Category Archives: Our Land and Home

Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

Clouds Will Form and Rain Will Fall, Even on That Day

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Beltane                                                                     Running Creeks Moon

Cub Creek Trail
Cub Creek Trail

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. ”
– John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, (1938), page 313.

Though nothing in our immediate vicinity would count as wilderness, Mt. Evans, the fourteener that lies directly west of us and is our weathermaker, has a designated wilderness area all around it. I can access the Mt. Evans’ Wilderness Area on the Cub Creek Trail, about two miles from home.

The mountains are our everyday, rising, rising, rising yet still. Steady. Tall. We have our life on and among them, enjoying the air cooled by Shadow Mountain, a mile and a half above sea level. The lodgepole pines, interspersed with the occasional aspen grove, are the mountains’ hair, growing longer and longer. Sometimes the odd bald spot appears, usually with craggy rock visible.

Black and red fox, mule deer and elk, black bears and mountain lions, squirrels and chipmunks are our neighbors. We’re just two legged mammals in our dens up here. With the millions of years of age the mountains represent, in very physical form, our few thousand years as a species is unnoticeable. When we’ve run our course and the homes here on Shadow Mountain are fit only for archaeology, Shadow Mountain will still exist. It will not wonder where we’ve gone, nor feel a pang of loss.

I like the feeling of our impermanence set in contrast to the mountains. They too will erode away, yes, their immovability moved by water following the demands of gravity, but it will take so long. Cannot be imagined, how long it will take. Our visit to the heights will be long over when Shadow Mountain is of Appalachian size. And even on that day the sky will be blue, clouds will form and rain will fall.

 

Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

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Beltane                                                                     Running Creek Moon

Strong trees remain
Strong trees remain

Tyler has moved 4/5ths of the slash, maybe more. He’ll be back Sunday to finish up. I’ve cut up all but two trunks. One tree remains standing with a blue ribbon. There is a way to take it down. Before Tyler returns on Sunday I’ll finish that work plus limbing logs with newly exposed branches. Then, the only work that will remain is stacking the firewood and limbing the standing trees up to 10 feet off the ground.  Since May 20th this round of mitigation has occupied some of every day, two to three hours, sometimes more. That’s almost two weeks.

Cheaper than having someone else do it. And satisfying, too.

Soon I’ll be back to writing on Reimagining, Jennie’s Dead and Superior Wolf. Translating Latin. Hiking in the woods.

 

Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Slash

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Beltane                                                                                      Running Creeks Moon

Tyler, who lives down Black Mountain Drive toward Evergreen, came over yesterday morning. He’s a junior at Conifer High School this fall. A three sport athlete football, basketball and baseball, he’s still growing, but on the thin side right now, and tall. He worked hard. Here’s the material he moved from the back.

Slash June 1 limbs
Slash June 1 limbs
Slash June 1 treetops and limbs
Slash June 1 treetops and limbs

While he did this, I cut up the downed and limbed trunks. Most of them I cut into Seth and Hannah size logs though I have made some fireplace size logs for us. More of those today. I’m hopeful Tyler will finish moving all the slash by the end of the morning. Our regular afternoon rains make working then difficult. The water adds a lot of weight to the slash. Better to let it dry out overnight.

The end of this work is in sight.

Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

Mitigation Nears Completion

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Beltane                                                                      Running Creeks Moon

misty morning May 31
misty morning May 31

All the blue ribbon trees are down, save one. The remaining tree presents a difficulty in terms of felling and I haven’t sorted out what to do with it. I spent yesterday finishing the felling, topping most of the downed trees, those already limbed, and completing the limbing of a few others. Kate moved slash.

Today Tyler comes over and will help move the slash into the front where it will get chipped. I’ll finish limbing while he does that, then begin cutting the trunks into logs. This project is nearing completion.

After Seth moves the logs that he wants and the fireplace size logs get stacked away from the house, there will remain two tasks. We need to prune the branches of the trees near the house. They need to be clear up to ten feet above the ground. This prevents laddering of a fire burning on the ground. The second task involves cutting down a few more trees further back in the yard. There are dead trees back there and a few situations where felling smaller trees will help the larger ones grow.

