Cabin Journal

Disappearing Cabins

On some of my recent travels, I’ve been dismayed to find that old cabins are a dying breed.

Visiting the family cabin on a lake in northern Wisconsin, large modern homes are quickly replacing the ones I knew as a child—with one bathroom, no insulation and primitive plumbing that didn’t allow for showers (we bathed in the lake). Most distressing was the three-story house that has been built in the bay, where I used to see great blue herons among the reeds, turtles on an old stump and, very occasionally, otters. At least the water lilies still float serenely, apparently unperturbed by the speedboats, jet skis and pontoon boats that fill the lake on a busy summer weekend.  

In Michigan, on another lake where generations have enjoyed the cabin life, I found a few traditional cabins—built of knotty pine wood, with low ceilings, rock fireplaces and screened porches overlooking the lake. These old cabins, where the rooms are small, feel cozy and intimate, especially when surrounded by pine and birch trees. Unfortunately, more large houses are being built on the lake by people who want more than one bathroom and desire bedrooms big enough for their king beds and who clear the trees in front so they can view the lake from floor-to-ceiling windows.

When I got back to Colorado, the heat sent me packing to another lake— Grand Lake, the largest natural lake in Colorado. Unfortunately, this once pristine lake has been so overbuilt that it’s hard to find anything natural around its edges, even wildflowers or native bushes. Huge homes, some constructed to look rustic, tower over the lake shore. As I kayaked around one side of the lake, here and there I saw an old cabin tucked behind the trees, as if shrinking back from the overwhelming display of wealth and ostentatiousness now prevalent on this lake.

Even when people build new cabins, it’s not the same. For one thing, the new places are often three to four times as big as the ones that have existed for 50 to 100 years.  The historic ones reflect decades of different owners, each one of whom left their mark: built-in shelves; gingham curtains; wooden deck chairs that might be falling apart; old piles of wood; strange wooden structures that could be ornamental or used for a purpose no longer needed, such as to cover cisterns or old wells; and ditches that carried water from the stream. There’s a sense of accumulated history, of continuity, of people passing on something they loved and treasured.

Yet even as the old, small cabins disappear, there’s still a cabin way of life. Something about being in the woods and or on a lake breeds neighborliness. Most cabins are on narrow, dirt roads. If you walk or drive them, you have no choice but to greet another walker or wave to the passing car.  You’re squeezed together between the trees—a good place to be.

Lots of cabins are family cabins, where the cabin has been passed down through generations. You might not know the person you meet while walking, but you remember their father, or your grandfather and her grandfather used to fish together. Even if there’s no historic relationship, there’s a sense of camaraderie, of sharing this space. When I meet my neighbors on the road around Meeker Park, we’ll compare notes: the hummingbirds have left (too soon!); watch out for the mama moose and her two young ones; do you know who bought the Marshall cabin?

There’s something different about sharing space in the mountains or woods than being neighborly in towns. In the woods, it feels more natural, like how people lived in pre-industrial times, in small villages where a trip to the market meant running into your neighbors. These curving dirt roads, which most often are dead-ends, feel more organic than the straight and symmetrical streets in the cities. In the woods and on the dirt roads, it feels like anything could happen, like running into a moose.

Because they are disappearing, these cabins seem increasingly precious. I have to wonder if the next owner of my cabin will tear it down and put up something more modern, an airtight cabin that doesn’t allow mice, that has a shower and a real stove. Or will there come a time, as the number of old cabins dwindle, that people will start appreciating the simplicity, the intimacy and the closeness to nature?  I hope so.

