Category Archives: Colorado

Anoka County, Colorado, Family, Great Work, Mountains, Third Phase

Make Choices. Live Them.

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Imbolc                                            Black Mountain Moon

P1020952750Selling the house in Andover. We’ve put our best effort into this sale and so far? No offers. Lots of lookers, but no buyers. It’s been four months since we closed on Black Mountain Drive which means for those four months and now a fifth, March, we’ve been paying two mortgage payments. Warren and Sheryl did it for several years and we can sustain it, but we don’t want to.

The longer it lingers, since it has a certain amount of our assets tied up, the leaner and tighter our budget becomes. Not unexpected, but not pleasant either.

There was risk in buying here before we sold the Minnesota house, but it was one we took with our eyes open. I’m glad we made the choice. This house fits us so well. Kate did a great job in finding it. Moving first simplified, by a lot, the whole process of exiting 153rd Ave. NW. And, we got to start our new life here in Colorado.ruthandgabe 86

An interstate move is expensive under any circumstances, especially when you have 20 years of belongings to move. Though we reduced by about a third, we still had a lot to move. The final tally, of course, is not in yet, but even when we add it all up, it will have been worth it.

Why? This was the time to move in terms of our health. We’re still healthy enough to establish a new life. And, moving to Colorado allowed us to accomplish two goals with one move. The first, being closer to the grandkids, was both about seeing them more often and their ages, Ruth, 8, and Gabe, 6.  As with our health, this was the time to move to be part of their lives while they still tune into grandparents.

IMAG0977The second goal we accomplished was to move into a place of great natural beauty with space for our four dogs and our mutual creative work. Living in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains means we have a home where the eco-systems vary by altitude and the altitude varies a lot. It also means spectacular vistas, interesting weather and wildlife.

So, we chose and now we live with the choice. Happily.

 

Colorado, Health, Mountains, Original Relation

Close to Home

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Imbolc                                                 Black Mountain Moon

This night, a heavy wet snow. Woke up to three inches of thick white covering the deck. As I do each time it snows, I clear the deck first thing, even before getting the dogs. This is important because the snow compacts in front of the door and the dogs  track in the snow from the deck. The stone floor can become slippery beyond our long entrance rug. Clearing the deck fixes most of that.

There was, this time, less snow on the driveway than on the deck. It doesn’t matter out there much at all since today will be 47, Saturday 57 and Sunday 65. The snow will be gone, probably by later today, certainly by Saturday.

I went for my first mountain hike yesterday, following the Upper Maxwell Falls trail into the Arapaho National Forest. Even though intuition told me I would need my Kahtoola spikes, the day was sunny, almost 50 so I put on my Keens, grabbed my backpack with water, compass, map and journal and drove the mile or so to the trailhead.

Where I promptly fell, slipping onto my butt. Sigh. Pay attention to yourself, I said. To myself. Hiking poles, which I had also considered, but left hanging in the garage right next to the truck, would have helped, too.

IMAG0977This is a popular trail and the love it had seen over the last few weeks had created stretches of the trail that were solid ice almost the width of the trail. Fortunately there was crunchy snow just off the trail so that walking on it I could make it some ways back into the woods. About 3/8’s of a mile in, though, the trail turned steeply up and narrowed. This section was not ice, but solidly packed snow that had melted then refrozen. May as well have been ice. In the gear I had for the day that was not passable, so I turned back.

Maxwell Creek burbled under its lacy ice and snow covering. There was an off trail path across the creek and up to a mostly snowless outcropping of rock, a small cliff and several lodge lodgepole pines (above). I wandered over there and began my nature journal sitting back against the large pine.

This is, I think, still on Shadow Mountain though my USGS topographical maps have not yet come in the mail.

Also near the Upper Maxwell Falls trail
Also near the Upper Maxwell Falls trail

This was an exploratory hike, one to assess what I would need when I begin making this a regular habit and for that purpose it worked just fine. Lessons: snowshoes would have worked. To hike in these conditions spikes on the boots plus hiking poles make sense. I’ll need a good pair of winter hiking boots. Learn more about the compass and its use with maps. I need a better back pack and a small camera to take along would be good, too. The nature journal will be another pathway into becoming native to this place.

