Category Archives: Colorado

Colorado, Cooking, Health, Jefferson County, Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Travel, Weather +Climate

Went West as an Old Man

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Lughnasa                                                                  Elk Rut Moon

Drove home Monday night, got in around 10 pm. Pretty whacked out from the drive and whatever is bugging my left elbow. The elbow made sleeping difficult to impossible. No sense paying for a bed I couldn’t sleep in.

On previous driving trips turning north marked the turn toward home. This time it was heading west. A different feeling. Turning north meant lakes, pine trees, wolves, a border with Canada, 40+ years of memories, cooler weather. Heading west conjures up wagon trains, First Nations people, the plains, aridity, mountains, elk, mule deer, moose, mountain lions and black bears. And less than a year’s worth of memories.

When I hit the Denver metro, an L.E.D. highway sign reminded truck drivers that they had to have chains with them from now until May 16th. The folks installing the generator wanted to get it done in early October because it’s possible to have thick snow cover soon after that.

Altitude makes a big difference.  The aspen have begun to turn up here on Shadow, Black and Conifer mountains. The effect is subtle, but beautiful. Various stands of aspen, small compared to the lodgepole and ponderosa and Colorado blue spruce that dominate the mountains above 8,000 feet, turn gold, accenting the evergreens. It’s a sort of arboreal mimicking of the gold rush as the color of the precious metal shows up, fleetingly, on mountain sides.

While I was gone, Jon finished five more bookshelves and put doors on the lower unit I’ll use for coffee and tea among other things. That means today I’ll start installing shelving and books. This should be enough to get all the remaining books onto shelves and off the floor. Organizing them will be a task of the fall.

Kate goes in for thumb surgery on Friday. That means three months or so of one-handedness, a long time for a seamstress/quilter/cook. The gas stove gets hooked up tomorrow and I’ll head to the grocery store for the first time in quite a while on Saturday. I’ll be at home on the range. Looking forward to it. She’s lost a lot of weight so one of my tasks will be to help her gain weight. An ironic task if there ever was one.

In further organ recital news I have yet another visit to an audiologist tomorrow. We’ll see what the new technology can do for the deteriorating hearing in my right ear. Kate’s hopeful they can do something for my left (deaf) ear, but I’m doubtful.

 

Colorado, Great Work, Jefferson County, Shadow Mountain

Dining Out

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Lughnasa                                                                     Labor Day Moon

Driving down to Big R for some chain I saw a small herd of elk does, maybe 10, in the meadow at the bottom of Shadow Mountain Drive. I watched one, then the others, come slowly out of the woods and begin eating the recently cut grass.

Then, coming home, there in our yard was this fellow and a companion. I pulled into the driveway, opened the garage door and they both kept eating. Just dining out in the neighborhood. Our neighborhood, theirs and ours.

muledeer600muledeer2600

 

Colorado, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Mountains, Park County, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Our First Fall in the Mountains

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Lughnasa                                                                Labor Day Moon

Yesterday, driving on 285 west through the Platte Canyon toward Kenosha Pass, I could feel summer beginning to transition toward fall. The sky was a bit gray, the air brisk, a definite browning in the grasses and small shrubs along the North Fork of the South Platte. The sweet melancholy of autumn passed through me with a quiet shudder. This will be our first fall in Colorado.

These moments of awareness as seasons change carry with them the autumns of yesterday. The smell of leaves burning on the streets in my childhood Alexandria. The homecoming parade. The brilliant blaze that catches fire in Minnesota as oaks, maples, elms, ash, ironwood turn from their productive summer chlorophyll green to the color of the leaf itself. People heading north after Labor Day to close up their cabins. Kicking piles of leaves raked up in the yard. Jumping into them.

What will fall be like in the mountains? I know it will have splashes of gold as the aspens change. There will be brown, the desiccation of grasses and shrubs. But the view from my loft window to the west, which contains lodgepole pines on our property and the massif of Black Mountain in the distance, also covered with lodgepole, will still be green. I imagine the green might become duller, but I don’t know for sure. The angle of the sun will change, has changed already, but the basic green and blue, the sky above Black Mountain, will remain.

The temperatures, especially the nights, will cool down. The mule deer and elk rut are important to fall here, as is the hunger of black bears feeding themselves toward hibernation. A young mule deer buck was in Eduardo and Holly’s yard yesterday, velvet still on his antlers. We’ve seen no does for some time and wonder where they are. Perhaps waiting out the violence of the rut in secluded mountain meadows? They are, after all, its object.