Just Listen

I recently heard a spiritual teacher talk about his method to get rid of anxiety: shut off all thoughts and just listen to everything around you. Here at the cabin, it’s easy, especially if I’m sitting outside, because I’m surrounded by sounds—some natural, some not:  

• The scolding of the gray squirrel
• The chirring of the swallows flying above me
• A door slamming shut
• The small motors of the hummingbirds
• The whine of a chainsaw
• The wind through the aspens
• The louder roar through the pines
• Rain hitting the roof
• The creaking of a car as it hits the potholes on the dirt road
• The screech of a Steller’s jay
• The sweet music of the wind chimes on my front porch and the more sonorous tones of my neighbors’ set, intermingling
• The start of my neighbor’s car engine
• A helicopter overhead
• Children yelling down the road
• The chatter of the chipmunks
• The creek running, softly, almost imperceptibly

And then there’s my breath, mingling with it all.  

 

Life As a Ground Squirrel

I once read an article about a man who wanted to live like a mountain goat, to see what it felt like. So he dressed himself in sheep’s clothing and started hanging out with the herd, eating grass, moving up and down the hillside with the rest of the goats, who seemed to accept him, and laying down with them at night on the rocky slopes.  

Although I don’t remember all the details now, I was intrigued by the idea, as crazy as it sounds. We’re so human-centric, we rarely see the world from the perspective of animals (that is, non-human animals), except for an occasional glimpse into our pets’ lives.

Since my post a few weeks ago about animals missing in action, I’m happy to report a boom in the population of chipmunks and ground squirrels at the cabin. For the past few weeks, I’ve entertained myself watching them go about their daily lives.

From the deck, I have a front-row view of their lives. I try to imagine what I look like to these tiny creatures, no more than 4-5 inches long: a huge beast but with eyes like theirs. I could be a tree except that I occasionally move. Sometimes the squirrel stares straight at me, and it almost feels like a squirrel-human mind flow.

When it’s not trying to stare me down, I watch it in the field: its small paws tugging at a plant, taking a bite and then moving on. One smart chipmunk figured out that if it nips the flower at the base, it doesn’t have to stand all the way up but can  nibble at ground level.

Another ground squirrel will come by, and the two chase each other through the grasses and under the porch. They (and the chipmunks) partake of the water in the rain barrel, where I stuck a log so they can crawl down and get water. The ground squirrels, chipmunks and gray squirrels use the fences around the yard as a super-highway; it’s so much faster than making your way through the grasses when you want to get someplace.

They like to take dirt baths, finding an open patch and digging deeper to create a more concave space to roll around in, with such joy and abandon I’m tempted to try it myself. I know it’s partly to remove fleas, because I watch them scratch their arms and faces, and kick at their backsides.

The ground squirrels, in particular, are as curious about me as I am about them, coming up on the deck to check me out, staring at me for minutes on end, standing on their hind legs, their paws grasped in front of them in curiously human poses.

When one was trying to find a better platform to observe me, it jumped over to the ponderosa pine in front of the cabin, but its nails aren’t sharp enough to go too high, unlike the chipmunks, which I’ve seen climb to the top of a tree.

What is life like for this small animal, the one that charms visitors at Rocky Mountain National Park, that has figured out how to beg for food in such a cute way that most tourists can’t resist throwing them nuts, even though signs all over the park warn against feeding wildlife.

“Every animal is enclosed within its own sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world,” science journalist Ed Yong wrote in a recent article in the Atlantic. “There is a wonderful word for this sensory bubble—Umwelt,” referring to what an animal can sense and experience—its perceptual world.

So a ground squirrel’s Umwelt would be the sense of the rocky ground under its feet, the world viewed through tall grasses and flowers, the texture of the tree bark, the myriad smells (that I can’t even begin to catalog), the sensation of the wind through its fur, the taste of the grasses and flowers (and occasional nut that I accidentally drop).

These charming animals seem so relaxed, even content, that I wonder how aware they are (especially the young ones) of the dangers: a goshawk from above, a weasel from below (I’ve seen them going into the squirrels’ underground burrows), coyotes and bobcats suddenly pouncing.

Still, there’s part of me that wants to partake of their life. I’m too creaky and the ground is too hard for me to get down on all fours and run through the grasses. But this is what I learn from these small creatures: enjoy the moment. Do not concern yourself with things you can’t control. Let’s run through the grass, nibble on the  flowers, feel the dirt under our feet, the wind in our fur. Life is good.

