• Category Archives Colorado

  • Inhabiting the Move

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                        Emergence Moon

    Planning on an hour or so a day, maybe two some days. Today the garage. Clustering yet another batch of toxic chemicals for a run to the hazardous waste depot. Old motor oil, gasoline preservative, brake fluid, paint. I put in that pile the ambitious collection of items I got when I decided to tackle small engine repair.

    In my usual avidity I dove into it, buying manuals, tools and imagining the things I could fix: snowblower, lawn tractor, weed whacker, chainsaw. Why? I can’t recall now, but, like the irrigation system I reasoned, it can’t be that hard. Oh. Yes. It could. Wrenches and screwdrivers danced out of my hands. Things weren’t where they were supposed to be, or at least where I figured they should be. Turning screws, cranking off recalcitrant nuts, slipping belts off and on and connecting metal latches all had unanticipated problems for me. I’m sure they were the kind of thing a kid learns with a father or brother who enjoys these things, but I skipped that part of my education.

    Finally I admitted what could have been obvious to me in the beginning. This required more patience than I had and more skill than I was willing to learn. I felt a bit defeated, somewhat ashamed of myself as a man, not being able to get simple mechanical tasks done.

    This sequence of imagining myself into some new skill began with lock smith ads in the Popular Mechanics and True magazines I read as a child. Boy, if I knew how to pick locks, make keys, install safes, I’d have a real, useful craft. Over time this theme of having a real, useful craft would, oddly, lead me to attend seminary and learn how to be a minister. Ministry was not, however, equivalent to being a locksmith. It was both more and less complicated, more and less useful.


    Colorado The Move

  • Get To Colorado Happy About the Move

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                              Emergence Moon

    In move. This is the space where I live these days, with matters to attend to at home, in the garden, with service providers and in Colorado. There are more pieces to juggle for the next year or so, but I’m looking forward to each one of them.

    Gentle Transitions was not the service I imagined, but SortTossPack just might be. Thanks to Bill Schmidt for pointing me to a website where I found them.

    Kate and I know how to work together, how to get things done, so we’ll manage this. She’s good at the details; I can keep perspective on the big picture. In my mind we have three large tasks. The first is to establish a realistic budget which includes an estimated cost of the move itself and the amount of home we can afford to purchase in Colorado. We have sessions with Ruth Hayden and RJ, our financial consultants, that will push that task forward. The second big task is to downsize/declutter, not so much to move into a smaller space, though we probably will, but to simplify our life and make sure we move only things we love.  William Morris, the famous arts and crafts designer said, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” The third task is put this house on the market and sell it.

    Within the limits of what we can afford I want to do as little of this as possible, but as much as I need to. Only I can downsize my library by half. Only I can sort through items of a lifetime and send many (most?) to a new life apart from me. In other instances, well, let the mover/organizer/realtor do it.

    My overall goal is to get to Colorado happy about the move, the process and our home there. That translates into doing this work at a reasonable pace, spread out over time, utilizing money and personal muscle in appropriate amounts and finding humor in it all.


    Colorado

  • On Us

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                             Emergence Moon

    Planting finished. Next comes weeding, watering and thinning. Then mulching.

     

    Gentle Transitions was a bit disappointing, though I think that’s on me rather than them. I imagined them as helping us set up a process for moving, a schedule with milestones, things like that, but instead they handle the moving chores right up to loading the truck. If we were moving in state, they would also help unpack. They’re a good service to know about but it leaves us with the (daunting) task of downsizing our stuff. Their service can help us donate items and we got a list of folks who do estate sales, so there are pre-move services, but not quite what I wanted.

    So. We do it ourselves. That means a schedule, room by room in some cases, by items (in the matter of things to sell or donate). I’ll start putting one together over the next couple of days.


    Colorado Our Land and Home

  • Wrenched

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                    Emergence Moon

    The more I consider this, something to keep me alert and awake (he said sardonically.), I think the move is causing my insomnia. It’s not whether to move or not, that’s settled and I feel good about it. No, it’s the interim period, the appearance of staying in place as things were when in fact things have changed dramatically.

    Projecting this activity and that into the future, in a new home. Wondering about how to deal with all of our stuff. Remembering moves past and how unpleasant they were. Then heading over to the Colorado Real Estate site to run through my list of zip codes, trolling for places. Looking up places to see horse racing.  Jazz clubs and festivals.

    I’m constantly taking myself out of the now and putting myself into a future moment. In some ways this is inescapable since good planning requires it, but I’ve got to work through a way of keeping my attention in the here and now. Not sure how to do that right now since all the various aspects of a move act like a wiggly tooth waiting to come out.


    Colorado Feelings

  • Not tavering, not at all, just westing

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                        Emergence Moon

    In moving myself toward the way of this retreat, I have consulted a two-volume work I bought a year ago and have not used with any intent, the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. It was difficult to learn how to use it, at least for me, and it took me a good while to get my bearings, but I finally found a section that had some rich associations with What is your walk?

    A listing under the more general category of travel contains words related to travel in a specific direction.

    Here is a complete listing of words, in historical order, that have meant or mean travel in a specific direction in English: begang OE. lode OE-1400. way OE. one’s way c 1205. trade c1375-1564. course c1380. trace 1400-1768. raik c1400-1425. race c1400-c1480. track 1570. voye 1578. tract 1616-1865. career 1642-1651. gate 1735. line of march 1835.

    Under this listing then comes other phrases or words with a direct relation to travel in a specific direction. Where there is more than one word, they are listed in historical order, though I chose not to put in dates. (too fussy)

    1. aim

    2. compass course

    3. easting, northing, westing, southing. (naut.)

