Went to the Shaggy Sheep yesterday, about 10 miles west of Bailey in Grant. One of the real joys of living up here is the chance to choose a place like this for our weekly business meeting. The drive through the Platte Canyon, starting in Bailey and continuing to the Kenosha pass about 20 miles west of the Shaggy Sheep is beautiful. Mountain meadows with horses and cattle. Old resorts like the Glen Isle. Rocky mountain sides covered with pines. The North Fork of the South Platte a constant running presence near Hwy 285. An Orvis recommended dude ranch. Santa Maria YMCA camp. Gravel roads snaking up into the mountains.
Also stopped by the Happy Camper on the way back to pick up some THC edibles. We now have to ring a doorbell to get inside. “To regulate the flow,” said a guy, maybe the owner sitting in the shop. He and a guy playing a guitar were lounging. Mine was the only car in the parking lot, so at that moment I represented the entire flow.
The young woman who helped me asked me if I had anything fun going on this Tuesday, “Buying dope,” I said. She smiled. “It’s a lot easier this way than when I was young,” I went on. She got a cute smile on her face, “Yeah, you don’t have to be so sneaky!”
Into Denver for the Denver County Fair today with Jon and the grandkids. Our county and state fairs, stocked with canned goods and quilts and wholesome teenagers with Guernseys and prize boars, are in the Lughnasa spirit. Lughnasa, starting on August 1st, is a Celtic holiday of first fruits. Also called Lammas in the Catholic tradition, villagers brought bread baked from the first wheat to mass.
Each of the cross quarter days in the Celtic calendar: Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasa and Samhain were the occasion for weeklong market fairs. Goods were sold, contracts for marriage and work made and broken, dancing happened around bonfires, general merriment abounded as individuals tied to the grinding daily labor of subsistence agriculture found themselves with time free for fun.
In our hearts we are a rural country still and there is something deeply satisfying about seeing sheep, cows, chickens, rabbits in competition for some mysterious (to city dwellers, now the dominant fair goer type) prize. Yes the number of family farms is at its lowest point in the nation’s history, but we have a communal memory of the time when most of us lived on the small farms that used to dot the land. In fact that small farming culture was often subsistence farming, very similar to the sort of rural life in the Celtic countries of Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Breton, and Cornwall.
It is this underlying sensibility of lives lived close to the land that seems so absent from our political discourse in this election. We are a people of the plow, the barn, the hay rick. We masquerade as global sophisticates, but in truth the itch to grow tomatoes or to have a small herb garden is as American as, well, apple pie, which we will see on display at the Denver County Fair, I have no doubt.
Lughnasa begins the harvest season which continues through the feast of Mabon at the autumnal equinox and ends on Samhain, or Summer’s End. It is one of my favorite times of the year, only the dead of winter is better for my soul.
A rainy week here on Shadow Mountain. The El Nino has given us an early summer reprieve from wildfires. Last night Jon said it felt like northern Minnesota. It did. The rain and the cool down at night brought back Burntside Lake, Magnetic Lake, Lutsen. No need for a.c. so far and we’re at July 1st already. Not a good environment for growing tomatoes though.
Nate Silver has given Hillary Clinton an 80% shot at winning the presidency. Not a lock, but pretty good odds. Even though Hillary’s politics are not mine, she’s a helluva lot closer than the Hairdo. And, in spite of her centrist politics, the thought of our sitting President, an African-American, campaigning in tandem with a female candidate for the office, excites me. Our little country might be growing up.
Colorado Republicans nominated a tea-bagger conservative to run against Democratic senator Mike Bennet. This should make it very difficult for the Republicans even though Cory Gardner (R) did oust Mark Udall (D) in the 2014 senate race. There are many lefties, Sanders won the Colorado Democratic primary, but there are also libertarians and far right wingers in large numbers. The contours of the state’s politics have not opened up for me yet. I hope by the end of this election cycle to have a much clearer understanding of Colorado’s political dynamics.