As I wrote the other day, the combination of spring weather, settling in to the house and acclimatization have made me eager to get out in the woods. And so I have started. This coming winter I’ll be out there with snowshoes and spikes, poles and pack. Now that spring and summer press against the remnants of winter it will be hiking boots, poles and pack. Couldn’t be happier. Like a long running vacation in the Rocky Mountains.

 

Colorado, Health, Mountains

Custom Boots?

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Imbolc                                                     Black Mountain Moon

OK. There are certain things, call them small trials, that come into everyone’s life. Today we’ll discuss getting hiking boots for the men’s size 7, wide foot. REI had “nothing in that size.” Just called Custom Foot in Englewood, an outfit that specializes in, well, custom fits and they said, “Well, we’d like to help you, but we can’t stock that size just waiting for you to call.” This was said in a sympathetic manner with a deprecating, sorry about that chuckle. End result. No boot.

So I’ve started looking at the world of custom made hiking boots. The advantage with these boots is they fit. And if there’s some problem, they’re fixed. Couple of disadvantages. Time to get them. Couple of months, maybe more. Price. They vary but they’re about twice to three times the regular boot. Of course, these will likely be my last hiking boots. Unless, of course, Vega eats them as she did my Timberland boots, but at these prices I’d be much more careful with them.

What’s happening is this. The cardboard has diminished. The moving in has slowed, acceptable for now, with another spurt to come once warmer weather sets in. The garage, for example. The acclimatization process seems to have peaked, not totally comfortable all the time, but close enough. Sunshine and warming temperatures have given me the itch to get out and start exploring the two National Forests that abut Conifer: Arapaho and Pike. But I need decent boots. Of course, I don’t need them to just get out and wander around a bit, but if I want to do any extended day hikes, I’ll want good quality boots.

So. Back to that small trial.

Colorado, GeekWorld, Mountains, Science, The West, US History

Becoming Native to This Place. More.

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Imbolc                                         Black Mountain Drive

Four Native Plant Master classes educate new learners in Colorado’s fauna: one for the high plains, one for the foothills and one for the montane eco-system where we live. The fourth, plant sketching, will support the nature journal I’m starting this week.  The Friends of the Colorado Geology Museum offers lectures and field trips that focus on Colorado’s physical features. Geology Underfoot, an excellent geology primer on the Front Range, suggests 20 self-guided field trips to see instances of particular developments over geological time. Wild Food Girl presents opportunities to hunt food in the Rockies.

How to saturate myself with the Old West, the mining and ranching histories here, that’s a challenge that lies ahead though History Colorado provides opportunities.

It’s an exciting time, full of information. Lots to do.

 

Colorado, Family, Holidays, The West

So We Live With the Stars

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Imbolc                                          Black Mountain Moon

As we drive back from our 25th anniversary dinner at the Buckhorn Exchange, the stars increase in number as the Front Range enfolds us, shields us from the Denver light pollution. “I still can’t believe I prefer living out here,” I said, “but  20 years changed me.” That was 20 years in Andover, Minnesota.

(Our table was just under this mountain lion.)

“We’re both introverts,” Kate said,”we prefer the quiet, the alone.”

Yes. “But,” she said, “we can always drive in. If we were in the city, we would have trouble  being alone.” Yes.

So we live with the stars, Black Mountain and the lodgepole pine.

The Buckhorn Exchange, at 1000 Osage Street, holds Denver’s liquor license #1. It was founded in 1893 and now bills itself as a museum of the Old West. The number of mounted trophy heads are enough to keep one man working full time dusting and vacuuming. (I asked.) There are old leather chaps on the walls, an antique pill roller, countless photographs and magazine covers mounted on the walls. It’s on the National Registry of Historic Places.

(this was the view from our table.)

We were, originally, going to have our 25th anniversary meal at Mama’s Fish House on Maui, but we bought this house in Colorado instead. The Buckhorn Exchange is to Denver as Mama’s is to Maui.

I had a bone in bison rib eye, Kate had elk and bison. As a starter, I had Rocky Mountain Oysters. They taste like alligator. Which I could have had, Alligator Tail, center cut.