Fighting Fire: a Conundrum

Every spring at my suburban home, when the snows finally melt, I start removing last year’s dead grasses and flower stalks and cutting back the bushes, making way for new growth. It has the satisfying feeling of cleaning out your house after a long winter. And yet the latest advice for gardeners, in this age of climate change, is to endure the  messiness for an extra month or two. We should wait until later in spring to clean out last year’s detritus because insects, including bees, winter under the leaves and in the soil. With a worldwide decline in insects, it’s becoming more urgent to protect them, especially when they are the main food source for birds, which are also decreasing in number.

At the cabin, I’ve always let nature tend to itself (except for some watering of the trees in the hot, dry months), and, over the years, I observed that nature knows best. In the east yard this spring, I had to fight the tendency to pull out the dried grasses that were hiding the new shoots of grass and flowers. I’m glad I held back, because I can see that last year’s grasses protected this year’s shoots against cold temperatures and late snow, and provide mulch for the new grasses and food for the small animals.

Mid-summer I  have a beautiful meadow (above) of waving green grasses and flowers. But those tall grasses, especially once they start drying out, can add fuel to any wildfire. This became painfully true when a grass fire last December, pushed by 100-mph winds, destroyed more than 1,000 homes in Louisville and Superior, east of Boulder.

As the West warms and dries out, my mountain neighbors have been discussing how to prevent our places from being destroyed by wildfires. We’re thinning trees, especially the lower branches, and sawing down dead ones. I’m bagging pine cones and needles from around the edges of the cabin. I’ve hauled out pieces of wood from underneath the cabin.

As a fire preventive, a lot of my neighbors are cutting down the high grasses around their cabins this summer. This poses a conundrum for me, because I love the grasses mixed with flowers—white yarrow, yellow parsley, purple thistle, yellow and red blanketflowers—that surround the cabin. If I mow the grasses (not so easy on ground that’s more rock than soil), I not only lose this beautiful meadow, but the chipmunks (above) and ground squirrels lose their cover from predators, and emerging insects lose their protection.  

We’ve gotten a lot of rain in the past few weeks, so the fire danger is low (or at least moderate). For now, I’ll let nature take its course, even if that means tempting fate—in this case, the loss of my cabin to a wildfire. I'm not ready to lose the wildness.

Missing in Action

Recently two neighbors commented to me how this year they are seeing fewer birds and small critters, like chipmunks and gray squirrels. One told me he and his wife put out nuts one morning for the squirrels, but the food was still there at the end of the day. What happened to the squirrels?

I’ve also noticed fewer animals. In April, I saw one mountain bluebird in the meadow where residents have installed nest boxes for them; since then, I’ve only seen one. Early in the spring I heard the eerie cry of the Western screech owl at night, but I haven’t heard it for more than a month. I used to occasionally see bats at night, but I haven’t seen any at all this summer, although it’s hard to see their dark bodies in the dusk or dark as they chase bugs.  

I’ve seen one rabbit this spring, and they are usually plentiful, chasing each other through the tall grasses or munching on them. Most mysterious is the lack of the gray squirrel (left), one of the dominant species that I thought would always survive because it’s so industrious: in fall it caches pine cones in trees and other places, which it survives on  all winter long.

Were there fewer pine cones last fall? Did the snow and cold that extended into June kill the insects that the birds depend on? Or is this part of the worldwide decline in insects? Did the fact that our flowers bloomed several weeks later hurt the birds and insects who depend on these flowers for food?

One clue might be the trail cam that my neighbors installed behind their cabin and near the creek. In a week’s time they recorded a bobcat and coyote, two animals that feast on ground squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits. But that doesn’t explain the decrease in gray squirrels, which largely hang out in the trees.