And, hey Minnesotans! How about that Iron Range guy that chopped his friend’s head off with a machete? Whoa.
Out on the ladder this morning using the pressure washer on the solar panels. After checking our panel production by time, I noted that yesterday some of the panels operated at 110% of their capacity. Guess the removal of the pine pollen has had an effect even though the panels still look occluded.
The sun up here at 8,800 feet is fierce and requires sun protection winter and summer. The heat when standing in it can quickly become too much. Of course the solar panels are on the south side of the house, so when working on them the sun is an issue. I finished before the peak of the UV index which begins at 10 am and ends around 4 pm.
We’re gradually changing the house and grounds to suit our preferences. We have plans for some plantings in the far back, well outside the defensible zones 1 and 2. Probably lilacs and shrub roses on the edge of our leach field. On the leach field itself we’ll plant bulbs and some flowers suited for an arid climate and the kind of sun we get. That’s this fall.
The now thinned lodgepoles have also changed the look. To my eye they look healthier, more space for individual trees and more sun, too. I like the less crowded, congested feel. Kevin of Timberline Painting will make our garage, shed and interior look better. Bear Creek Designs are coming by today for an estimate on redoing our bathrooms. I had guessed two years for settling in and I think that’s going to be pretty accurate.
Young Tyler, who helped me move slash, plays shortstop for the Conifer High School baseball team. He had to sell Rockies’ tickets as a fund-raiser, so I bought two tickets and took Jon to see the Rockies play the Arizona Diamondbacks.
It felt very American to park, climb out of the underground lot to follow Dads and sons with baseball mitts, intense fans with jerseys of their favorite players, young couples holding hands and pass on-street vendors with cheap coolers filled with bottled water.
The brick facade of Coors Field has a retro feel. Oddly, this twenty-one year old baseball field is the third oldest in the National League.
Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack. A contemporary fillip added to the experience is the presence of metal scanners, uniformed security personnel and small plastic holders for phone and keys. Jihad and the great American past time.
The promenade behind the lower level seats is spacious, dotted with kiosks and vendors: extreme hotdogs, Denver cheesesteak, Nathan’s kosher hot dogs, Diamond Drygoods, the Smokehouse, Gyros. A man walks past with a mutton-chop beard and a pale purple Rockies’ jersey open over a white t-shirt, its tails almost below his khaki shorts. The smell of funnel cake, roast Elk brats, popcorn blend with the view toward the green, green grass of home…and second and third.
Jon came by train, the new rail line to DIA runs near his house and goes in the other direction to the Union Depot near Coors Field. A foot-long hot dog and a Denver cheesesteak later the game was underway.
Baseball is a bit slow for my taste, but the total experience, the people watching and the traditional bits like grounds preparation, the first pitch, people streaming in and out, up and down, the sun setting is worth it once in awhile.
We went to Dinosaur Ridge this morning, the place where the first stegosaurus bones were found in the U.S. It was 92 when we got there. A ride in the vanasaurus, an unairconditioned bus like airport rental shuttle rides, took us up the ridge where we saw bulges in the rock created by brontosauruses walking on their tippy toes and squishing mud far down with their huge tonnage. We also saw a large collection of dinosaur footprints laid down on a beach a hundred million years ago. Grandma and Grandpop enjoyed the tour as much as the kids.
After Dinosaur Ridge, we went to the Red Rock Amphitheater, not for a concert but to find a picnic area. We found one high on a Fountain Formation (red sandstone) ridge overlooking all of the Denver Metro. The breeze was cool, the food was good.
The drive into Denver to drop off Ruth and Gabe with their Dad was hot. As we got further and further into Denver proper, the heat went to 98 degrees. A bit later it hit 104 on our way back toward the Front Range and home. Yike. Fortunately, it was only 74 on Black Mountain Drive.