A memorable evening, a fitting 25th.

Beyond the Boundaries, Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Mountains

A View From Shadow Mountain

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Imbolc                                        Black Mountain Moon

The world has receded. The old battles have become less clear. Keystone seems far away. So even the fracking arguments common here in western Colorado and in Weld County. The civil rights focus at Selma, Ferguson, even in Denver, distant. Not sure whether this is an inevitable part of transitioning to a new place, a loss of focus on what used to be, or an age related pulling back, letting the young warriors have their time. It’s as if a fog, not dense, but real has crept up Shadow Mountain, or, maybe it’s just the Shadow itself, the mountain’s long shadow, but the events occurring far below on the plains are less visible, perhaps even less real.

Minnesota now lies at an impossible remove, once again that cold place holder in the central northern U.S. The house in Andover is an abstraction, an asset, a factor on our balance sheet. Like owning a mutual fund.

Here’s what is visible: Kate. Ruth, Gabe, Jon, Jen, Barb. Vega, Rigel, Gertie, Kepler.  The mountains and their geology, the plants native to Colorado. The West. A new novel, Ovid, Caesar, a thread now, a strong thread of wondering how all the information available could be organized. The house. Continued settling in. The grounds and a small potential garden, the bees next year. Near things, you could say, matters of the heart and matters of the immediate physical environment.

This feeling is new. But, permanent? Hard to know.

Colorado, Original Relation

Them Bones

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Imbolc                                        Black Mountain Moon

These bones, these bones, these weary bones. Took Ruth (granddaughter Ruth) to the Colorado Museum of Geology today. We drove in to Denver and picked up after Sunday School, in the Jewish instance this is school on Sunday. She’s on the long road to the Bat Mitzvah, learning Hebrew, Torah, tradition. Over the last few weeks she’s been learning the 4 questions for the Pesach meal, the first of which is the famous, Why is this night different from all other nights? She recited it in Hebrew.

When Kate told Ruth she’d studied Hebrew long ago, Ruth replied, “Well, if you learn the alphabet and the vowel marks that’s all you really need.” And, of course, in a sense she’s right.

We ate lunch in downtown Golden at the Blue Canyon Grill, then went to the museum. We were late getting in because (only at an academic institution situation) a sign there said, “Between March 7th and March 15th we might be open. Call to confirm.” Several people gathered with us in the lobby and one efficient looking mom whipped out her cell phone and called. “Answering machine,” she said.

Just when we’d decided on the Science Museum a slightly padded guy in a black t-shirt, ear plugs and a stubbly beard wandered up. Yes, he said, I’m here to open up.

The museum has display case after display case of beautiful rocks and minerals from all over the world (and out of this world, too, since it has the largest moon rock brought back with one exception, plus several meteorites), but with an emphasis of course on Colorado minerals, notably gold and silver, but copper, molybdenum, pyrite, too.

There was, too, a significant collection of fossils and petrified plants. Dinosaur bones, too. When I asked the guy who opened the museum to explain petrification, he did so, and afterward added, “The same process works with organic matter like bones, too. In the instance of dinosaur bones found in Colorado a major element that precipitated out of the water solution and into the bone was uranium. Colorado’s dinosaur bones are hot. Really hot.”

The Colorado School of Mines is an interesting place, full of people who know a lot about rocks and geological history. Much more to learn from there.

To get back to these weary bones. Didn’t seem like much of a day activity-wise, but when we left the museum grandpop felt completely tuckered out.

Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Mountains, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The West, Third Phase, Writing

Learning Colorado

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Imbolc                                         Black Mountain Moon

Signed up for 4 Colorado Native Plant Master programs: one in the foothills, one in the montane eco-system (ours) and one in the high plains. 3 of these are 3 session 8:30-12:30 classes. The fourth is a two session, 9-3, course on plant sketching. Don’t really want to qualify for the Native Plant Master program since it has requirements for volunteering that I don’t want to fulfill, but I want the content and the chance to meet some people involved in botany here.

