessing these are summer visitors who want to stay in touch all year or people who lived here but, for whatever reason (old age, sickness) had to leave.  I think it’s an indication of the draw of this valley, of the love people have for it, that they want to stay connected. They want to know when the first bear sighting is in spring (and see the picture), find out what ‘s going on with their former neighbors, and how much precipitation we got last month. Or the Hilltop Guild’s theme for the spring fashion show.