Category Archives: Holidays

Great Wheel, Holidays, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate

This and That

November 3, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Moon of the First Snow

We’re about to head into a cooler streak, some snow in the forecast. Still a warm November so far according to weather 5280.

P.T. exercises kept the pain away. Good deal. Means I can do more work outside today.

(We’re in holiseason now and Thanksgiving colors the days. We’re doing it here this year, our first big holiday do in Colorado.)

Logging. It can be dangerous and nothing more dangerous than a hung up tree. I’ve had three already and I may have been lucky in how I dealt with them. Trees weigh a lot and releasing tension on them can result in fatal injury. Just watched some youtube videos that were very helpful. Nice to see folks actually felling hung up trees.

I’m getting closer and closer on the loft, all the books are now on shelves and I even have some space left over. Once the snow flies I’ll start rearranging the books since I shelved them in broad categories, but with no particular order in the categories. That’s fun.

Today Melanie will do my floor and carpet. Before she comes I’m going to shelve office supplies and get things off of the floor, mostly prints and paintings, so she can work unimpeded. Getting the floor mopped and shined will make the place feel even better.

Beyond the Boundaries, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The Move

Happy New Year!

October 31, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Moon of the First Snow

The Celts began the New Year at the end of the harvest season celebrated on October 31st. In the old Celtic calendar there were only two seasons: summer and winter and today marked summer’s end or Samhain, the end of the growing season. So for the ancient Celts the year began in the fallow season, the season of senescence and death.

As I’ve watched the run up to Halloween this year, I’ve been struck by its emphasis on horror, scares and fear. As a direct, but altered version of Samhain, Halloween emphasizes certain aspects of the original holiday, for example the thinning of the veil between this world and the Otherworld, the land of faery and the dead.

This year Kate and I celebrate the thinning of the veil between Minnesota and Colorado. Exactly a year ago today we closed on Black Mountain Drive. That closing brought Minnesota and Colorado so close to each other they could touch. For us.

Three mule deer bucks were in the back that morning, eating grass. I approached them slowly and they let me get very close, watching me with round brown eyes, attentive but not nervous. They were the spirit of Shadow Mountain welcoming us home, a trinity of mountain dwellers.

Black Mountain Drive is a Great Wheel home. We closed on October 31st, Samhain, and moved in on December 20th, the Winter Solstice, the day that Samhain ends. The holiday of the longest night, Winter’s Solstice, is my favorite holiday of the year, so to close on Samhain, the New Year, and to move in on my favorite holiday gives our home a special frisson. It occupies a space not only on the physical Shadow Mountain but on spirit Shadow Mountain, too.

Our home participates not only in the massive rockness of the mountain, but in the essence of the Rocky Mountains, their wild majesty, their sudden emergence from the Great Plains, their uncivilized character. These mountains are home to elk, mule deer, fox, bear, squirrels, pika, mountain lions, human beings, dogs, cats, lodgepole and ponderosa pines, Colorado blue spruce, fast running streams, waterfalls, quiet ponds and small lakes.

It is a Samhain home and a Solstice home, forever for us, infused with the old energies of these two seasons. Our years within it begin on the Celtic new year and grow deep with the long night, the two poles of our start here.

So this year we celebrate both home and holiday. Blessed be.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Holidays, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Neither the First nor the Last

September 28, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Mabon Elk Rut Moon

The bloody supermoon. Saw it last night over Conifer Mountain with Kate. We stood at the end of the driveway, she in tie-dyed t-shirt and a small Hawaiian quilt for a skirt and me trying to make sure I didn’t fall in the ditch. It was, after all, dark. It reminded me of a frigid Minnesota night, a January of long ago, with the Woolly Mammoths at Villa Maria in Frontenac. We went outside to see the lunar eclipse. The air temperature was well below zero, maybe 15 0r 20, and we stood, in the dark, marveling.

When I checked Facebook this morning, I saw many cell-phone shots of the super, bloody moon. They all proved that cell-phones are not a good choice for photographing lunar anything. Too far away. They also proved the old lover’s promise, we’ll be looking at the same moon.

As any reader of this blog can attest, I start with the same two things every post: the Celtic season on the Great Wheel and the current moon. The spiral nature of time is caught by the different seasons of the Celtic year, seasons which recur, and the always changing, yet always the same phases of the moon. This focus helps me stay in context with the natural world, in it and of it.

It also reminds me of a crucial fact. This life will end in death, but death is not the end. It is, like the recurring Celtic seasons and the phases of the moon, a moment in the spiral passage of the human species from yesterday to tomorrow. I am neither the first nor the last, but rather part of a widening gyre that is the cumulative experience of what it means to be human. I contribute my part, then make way for others, just as the blood moon departs to make way for countless more phases.

Colorado, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Holidays, Music, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

JFest

June 8, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Closing Moon

Kate and I went to Boulder J Fest yesterday. It was on Pearl Street Mall, a three block long pedestrian mall that is the heart of downtown Boulder. We had a great time, wandering among booths that featured Jewish crafts people, Kosher food, humanist Judaism, Judaism Your Way and B’Nai Brith among many others.

We ate lunch in an excellent Italian trattoria with outdoor seating that gave us a comfortable front row seats to the performance tent. We first heard Lost Tribe, a klezmer band with extraordinary range doing everything from Bob Dylan to reggae klezmer. After they finished an acapella Orthodox group Six13 took over the stage.