On the other hand, my neighbors are reporting unusual bear sightings—unusual because an adult and young bear have been seen during the daytime. Bears have become nocturnal to avoid human contact, but one feasted on my neighbor’s bird feeders one morning and then visited another neighbor’s deck. If bears are appearing during the day, does this mean they are more desperate for food or that they are still young and ignorant of the ways of humans?

One particularly depressing loss this year is the aspens, which look thin and sparse, and the willow bushes (above), some of which are completely dead. I’m seeing a lot of dead ponderosas around Meeker Park, and even the ones still alive  have a lot of dead branches. Are the trees dying because we had a particularly dry April this year?

I know that nature has its own cycles. One year an increase in bobcats means fewer smaller animals, but when the squirrel population decreases, the bobcats have less food, thus increasing their mortality, which could mean that the following year there are more rabbits. So many factors affect the rhythm of nature. Are these normal fluctuations or am I seeing the effects of climate change? I guess only time will tell.

The Hidden Life of Lily Lake

There’s so much that’s grandiose and overwhelming about this lake that lies just down the road from me and is a part of Rocky Mountain National Park. There’s the views of Longs Peak and Mount Meeker towering to the south, the ramparts of pale rose-colored granite to the north, and the views to the west of still snow-covered peaks.

Occasionally a moose or elk emerges from the aspens and conifers that border the lake,  much to the delight of the park visitors. Lily Lake once held beavers, which built a huge lodge on the south side but have since disappeared, leaving the lake to the muskrats (below) who criss-cross the lake, entertaining the tourists who think they’re beavers. While families of ducks sleep on the mats of water weeds, above them swallows dip and soar above the lake.

But if  you look more closely, there’s wildlife hiding in and on the pond, and the strangest one  has to be the tiger salamander.  With their oddly shaped heads and gills that fan out from their heads, and with short legs (below), they look like something from a different epoch, like someone tried to put a fish and reptile together, and it didn’t quite work.

After they reach a certain stage, most tiger salamanders leave the water for the land. But in Lily Lake, as far as I can tell, the salamanders stay in their larval stage, never leaving the water and never developing the yellow spots that inspired their name.

These ancient animals, which have the ability to regenerate their limbs, are related to the axolotl, which spends its whole life in water and never undergoes the metamorphosis into a land-dwelling salamander. But the axolotl only exists, just barely, in Mexico, where they were once a main part of the Aztec diet, but are now nearly extinct.

While discussing the tiger salamander with a tourist from Illinois who was familiar with the axolotl, he asked me about the Lily Lake salamanders: “Where do they come from?” The question stumped me. Did he think these larval salamanders had somehow migrated from Mexico? Or that someone had dumped some in the pond where they had multiplied? Or that they migrated from the plains, where they might spend winters instead of the frozen Lily Lake? I can only presume these salamanders burrow down in the mud once the lake starts freezing in November and hibernate.

But why do they exist here at all, when most of their fellow salamanders leave the water? One article I found said that some tiger salamanders prefer to remain in the larval stage because it’s safer in the water than on land, but only if there’s no fish to eat them. But I’ve seen people fishing along the shores. So it’s a mystery.

Just as mysterious and even less noticeable than the salamanders are the damselflies (left) that emerge every year in mid-June. Last week, kayaking on the lake one evening, these blue insects with their transparent wings were out in full force, even with a strong wind, swarming my kayak, flying in formation, like small armadas, across the lake.

Inches above the water, how are these delicate damselflies, which weigh almost nothing, not pushed into the water by the wind and drowned? Some even mate in mid-air, while others hang onto the blades of grass along the shore.

While I skim the dazzling surface of Lily Lake in my kayak, below me are strange primitive creatures, while beside and above me are blue ethereal beings. All of us coexisting happily in this amazing place called Lily Lake.

Losses and Gains

Last week, I was excited to be back one of my favorite trails in Wild Basin, the first time this season. I love the tall pine trees that form a dense canopy over this trail, which are interwoven with a few leggy aspens that provide some light on this otherwise dark, north-facing slope. On top, where the trail flattens out, is another thick forest of ponderosa pines.