All part of becoming native to this place. Starting this week I plan to keep a nature journal, hand-written, a record of our yard, hikes, these courses, geology lectures and field trips, meteorology notes. I’m not much of an artist, but I think with some practice I can draw plants and animals, maybe sketch geological features, at least well enough to call them to mind when I review the entries.

We drove into Evergreen for our business meeting at the Wildflower Cafe. It was good to see those folks again. Afterward we drove around Evergreen a bit, going out to the I-70 entrances and seeing in the distance snow covered peaks. Our mountains around here have snow, but are not snow covered.

 

 

Beyond the Boundaries, Colorado, Mountains, Science, The West

The Rio Grande Rift

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Imbolc                                                Black Mountain Moon

Into the Colorado School of Mines last night, its Museum of Colorado Geology, for a second lecture to the Friends of the Museum. This one: Whither the Rio Grande Rift?

The significance of the title escaped me until Vince Matthews, former Colorado State Geologist, explained that the rift was a spreading of the earth’s crust, a spreading that thins the mantle and increases volcanism and creates faults. Then it hit me. Oh, a rift. Like the Olduvai Gorge in the horn of Africa.

There are three faults within the Colorado portion of the Rio Grande Rift that made it onto the USGS hazards map, one believed capable of producing a 7.5 magnitude quake and another of producing a 7.0 quake. Logarithmic scale. Those would be powerful and they would come in the middle of Colorado, toward the New Mexico border.

He used two terms in this dense, finely argued lecture that were completely new to me: graben and lineament.

Graben: In geology, a graben is a depressed block of land bordered by parallel faults. Graben is German for ditch or trench.

 

Lineament: A lineament is a linear feature in a landscape which is an expression of an underlying geological structure such as a fault. Typically a lineament will comprise a fault-aligned valley, a series of fault or fold-aligned hills, a straight coastline or indeed a combination of these features.

The focus of his presentation was the true northern extent of the Rio Grande Rift. Here’s a map that shows its extension in the consensus view (more or less). In this map you can see the Rio Grande rising in southwestern Colorado, then flowing through the San Luis basin into New Mexico and then onto its more familiar location as a major boundary feature between the US and Mexico.

Vince said that current thinking took the Rio Grande Rift as far as Leadville.

 

Leadville in this map is the first black lettered city above the C in Colorado. I use this map to show you the San Luis Basin (the light tan opening to the left of Highway 25 and starting at the New Mexico border. The San Luis Basin is a major feature of the Rio Grande Rift as it comes north out of New Mexico.

Matthew’s argument extended the Rio Grande Rift considerably further north and then hypothesized a turn from its primarily north/south axis to an east/west one. This map of the Colorado Plateau can be used to illustrate his argument:

 

Matthews extended the boundary of the Colorado Plateau east to include the Rio Grande Rift, then proposed that the rift extended east/west toward the area here marked as the White River Plateau. He based his argument on indicators of a rift zone (which I won’t go into here) and on an experiment on a clay model of the Colorado Plateau.

In essence he argues that the Colorado Plateau is a tectonic feature that has been rotated clockwise. When asked how that could have happened, he said, “I don’t know.” But, if you imagine the Plateau as a piece of the earth’s crust that has physical integrity, then a motion pushing up on its southwestern edge would turn it clockwise. One of the other geologists in the room proposed the San Andreas Fault as it developed. (I got lost right here, but I followed the argument up to this point.)

Very interesting. These lectures are helping me orient myself to the unusual topography of Colorado and some of forces that shaped it.

BTW: I loved Matthew’s description of two cinder cones as “very young.” They were only 640,000 years old. Puts 68 in a very satisfying context.

Colorado, Great Work

Mother of Rivers

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Imbolc                                      Black Mountain Moon

Just spent a half an hour tracing the Rio Grande from its source in Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico. Then, the Colorado. The Platte River rises here, too, as does the Arkansas. Colorado may in the national memory be mountains, but in the national and international geography it is the mother of rivers, much like the Himalaya are the mother to India’s famous rivers.

It’s interesting to think of the snow hanging right now on the lodgepole pines in our yard melting, then later in the spring finding its way down the mountain into the South Platte and then on to the Mississippi and the Gulf. A mountains seems isolated, feels isolated but gravity and density make what happens on it run down hill.