Summer is always a paradox in the temperate zone. It brings warmth and growth, a loose freedom to wander outside with no coat. In that way it opens up the space around us, gives us more room. But the heat can become oppressive, driving people back indoors toward air conditioning. Humidity goes up; weather hazards like tornadoes, torrential rains, thunderstorms, derechoes increase. Here in the mountains, most years, the threat of wildfire spikes. As for me, I am usually happy to see summer slip away.

 

 

 

Colorado, Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West

Clash

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Lughnasa                                                            Labor Day Moon

 

Part of the transition to fall here in the mountains is the elk rut. My dental hygienist told me about her first experience. She and her husband came home from work in late September. They heard a sound like two men clashing 2×4’s together, went to the window and saw two bull elks in the backyard, charging each other. This went on through supper, and as night fell, they both used night vision goggles that her mother had left behind after a visit. They went to bed to the sound of the elks battling for reproductive rights.

When she got up, the second elk was gone and the winner basked in the comfort of a large harem of does. Also, she said, the bugling sounds just like bugles. Looking forward to this fall.

 

Colorado, Family, Mountains, The West, US History

All Aboard!

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Lughnasa                                                                 Labor Day Moon

RR250Colorado’s mining culture, essential to the state’s history, has left imprint after imprint on mountainsides in the existence of mining towns like Idaho Springs, Leadville and Georgetown, in dirty yellow tailings runoff like flooded the Animas River a couple of weeks ago, and  in now tourist oriented railroads that once carried miners, their supplies and their product, often gold and silver in the early days.

The Georgetown loop railroad, a 4.1 mile trip to a 2 mile away destination, exists because the grade between Georgetown and Silver Plume would be too steep, 7%, without it. Ruth and Gabe spent part of their 2012 ride cowering from the blasts of the train’s whistle, but not this year. This year it was “awesome.”

RRGabe250Kate and I are down to our last two days of grandparent immersion, the two week plunge that began last week Monday. Tomorrow I’m taking Ruth and Gabe hiking on the Upper Maxwell Falls Trail, about a mile and a half from our house. Today though, as Ruth said, “Sadly, Grandpop will not be with us.” I have a two-hour marathonman dental session. What a joy.

(Gabe standing on the bridge over Clear Creek, which gives Clear Creek County its name.)

Colorado, Cooking, Jefferson County, Mountains, Third Phase

Looking for a Sign from God?

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Lughnasa                                                             New Labor Day Moon

liveroadsignR285As you head into the foothills on Hwy. 285, there is one of those digital signs. The first night I drove up here to Black Mountain Drive it read: Watch for Wildlife. Seeing that l.e.d. message made me feel like I was going home, even that first night. After all the rain we’ve had this summer, it now reads: Watch for Rocks and Wildlife. This is not Round Lake Boulevard in Andover.

Another sign, at a Catholic Church in Woodland where we were last Saturday: If you’re looking for a sign from God, this may be it.

Bush-hogging. Another term new to me. Someone wanted a bush-hogger for their property. I looked it up. Oh, it’s one of those mower things pulled behind a tractor.

A part of grandparent immersion, this week and next, is taking the kids back, every other day or so, in the late afternoon. Due to rush hour on I-70, “that I-70 mess” as our mortgage banker referred to it, we’ve taken the opportunity to find new restaurants and new sections of Denver.

Gabe and Vega
Gabe and Vega

Last night we ate at Leña on South Broadway. “Leña is a Latin American inspired upscale, casual restaurant with a fun, vibrant atmosphere, focused on sharing and communal dining. The name translates to “firewood”, and a white oak, wood fired grill serves as a culinary focal point, offering a vast asado selection of grilled meats, seafood, and vegetables.”

Good food, buzzy, hipster atmosphere. Another new term to me: check presenter. When we tried to return a book to a customer who had just left, a waiter informed us that the book was, “their check presenter.” Sure enough, when it came time to pay, the same book came to our table with the check in the flyleaf. It contained, too, a note from an apparently very happy gay customer. Somewhat, well, no, a lot, blue.

Lena300After the meal, we walked up Broadway toward the car. Leaning over the sidewalk facing counter at Sweet Action, an ice cream joint a couple of doors away, were a woman and her three kids, eating ice cream cones. I nodded to her since they had been sitting near us in Lena and said, “I thought about stopping here.” She smiled and said, “This is the way you top it off.” There was something warm in her reply, inclusive, and it made me feel welcome in this neighborhood.