Feels good to have reached this point. This is the first major work I’ve done here. Glad there was a task that needed a skill set I possess. As the trees grow over the years, the virtue of this kind of forest management will become apparent. Mitigation will improve the overall health of our trees, another bulwark against fire. Healthy trees can withstand more fire.

Bees, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

Summer Begins

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Beltane                                                                                Running Creek Moon

house400So. A rookie takes the Indy 500. The Warriors outlast the Thunder to make the NBA finals a second year in a row. School has begun to wind down. The rhythm of our national life slips into summer, a season forever shaped by the farm, the growing season, even though the number of family farms has continued to sink since the middle of the last century. The kids get out of school to work on the farm, at least they used to. Now most school kids have probably never been on a farm, perhaps find them as foreign as they find the North Woods or the Rocky Mountains.

Here, so far, we’ve had a wet May and forecasters think that may extend into mid-to-late summer. The deeper into the fire season the moisture remains the better off we are. With one exception. All that rain encourages the grasses, shrubs and smaller plants. They in turn can become the fuel that advances a fire.

Bee-guyThe fire mitigation process has the flavor of seasonal work in that it needs to finish before the mountains dry out. Hard physical labor in the early summer fits the mood. Here in the mountains the mornings remain cool, pleasant for working outside.

A couple of days ago I noticed an odd newcomer in the mountain meadow the cattle company uses to grass feed some of its stock. A beehive. A single beehive surrounded by metal posts with both barbed wire (I think. From the road it’s hard to tell.) and electric fencing. It intrigued me, looked like a simple set up. Sort of rejiggered the beekeeper in me. Hey, maybe I can do that. I’m going into the meadow someday this week and check out the setup.

 

Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

Still Felling

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Beltane                                                                        Running Creeks Moon

strong lodgepole shedYesterday I felled trees and slept. Wearing myself out. I’ll have all the blue ribbon trees down by tomorrow and limbed completed by Wednesday I hope. Tyler, a Conifer High School junior looking for work, comes by on Wednesday to start moving slash to the front. While he’s doing that, I’ll finish my limbing and cutting off tree tops.

When that job is done, the next work is cutting the limbed tree trunks into either Seth and Hannah sized logs or into fireplace size logs. I’ll probably finish that by the weekend. Tyler will return and help me stack logs. More chipping of the slash is also part of this work.

This morning I felled a few trees and limbed four. This afternoon Jon and Jen and the grandkids are coming out for Memorial Day steak. If the weather co-operates, I may take Ruth on the cliff trail, a part of the Upper Maxwell trail we’ve not seen yet.

When this work finishes up, the next big task will be sorting out and rearranging the garage. Finally. Moving in takes time.

Part of the point of fireplace mitigation is to create defensible and strengthen the health of the remaining trees. There are several strong lodgepoles that will now have better sun, more nourishment, enough of them that I want to name them. Two after the grandkids, then I don’t know what. The sinuous lodgepole in front of the shed is one of the strong ones.

Jefferson County, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

New Tricks

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Beltane                                                                   Running Creek Moon

two topper limbed
Two topper limbed. Today I cut this one into fireplace size logs.

Kate got outside today and moved slash, stacked wood. After completing the cutting up of all the trees felled by Always Chipper, I moved back into tree felling. Since this was the first I’d done since last fall, I started further away from the house. Still know how to do it.

Always Chipper’s Kevin and Tom taught me a new trick. When they felled the trees that were too tricky for me, they let them fall on top of each other like pick-up sticks. At first, I thought, what? That seems lazy. But, when I started limbing and cutting them up, I discovered that the jumble of logs lifted most of them off the ground. Easier to limb and easier to cut up. No Peavey necessary.

Guess what I did? Yep, dropped three trees one top of the other. Much simpler and faster. It’s always good to learn from people who know more than you do.