We have become much more familiar with the Denver metro area. The southern suburb of Littleton has become our medical neighborhood. We visit it often, perhaps a bit more often than we’d like. Jazz clubs Dazzlejazz and Braun’s are regular evenings out. The Curious Theater has entertained us with the work of contemporary American playwrights. Museums from the Colorado History Museum to the Museum of Science and the Denver Art Museum. Restaurants with Western flair like the Fort and The Buckhorn Exchange. Many sushi spots including the unusual Domo which features Japanese rural cuisine.
Shadow Mountain from the Upper Maxwell Creek Trail, Cliff loop
Most of our time has been spent here on Shadow Mountain or in the immediate vicinity: Conifer, Evergreen, Bailey. These mountain communities are quite different. Evergreen is a tourist destination for day trippers from Denver, but it has a distinct flavor that makes it much more than a tourist town. It has homey cafes, gourmet restaurants, an excellent jewelry store, two synagogues, small shops and large grocery stores. Conifer is a geographic anomaly, not incorporated, but quite large physically with three different “activity areas” two anchored by their own large grocery stores King Sooper and Safeway and the third with a Staples, a great ice cream place, Liks, and our vet, Sano Vet Hospital. Bailey is distinctly downmarket compared to Conifer and Evergreen, but it has a rough mountain charm. Our favorite marijuana dispensary, the Happy Camper, is outside Bailey. We visit each of these towns frequently.
“So you try to remain calm and remember your training. Not easy to do as you use the last t-shirt that came home in the box with your nephew from Iraq to try to keep the inside of his head where it belongs.”
“Meantime help from the young man that caused the incident is running around getting in the way crying ‘Please don’t let him die, I didn’t see him. Please don’t let him die’. Tried to be nice but had to tell him to get the f out of the way.”
“Was trying to figure out how to make an airway out of Pepsi bottle or something when he slipped away, as the fire department pulled up.”
Redneck for Hire, Pinecam.com
Life. Like the flickering of a firefly or a summer breeze passing through a mountain meadow. We have it, then we don’t. Tyler, my young helper who will be a junior next year at Conifer High School, had an uncle killed in a motorcycle accident on Highway 285, Saturday. Pinecam.com, that smalltown breakfast joint of a website, had several entries talking about the accident.
One, from a poster who takes the handle Redneck for Hire, was very poignant. He has EMT training and was on the scene before Elk Creek Fire Department. Tyler’s uncle died in his arms while he tried to remember something he could do to help. What was an abstracted source of hometown news became personal, even for me, though only in this tangential way. It’s the slow integration of our life with the lives of others who live near us.
Driveway the day we got home from Korea. Eduardo and Holly cleared it.
Our neighbor Holly is still in California, having had thyroid cancer surgery at Scripps in San Diego. Eduardo worked on the family beach house outside Tijuana. His father has late stage Alzheimer’s and the beach house is a place for him to enjoy. The two of them cleared our driveway before our return from Korea.
Next door neighbor Jude’s dogs are quieter, the front yard neater. He has a woman friend who has moved in. Jude was fired from his job as a shift supervisor at a casino in Blackhawk about a year ago. He returned to the welding business of his father, having worked there before. Now, he says, he’s so much happier. Glad he was fired.
Jon and Jen are in the early stages of a divorce. Painful news in so many ways. Yet, having been there myself, I know that once a relationship sours the way back can close down forever. Made more difficult of course by Gabe’s hemophilia and both Ruth and Gabe’s gifted, but troubled personalities. As grandparents we’re very limited in what we can do other than that most important thing: love them all, through it all and afterwards.
You might consider this an OMG moment for us since we moved out here to be closer to the grandkids and Jon and Jen. To the contrary. It makes the move make even more sense. We have a chance to be of real assistance, up close. I’ve spent a lot of time talking with Jon already. Nodding. Listening. Reassuring. We will be here.
Yes. life is a firefly flickering or a summer breeze across a mountain meadow, but while it flickers, while the breeze blows, what an amazing experience.