But as I climbed higher, the trees suddenly disappeared, replaced by slash piles of dead trees with orange needles (right). While I enjoyed the unobstructed view of Mount Meeker and the still snow-covered peaks to the west, I had lost my cover, that sense of being enclosed in trees and protected.

As the trail headed south, onto a hillside that gently sloped, I found more destruction: hundreds of trees gone and more tent-shaped piles of dead limbs and branches. I can only assume that the Park Service had removed these dead or dying trees because they could be a hazard to hikers, or that this was a fire-mitigation project to thin the forest –or perhaps both. But the result for me was a landscape that was no longer familiar or comforting.

I hike this trail every spring and fall, especially, to see the new lime green leaves of the aspen in spring and then the golden ones in fall. But this year, many of the aspens were dead or dying—a result, I presume, of our low snowpack this winter. It seemed a double whammy—both the ponderosas and aspens gone.  

I’ve lost so many of my favorite hiking trails in the past few years—mostly to fires—that I don’t want to lose anymore. But with climate change, more fires are inevitable along with the loss of trees stressed by the heat and drought. So I need to celebrate what’s still here.

Last year the house wrens, for the first time since I’ve had the cabin, didn’t make a nest in the box on the garage. I worried that maybe their numbers were decreasing across the globe. But this week, sitting on the back deck, I started to notice the small brown birds with the upright trail and the lilting song.  One settled into the the aspen tree, 5 feet from where I sat on the back porch, and sang lustily, as if all was right with the world. Another house wren was picking through pine needles and dirt on the ground and finally found a suitable feather, which it carried to the nest box. So I’m hopeful that another generation will soon be on its way, nestled in the feathers that came from the turkey killed last winter by a bobcat. Nature loves to recycle.

In the sky above the cabin, the swallows have returned, and I watch their daredevil flying with great joy, as they swoop to catch insects for their new young. Amazingly, the pasqueflowers, which bloom mainly in April, are still flowering, and last week I found rare calypso orchids (above) on my walk around Meeker Park.

Even a small herd of elk has made its appearance in Meeker Park. Although these charismatic animals are plentiful in Rocky Mountain National Park, I don’t often see them—especially big herds—in my neighborhood, maybe because there are too many people, cars and noise here. Several times I’ve looked up from my computer to see the elk, with their new soft spring coats –step onto the dirt road in front of the cabin; and one evening a lone male magically appeared in the side yard (top). They feel like visitors from an alternate universe, one that is more quiet and tender, more wakeful and aware.

Since the fire on the Fern Lake trail in the park, more elk, as well as moose (above, sitting comfortably next to the trail), have moved into the areas opened after the trees burned down. And the combination of more sun-filled spaces plus nutrient-rich soil has produced more flowers and more types of flowers than I’ve ever seen, with golden banner taking over whole hillsides.

With climate change, it feels like for every gain there’s a loss in our natural world. All we can do is mourn the losses while celebrating the life that survives and even thrives. On my way back down the Finch Lake trailhead last week, as I approached the creek, I was glad to be back in the deep forest and even happier to hear the clear vibrato of a ruby-crowned kinglet, calling unseen from one of the still thriving pines. I celebrate these small miracles.

Life, Death and Joy in the Animal World

All winter, I watched a flock of wild turkeys trot across my front yard on their way to my neighbor’s place, where she put out food for them. In March, I was lucky enough to witness the males perform their courtship rituals—flashing their tail feathers in front of the females. Then in April, when the snow began to melt, I noticed turkey feathers all over the yard but was puzzled as to how they got there: do turkeys molt in the spring?

But the story turned out to be sadder and more unexpected. One of the female turkeys, my neighbor told me, had some kind of disfigurement and was shunned by the others. As part of nature’s plan, a bobcat took advantage of her vulnerability. Her fate was written in the snow. My neighbor saw the bobcat tracks and the signs of something being dragged. Those feathers around my cabin were a testament of how nature works: predator and prey.