    4. counter-course

    5. collision course

    6. stepping

    7. round, beat, route

    8. rithryne (OE) straight/right

    9. zigzagerry, tack, zig-zagging, darning

    10. compass, circuit, circumference, compassing, ymbangt (OE), circuiteer

    11. ascent, slope, breasting.

    12. descent

    13. deviation from straight course: aeflast (OE), ymbswaepe (OE), turn, wrying, circumference, extravagancy, extravagation, outstepping, deviation, detour, left. digression.

    14. straying/going astray: gedwolfaer (OE), stray, vagation, out-way going, gate will, will gate,  straying, tavering, estraying, wandering. strayer, stray, straggler, strayling. missing. disorientation. bewildering. estray.

    (Albert Bierstadt – Estes Park, Colorado, Whyte’s Lake)

     

     

     


    Colorado Third Phase Woolly Mammoths

  • And the Winner Is…Bill Schmidt

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                      Emergence Moon

    Fortuna rode in from the western suburbs with Bill Schmidt tonight. He got hand after hand and played them well. Congratulations, Bill.

    We’ve had a soaking here tonight. As I drove home around 9:30 after the sheepshead card game in St. Paul, the rain began to achieve downpour proportions.  I turned on Highway 10 headed toward Round Lake Boulevard and had the windshield wipers on full phaser.

    Driving through the rain, here in the humid east, a background scene rolled past of future drives at night in the arid west. Will these storms be those of memory once we move to Colorado?

    Even though we’ve set ourselves two years to make this move, there is a sense of the last time I’ll… in many things I do, including this drive in the rain. To return to the circus image, the stakes have begun to loosen and the ropes have got some slack even though the tents a long way from coming down.


    Colorado Friends Weather +Climate

  • Journey Before Destination

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                        Emergence Moon

    A book I’m reading has these phrases: life before death, journey before destination. An adequate life philosophy and not far from the one I try to represent here at ancientrails. Which, in fact, emphasizes the journey. As does the Malay saying which I got from my sister, “Welcome to the journey.”

    Kate and I now have a destination that reaches out from the future and pulls us toward it, yet we must go on the journey first. That journey involves preparation, execution, leave-taking and much more before the destination. I like the emphasis on the journey. Slow travel makes so much sense to me: car, train, ship. Slow by twenty-first century standards.

    When the journey is as important as the destination, then a trip becomes whole. It is not a disjointed transportation from one locale to another with no appreciation of the changes along the way. Of course, slow travel is just that, slow, and often times cannot accomplish what our life demands. But, more often than not we can go slower than we think.

    I want getting ready to move to Colorado to be as pleasurable as we imagine our life there will be. Journey before destination.  And always, life before death.


    Aging Colorado Retirement Third Phase Travel

  • Colorado Diary: First Steps

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                 Emergence Moon

    1000P1030648

     

    Kate sorts through the first batch of items from the Jon-built shed. Keeps (move) went in the white plastic bucket. Discard was in two piles: trash and donate/sell. It’s a beginning. Just have to keep at it now.

    1000P1030650

    When we sold the house on Edgcumbe Road in St. Paul, our Realtor told us that our pictures of the property in bloom were instrumental in the sale. The one above and the one below are before pictures for the 2014 vegetable garden.

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    This one of the cristata is the first of a sequence of photographs that will show our perennial flowers as they bloom over the season.
    1000P1030647


    Colorado Garden Our Land and Home

  • Get It Sorted

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                        Emergence

    Let the sorting begin. Today, the Jon-built garden shed. A book suggested removing every object from its place, then sorting them into keep (move) and discard. Discard can be sell, donate, trash. Gonna start that process with the motley collection of garden tools we have acquired over many years of trying out this one and that one, while never eliminating any. Well, not only garden tools. There are old tarps, flower pots, wire, chemicals, and other things, lots of things.

    And the planting, too. A wonderful day for getting those onions and leeks in the ground, fertilizing the bulbs. We’re going to put less emphasis on putting food by over the next couple of growing seasons. Just more things. To move.

    Decluttering twenty plus years of accumulation will take us several months at a reasonable pace. I want this move to feel good, so I don’t want us to wear out at any point. This is a long distance hike, not a walk down for the newspaper. I also want it to build good feelings as we molt much of our carapace, not so that we can build a bigger shell, but so we can build a better one.

     


    Colorado Our Land and Home

  • Still No Wind

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Beltane                                                                 Emergence

    In spite of what I said yesterday I’m still in the doldrums. Still feeling out of touch with now, wishing for some magic transport portal that would accomplish this move in a flash. The resistance I have is not about the decision, that makes sense, feels good. Moving. And prior to moving, culling, sorting, packing, staging, selling, buying. I’ve done it, more times than I care to count, but it’s been 20 years and that’s a long, long time. Longer than I’ve lived anywhere. All that time to accumulate. Stuff.

    And the resistance is, as I said the other day, premonitory. What can I do today? Gather all the garden tools, put them on a tarp and divide them into keep and donate. After that’s done, I can plant the onions and leeks. Then, we can go into the garage. Same discipline. Sort. Divide into keep and donate. That’s what I can do now. I can’t hunt for land or property. I know that. So we can do the incremental things that will make it possible for us to move forward.

    Imagine those pioneers faced with a homestead full of things and a Conestoga wagon to put them in. That must have been a challenge. Or, all those nomadic peoples who pick up and move every season. Packing light’s a necessity. So, it can be done. I know it.


    Colorado Feelings Travel