Here’s a video of one of their number on youtube:

Feelings, Holidays, Memories, US History

Summer’s Gateway

May 26, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Closing Moon

Beltane marks the start of the growing season and the Celtic summer on May 1st. Meteorological summer doesn’t start until June 1. The summer solstice isn’t until June 20th/21st. Even so, we have just passed through our cultural gate to the summer season: Memorial Day and the Indy 500.

Yesterday bike riders began to show up in greater numbers, a fact that encouraged a lot of barking here on Shadow Mountain. There goes another one. Woof. And another one. Woof. The doggy equivalent of OMG.

Decoration Day, as it was called when I was a kid, was also the end of the school year. 12 years in the Alexandria, Indiana school system left me deeply imprinted with its meaning. First, we had the last day of school. The student’s equivalent of OMG. Then, we had the Decoration Day parade which ended at the cemeteries on Highway 9. After that, bliss.

Each year since, even today, the day after Memorial Day feels different. Lighter. My heart fills up with possible small adventures: hikes, road trips, movies, long evenings outside with friends. Too, U.S. history becomes more important to me, so I often pick up a Civil War book or something about slavery. This year I imagine they will be about the West.

So, let’s go play!

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Holidays, Myth and Story

Éirinn go Brách

March 15, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Black Mountain Moon

N.B. The “snakes” that Patrick ran out of Ireland were the Druids, priests of the Auld Celtic faith, so I’m celebrating Celtic heritage today, not Patrick. Though he did have the good sense, when returning to Rome after his missionary work in Ireland, to take several Irish Wolfhounds with him.

We’re getting ready for our second party in two months. That’s approximately two more than we hosted all last year. Today our neighbors Eduardo and Holly, Ann Beck (real estate agent) and Jon, Jen, Ruth and Gabe will eat corned beef, cabbage and other fixings with us.

This is a holiday I have celebrated at Frank (the Mic) Broderick’s for many years. It’s a Woolly traditional meal and the one tomorrow night will be the first one I’ve missed in a long time. Having a Celtic meal of our own might be the start of a new, Colorado tradition for us.

Just got done mopping the floor, after vacuuming. I can do this now with minimal huffing and puffing though there’s still a ways to go on being fully acclimatized. Kate’s got corned beef in the slow cooker, cabbage and potatoes ready to boil and a mango popover for dessert. I made an Irish soda bread yesterday that looks pretty good.

In a nod to the digital age I just retrieved my Pandora password from my password program on this computer. That way, I can go downstairs, enter it on our TV! (Roku) and provide some holiday appropriate music.

69 degrees here in Conifer, a sunny bright day for St. Patrick’s. Strange. And, when I just checked, I’m very surprised to see that in Andover it will be 71 today. Stranger yet.

Colorado, Family, Holidays, The West

So We Live With the Stars

March 10, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

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.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Holidays, Mountains

Happy Purim!

March 6, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Black Mountain Moon

A sunny, 55 degree Friday here on Shadow Mountain. It has knocked on that door behind which hides spring longing. One thing I look forward to is a mountain spring, but I know it will come when it comes. Still, these day make me imagine what our neighborhood, our drive, our mountain will look like without snow cover, with the aspens leafed out.

Today I went back into Ovid for the time in several months, delighted to see that my skill level has picked up considerably. I’m still far from facile, but I can see the plateau before it from where I stand now.

Then this afternoon I wrote another 1,500 words on Superior Wolf. This version, this is my fourth or fifth restart, going back to 2002, seems to have the push necessary to get to the end.

Kate’s gone into Denver to celebrate Purim* at Temple Micah. She made hamentashen, the triangular goodies associated with this holiday.

*The festival of Purim is celebrated every year on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Adar (late winter/early spring). It commemorates the salvation of the Jewish people in ancient Persia from Haman’s plot “to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews, young and old, infants and women, in a single day.”

Holidays, Weather +Climate

Heart Shaped Weather

February 14, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Settling Moon II

Valentine’s Day will be warm here in Conifer, around 60. Andover is at -2 with a -28 windchill. A contrast.

A persistent ridge of high pressure has dominated the weather pattern here in the west while an equally persistent trough of low pressure has dominated the east. Minnesota has been in a colder than normal pattern as a result; we’ve been warmer.

As each warm spell arrives, it feels as if spring has arrived. Later, as will happen Sunday, the weather cools down again. Not cold, but markedly cooler. That’s when the snow comes. So far each recent snowfall has been followed by a warmup. And our south facing asphalt driveway responds by melting the snow, though I did have to blow it once this week after a 7 inch or so snowfall.

And that’s all the weather for now.

Colorado, Family, Holidays

Eventful

February 11, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Settling Moon II

Screeching up to 68, flames coming out of the brakes. It’s been a long, strange trip so far and I’ll be happy with whatever else comes along. Forgot, too, that Ancientrails turned 10 last week. Thank you, Bangkok. The achilles rupture there in 2004 gave me two months off my feet. On March 10th Kate and I hit 25 years. 25 is the new 50 as far as wedding anniversaries go.

So it’s a season that celebrates persistence, good luck, love, typing, unexpected consequences. Just right for me.

At two years from the Jewish three score and 10 life has given me a chance to begin much anew. Now a mountain man and a westerner and a Coloradan living in an arid climate the next period will have (has had) many opportunities for adventure.

Last Sunday Ruth was up here while Jon did some handyman work for us. I mentioned the Colorado Geology Museum to her. She said, “That can be our next museum.” Seeing the adventure through the eyes of a child makes it several notches more special.