Rained later in the morning so the work will have to wait until tomorrow, but I’m making progress.

Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West

Fire

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Beltane                                                                                Running Creeks Moon

two topper cutBoth stamina and strength improving. Worked most of the morning yesterday, then an hour plus in the afternoon. This is work that needs to get done and has a meteorological timetable. When the forest dries out, it might be too late. The risk of fire here is real. According to the Elk Creek Fire Department Deputy Chief who came out last fall, there’s not been a big burn in this area for a hundred years.  That’s a lot of fuel.

Confession. I always wondered how people could choose to live on a floodplain, in an earthquake prone area, on or near a volcano. I was scornful of their choices. What were they thinking? As I cut down trees on our property so a probable forest fire might not burn down our home, I know. They wanted to live there. For some reason. Whether motivated by poverty, beauty, family or something else.

In our case we wanted to live in the mountains and enjoy the cooling effect produced by 8,800 feet in altitude. Find such a place close enough to the Denver metro-to make seeing the grandkids feasible-meant buying in the front range. Most of the front range near Denver is in the red zone for fire risk. As the climate changes, forest fire danger increases. “…fires up to this point have been five times worse than last year, and last year’s season as a whole set a fire record.” Agriculture department 2016 fire season forecast.

It has taken me years, decades really, to learn that the best antidote to anxiety is action. house400And, of course, a good dose of Zoloft. So we’re following the firewise policies of defensible space, fuel free zones. This means we will have done what we can, what makes sense. After that, we drive away with the dogs, taking our emergency kit with us, find a hotel or motel and wait.

If a fire comes and destroys the house and garage, we’ll rebuild. The fire risk will be much lower, at least for a while. In the interim we keep the fire mitigation up to date. That same Deputy Chief told me our house was well-positioned for survival. We live off the main road which makes access by the fire department easy. We have a flat, short driveway with the same virtue. Our roof is class a. Soon we will have completed a fire mitigation plan. After that? Taking our chances.

Anoka County, Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Jefferson County, Latin, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate, Writing

Write It Out

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Beltane                                                                             Running Creek Moon

freshman year
Freshman Year, Alexandria H.S.

Ever since the great iconoclasm, my voice has been muted. Not sure why.  Topics don’t seem to occur to me. I’ve never had a theme, a particular ax, though felling and limbing the occasional political issue shows up once in awhile. Philosophical, quasi-theological pondering. That, too. Lots of did this, did that. The online continuation of a journal keeping way I’ve had for decades. Art. Yes, but not as much as I want.

Maybe there was a more intimate link between the images and the vitality of this blog than I realized. Apres le mitigation the whole copyright issue, the fate of images in an age of digital reproduction, will occupy some of my time.

Work on both Superior Wolf and Jennie’s Dead have been ongoing, though not yet much writing. Reimagining Faith occupies a lot of my free thinking time, wondering about mountains, about urbanization, about clouds that curve and mound above Mt. Evan’s, our weather maker. No Latin yet. Not until I can have regular time up here in the loft. Not yet.

Could be that underneath all this lies a reshuffling of priorities or a confirmation of old ones. It’s not yet a year since my prostate surgery and a friend of mine said it took her a year to feel right again. This year has felt in some ways like my first year here, a year when I can take in the mountain spring, the running creeks, the willows and their blaze of yellow green that lights up the creek beds, the mule deer and elk following the greening of the mountain meadows.

My 40 year fondness for Minnesota has also begun to reemerge, not in a nostalgic, wish I was still there way, but as a place I know well, a place to which I did become native, a place which shaped me with its lakes, the Mississippi, Lake Superior, wolves and moose and ravens and loons. Where Kate and I became as close as we could with the land we held temporarily as our own. Friends. Art. Theatre. Music. Family. Perhaps a bit like the old country, an emigre’s memories which help shape life in the new land. An anchor, a source of known stability amidst a whirl of difference. The West. Mountains. Family life.

So. There was something in there anyhow. Now, back to fire mitigation.