In March, I saw other evidence of nature’s seeming cruelty. All winter long, when most of the wildlife is hibernating, the rabbits were still out, hopping across the snow and leaving tracks by the front porch, under which they took refuge. But in March, the rabbits disappeared. I miss them, their softness and gentleness, but I know a bobcat had a meal that helped it to survive.

But the rabbits’ and turkey’s demise is easier to understand than the death of a moose calf a few weeks ago. When it was still alive, the young animal was photographed at Lily Lake, just down the road from me, and its picture appeared on the front cover of the local newspaper. (My photo of a moose calf, above, was taken several years ago at Lily Lake.) But a neighbor told me that she saw its dead body, a few days later, by the side of the road near the lake, presumably mowed down by a car.

I’ve driven that road many times, and people drive it fast, oblivious to the fact that wildlife lives alongside and cross it: deer, elk, chipmunks and other animals. Driving it once at dusk, I had a car on my bumper the whole time, and when I slowed because I saw a deer on the side of the road, the car started to pass me until I honked, and the driver stopped just in time to avoid hitting the deer when it stepped into the road.

It’s hard to see any animal die, but even harder to endure the obliviousness of humans to the animal world, especially when our need to get someplace fast comes before respect for their lives.

Luckily for river otters, their way of life keeps them from (mostly) having to cross paths with humans, although that wasn’t always true. Hunted in most states almost to extinction for their fur, they were reintroduced in Colorado decades ago and have slowly been  making a comeback. I first saw one about eight years ago in Wild Basin, when it popped out of a hole in the ice and quickly dove back into the frigid water when it saw me.  

But last week, I was not only lucky enough to see an otter again, but to witness the animal do something I had read about but never seen. Sitting at Copeland Falls in Wild Basin, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move. I turned my head just in time to see the otter jump onto a snow bank and slide maybe 30 feet into the river. It looked like an act of pure joy, and after it spotted me watching it, the otter went farther downstream, where I followed it, and found another (shorter) snowbank to slide down. (I didn't move fast enough to get a picture of the sliding otter, but I did photograph the track it left behind, to the left of the waterfall.)

Although its survival was based on catching fish, it was having fun doing it. I watched the otter dive into the water over and over, although I never saw it catch its meal. More than anything, I wanted to be that otter, wanted to slide down the snowbank and become part of the river, make my way around the boulders and over the waterfalls, plunging over and over again into this creek. At that moment, I couldn’t imagine anything more fun.

In a world full of anger and loss, where often there is more pain than pleasure, it’s a treat to find pure joy. I envied the otter and its long leap into the river, where it’s at home among the boulders, waterfalls and deep pools.  Unfortunately, I probably wouldn’t survive a swim in the river, but I might be able to find a good snowbank to slide down.

Stock photo above by Zachary Spears on Unsplash.

After the Fire, New Life

Hiking the Fern Lake trail, it’s still a shock to see the burned tree limbs, the empty spaces where trees went up in smoke, and the charred black ground a year and a half after the East Troublesome wildfire roared through this area of Rocky Mountain National Park. Whole groves of aspen are completely gone and the blackened skeletons of ponderosa lay on the ground. You can tell that the junipers burned the hottest, because the black circles surrounding them are lifeless.

Yet, as spring comes to the mountains, there is also new growth. The yellow grape holly spreads across the barren hillsides, and a few barrel cactus are flowering, either having survived the fire or regrowing from deep roots.  New grasses are pushing up among last year’s dead ones, and in the puddles from the melting snow I find moss growing on rocks.

On the steep slope where the 2013 flood cleared out trees and bushes, and then the fire cleaned out anything left, I saw small ponderosa pines growing, maybe four feet high. From what I can find, ponderosas grow at a rate of  12-18 inches a year. Is it possible these pines started growing after the fire?