Colorado, Family, The West

The Wild West

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Lughnasa                                                             Recovery Moon

The grandkids, Ruth and Gabe, are spending several overnights with us this week and next. Daughter-in-law Jen got a new job in the Aurora School District. Her move back to Aurora from the Denver School District means she had to start work earlier than planned, leaving Ruth and Gabe with two weeks until their school starts and no parents at home.

Yesterday Kate and Ruth made a messenger bag. Ruth designs things in her head, finds fabric she likes and grandma sews things together. They’re a fashion co-operative. Kate’s teaching her to use a sewing machine, too. Gabe and I talked up in the loft yesterday while I moved books.

Around 11 we all went to Chief Hosa Lodge, where Jon and Jen got married. Ruth and Gabe had been there once, some time ago. They climbed around, imagined Mom and Dad getting married, then we took off for Buffalo Bill Cody’s gravesite and museum.

An excellent small museum. Buffalo Bill wanted to be buried on Lookout Mountain “because you can see four states from here.” This did not make the folks in Cody, Wyoming happy. They offered $10,000 for his body.

A special exhibit focused on the international nature of his Wild West Show, emphasizing the range of nationalities and ethnicities working and touring together. It was an astonishing global cast. The museum’s exhibit says they worked together harmoniously.

Ruth and Gabe spent most of their time at the museum rearranging colored blocks into various bead work patterns.

After taking them back home, Kate and I watched a funnel cloud over Aurora. As long as we saw it, it stayed up in the sky, moving a white thread toward the ground twice. That was enough for me and I activated old Midwestern instincts and drove away from it at a right angle.

 

Colorado, Family, Great Work, Memories, Our Land and Home

Stained Fingers

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Summer                                                         Recovery Moon

Jon and I went to Paxton Lumber Company yesterday, checking out exotic and not-so-exotic woods for material to extend the surface of the shorter shelving units. A couple of the ones I really liked were $20 and $19 a board foot, padauk and wenge. At those prices one board, thick, was in the $300 range. After looking at ash, white pine, and douglas fir, all of which I liked but were too close to the birch veneer on the bookshelves, we settled on black walnut.

Not only will the black walnut contrast with the birch veneer, black walnut trees were common in my hometown of Alexandria, Indiana. I have fond memories of stepping on the green acrid smelling husks of walnuts as they fell from those trees. We teased out the walnuts tucked inside and took them home, fingers stained with a greenish-yellow paste that had a bitter lemony taste. A part of my childhood. Also, black walnut trees were part of the old forest which dominated the landscape of the midwest prior to westward expansion. So those boards of the midwest will rest on birch veneer, redolent of the boreal forest in Minnesota. But the bookcases they constitute reside here on Shadow Mountain among lodgepole and ponderosa pines.

We ate lunch at Park Burger in the Hilltop neighborhood of Denver, a wealthy area with tear-down lots filled now with house reminiscent of Kenwood in Minneapolis. I had a Scarpone burger with pancetta, provolone and giardiniera. It was delicious.

Jon’s skills as a woodworker were evident as we selected the particular walnut boards. We matched their color, thickness and rejected some with too deep fissures or splits. He knows the woods and their characteristics. He also knows the places where exacting cuts can be made, straight. One place has a table saw as large as a small room.

Once again the joy of returning home from Denver’s 94 degrees to Shadow Mountain’s 77 with 23% humidity. The nights have been warm of late, making sleeping more difficult and pushing those ceiling fan purchases higher up on our priority list.

Colorado

Mataam Fez

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Summer                                                                  Healing Moon

Bernie Sanders we missed. The Mataam Fez serves 5 course meals, lots of hand washing, belly dancing and a generous amount of time between each course. Most of the food was very good, all eaten by hand, thus the handwashing, though the lamb brochette was overcooked.

The meal began with a salad and palate cleanser. The palate cleanser was shredded carrot with raisins in a slightly tart sauce. The salad had beets, spicy carrots, spinach, chopped tomatoes and onions and spiced potatoes all in individual portions. The third dish was phylo dough covered with powdered sugar and filled with a meat, couscous, spice mixture. Very tasty. The entree, mine lamb on a bed of pilaf with raisins and Kate’s shrimp in a delicate sauce, came next. After a long wait, during which the belly dancing happened, came mint tea, rose water for our hands and face, then a plate of cut fruit.

Across the way from us a toddler, a girl, got very involved with the belly dancing, swaying and twirling as the woman, older, took her out into the middle of the room to share the dance. This was a toddler friendly environment since guests sat either on pillows or hassocks at a low table.

We decided this was my father’s day meal out and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Until we had to get up from that position. But we managed.