“…I am at home in the West. The hills of the coastal ranges look “right” to me, the particular flat expanse of the Central Valley comforts my eye. The place names have the ring of real places to me. I can pronounce the names of the rivers, and recognize the common trees and snakes. I am easy here in a way that I am not easy in other places.” Joan Didion, California Notes, NYRB, 5/26/2016
Front, May 6th
Becoming native to a place implies the opposite of what Joan Didion recalls in this fine article taken from notes she made in 1976 while attending the Patty Hearst trial for Rolling Stone. The becoming process implies not being easy where you are, not knowing the place names as real, not knowing the common trees and snakes.
The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is not a real place to me. Neither is Four Corners nor Durango nor the summit of Mt. Evans, only 14 miles away. The owls that hoot at night, the small mammals that live here on Shadow Mountain. No. The oak savannah and the Great Anoka Sand Plain. Familiar. Easy. The Big Woods. Yes. Lake Superior. Yes. The sycamores of the Wabash. Yes. Fields defined by mile square gravel roads. Pork tenderloin sandwiches. Long, flat stretches of land. Lots of small towns and the memories of speed traps. Yes.
A local photographed yesterday near here. from pinecam.com by serendipity888
With the fire mitigation this property here on Shadow Mountain is becoming known. It has three, maybe four very fine lodgepole pines, tall and thick. A slight downward slope toward the north. Snow, lots of snow.* Rocky ground, ground cover and scrubby grass.
Denver. Slowly coming into focus. The front range, at least its portion pierced by Highway 285, too. The west is still blurry, its aridity, mountains, deep scars in the earth, sparse population. The midwest clear, will always be clear.
Becoming native to a place is the ur spiritual work of a reimagined faith. First, we must be here. Where we are.
*”Snowfall for the season on Conifer Mountain now stands at 224 inches (132% of average).” weathergeek, pinecam.com
Finished a 2010 book, The Beast in the Garden, today. By David Baron, an NPR reporter, Beast examines the changing nature of the wildlife/human interface especially through an examination of mountain lion activity in and around Boulder, Colorado in the late 1980’s into the mid-1990’s.
Baron did an exhaustive amount of work. He recreates the time period in which Boulder’s love for nature and its actions to both create and preserve a natural setting resulted in tragedy and conflict. After several years of encouraging wildlife into the city through tolerance, rings of urban parks and conservation of land outside its limits but contiguous, Boulder had an irruption of deer. An irruption is, as Baron says, very similar in meaning to its volcanic homonym.
There’s a saying here on Shadow Mountain, “If you have deer, you have mountain lions.” That proved true in Boulder. The problem was, that since the elimination of the wolf, mountain lions no longer had any predator of their own and had become desensitized to their ancient foe: the canid. No longer did just any dog barking drive away mountain lions. That meant the lions could follow their main food source, deer, into human inhabited areas where they could encounter dogs.
Some cougars began to hunt dogs. The combination of hunting deer, their ancient and still most frequent prey, and dogs, kept as pets and therefore nearby human’s daily life, led to certain cougars becoming habituated to humans. Habituation involves suppression of the once instinctive fear of humans engendered by early farmers and ranchers near extermination of the species. Once that fear is suppressed humans are bipedal potential sources of dinner. Dogs were eaten. Cougars lounged in people’s backyards. A few attacks occurred. Then, a couple of deaths. This book tells that story.
Went to the Shaggy Sheep yesterday, about 10 miles west of Bailey in Grant. One of the real joys of living up here is the chance to choose a place like this for our weekly business meeting. The drive through the Platte Canyon, starting in Bailey and continuing to the Kenosha pass about 20 miles west of the Shaggy Sheep is beautiful. Mountain meadows with horses and cattle. Old resorts like the Glen Isle. Rocky mountain sides covered with pines. The North Fork of the South Platte a constant running presence near Hwy 285. An Orvis recommended dude ranch. Santa Maria YMCA camp. Gravel roads snaking up into the mountains.