Most of the willow bushes in this open valley were destroyed, but I see new shoots coming up, adding some color—yellow and red—to this dark landscape, which is almost unrecognizable in places. With so many trees gone, it’s more open, so from the trail I can see the river across a now open field. And without the trees and bushes, the boulders are no longer obscured but are revealed in all their grandeur—the myriad different shapes, textures and colors. I can see how the orange and green lichen blend with the blue and gray tints of these angular rocks.  

After the wildfire burned the outer bark of the aspen trees, what’s left is the yellow outlines of these elegant trees, a bright light in the darkness (below). Similarly, with their needles burnt, the architecture of the junipers is exposed: the intertwined golden and brown limbs and branches (above).  

I read that ponderosa pines’ thick bark protects them from fire. So even if the tree looks dead—the blackened trunk and the orange needles— underneath the outer bark, nutrients and water can still be transported from the ground to the branches. These ponderosas might yet survive to see another year.

Hiking in another part of the park this week, Wild Basin, I noticed that, without fires to clean out the underlying dead brush and downed trees, the forest looks messy and is prone to more severe wildfires. In contrast, on the Fern Lake trail, the fire has opened up the landscape, so sunlight is better able to penetrate and activate new growth—of grasses, flowers, aspens and  pines.  

Although the fire itself was unnatural—leaping over the treeless tundra—I have to appreciate that I’m watching a natural cycle, even a destructive one: the death of one ecosystem, a rearranging of the natural landscape, and then new growth. It's not just an ending but a new beginning.

Stop the Wind

I used to love the wind. I remember childhood afternoons on the sandy beach of Lake Michigan, being cooled by the breezes coming off the lake. Or summers at my family’s cottage in northern Wisconsin, listening to the wind through the birch trees, the waves softly lapping the shore.

When I got to Colorado I discovered the music made by the wind through the aspen leaves and through the pines: a sound that evoked something wild: winds that streamed from the Pacific Ocean, across the Sierras and the empty desert basins, arriving in full force at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.   

Here, in Boulder, where strong winds are common, especially in winter, I also discovered wind’s destructiveness. A few years after I moved here, wind gusts of 80 mph tore off a roof in southern Boulder and sent it down the hill, where it landed in someone’s yard. Over the years, telephone and electric poles were constantly being replaced by tall metal towers that could withstand high winds.

But I was never afraid of the wind until last December when 100-mph winds carried flames across dry fields into suburbia, destroying 1,000 homes in Louisville and Superior. (Photo above shows the aftermath, with plastic head that someone stuck on the emergency fence.) Up to that point, no one imagined that a fire could start in December, burning so hot that it leapt across a four-lane highway to obliterate not just homes but a strip mall and hotel.

And in the last month, strong winds have started small fires up down the urban Front Range, burning fields as well as pine-covered mountain slopes, invading both mountain and suburban subdivisions. We’re learning that no place is safe. Last week, a wildfire burned several homes in Monte Vista, a southern Colorado town surrounded by farmlands and near the sandhill crane refuge I visit every spring.

None of the fires this past month has reached the destructiveness of the December fire, but everyone knows it’s just a matter of time. Everyone is holding their breath, especially when the wind comes up, like it has for the past week.

At the cabin, many of my neighbors are already making their evacuation plans for what looks to be a dry and warm summer: what to pack and  which route to take when the alarm sounds; who to call for information. One neighbor told me he can’t stop worrying, that he feels the hand of doom on his shoulder constantly. Right now, the fire danger is greater on the plains, because the snow has just melted at the cabin, and the ground is still moist. But as temperatures rise, the snow that covered Mount Meeker last week is quickly melting, and no measurable precipitation is forecast for the foreseeable future.

When I arrived at the cabin this week, the winds were strong, almost too strong to walk in, and the trees swayed violently in the wind. Unlike in the past, I didn’t find the winds comforting. It felt like some unknown and unseen force had been loosened. What’s scarier is that there is no safe shelter anymore.