That garage looks better now. Over to Mountain Waste System’s transfer station outside Pine Junction. Backed up to a big trench, a mega trash compactor. Boards, pieces of old kitchen counter, some plastic bins, a too damaged drafting table, and a printer stand with a slot for the paper feed from a dot matrix printer went in. Would have been a perfect place to dispose of a body. Paid the guy $10 and left.
Shelving is up in the garage and has my journals and other too much stuff stuff from the loft. Kate put up a tire rack which now holds the four Blizzaks, ready for the next winter. Jon and Max (his buddy from Minneapolis) have started work on benches for our tools and the top for my multi-purpose cart. The whole space has become more organized though there’s still a good bit to go.
Meanwhile rain has come down most of the day. Eduardo rented a machine to augur in foundation supports for the new carport he’s building. A wet day for that sorta work.
A rainy week here on Shadow Mountain. The El Nino has given us an early summer reprieve from wildfires. Last night Jon said it felt like northern Minnesota. It did. The rain and the cool down at night brought back Burntside Lake, Magnetic Lake, Lutsen. No need for a.c. so far and we’re at July 1st already. Not a good environment for growing tomatoes though.
Nate Silver has given Hillary Clinton an 80% shot at winning the presidency. Not a lock, but pretty good odds. Even though Hillary’s politics are not mine, she’s a helluva lot closer than the Hairdo. And, in spite of her centrist politics, the thought of our sitting President, an African-American, campaigning in tandem with a female candidate for the office, excites me. Our little country might be growing up.
Colorado Republicans nominated a tea-bagger conservative to run against Democratic senator Mike Bennet. This should make it very difficult for the Republicans even though Cory Gardner (R) did oust Mark Udall (D) in the 2014 senate race. There are many lefties, Sanders won the Colorado Democratic primary, but there are also libertarians and far right wingers in large numbers. The contours of the state’s politics have not opened up for me yet. I hope by the end of this election cycle to have a much clearer understanding of Colorado’s political dynamics.
And, hey Minnesotans! How about that Iron Range guy that chopped his friend’s head off with a machete? Whoa.
Out on the ladder this morning using the pressure washer on the solar panels. After checking our panel production by time, I noted that yesterday some of the panels operated at 110% of their capacity. Guess the removal of the pine pollen has had an effect even though the panels still look occluded.
The sun up here at 8,800 feet is fierce and requires sun protection winter and summer. The heat when standing in it can quickly become too much. Of course the solar panels are on the south side of the house, so when working on them the sun is an issue. I finished before the peak of the UV index which begins at 10 am and ends around 4 pm.
We’re gradually changing the house and grounds to suit our preferences. We have plans for some plantings in the far back, well outside the defensible zones 1 and 2. Probably lilacs and shrub roses on the edge of our leach field. On the leach field itself we’ll plant bulbs and some flowers suited for an arid climate and the kind of sun we get. That’s this fall.
The now thinned lodgepoles have also changed the look. To my eye they look healthier, more space for individual trees and more sun, too. I like the less crowded, congested feel. Kevin of Timberline Painting will make our garage, shed and interior look better. Bear Creek Designs are coming by today for an estimate on redoing our bathrooms. I had guessed two years for settling in and I think that’s going to be pretty accurate.
Light to dark. A continuum and a dialectic. Our inner lives fall, always, somewhere along this line. Our life might be bright, cheery, goals and actions easy to see, our days bouncy and their weight upon us like a feather. Or, our lives might be dark, intense, solemn, our next moves difficult to imagine, our days heavy, weighing upon us like a great rock.
But the Great Wheel shows us a yet deeper truth. Light to dark and dark back to light is the way of life on this earth. In the temperate latitudes this truth is at its most nuanced and its most fruitful. Quite literally. In temperate latitudes, as the Solstices mark out, we go from the Summer victory of light to the Winter victory of darkness.
Though darkness seems to be the dialectical opposite of light-winter the antithesis of summer-in fact darkness gives plant life a time to rest, rejuvenate, prepare for the rigors of another growing season. The light, when it begins to bear down upon the fields and forests, encourages and feeds them, preparing them for the harvest. In the places where the seasons are more extreme, like the tropics where daylight remains equal to night all year round and at the poles where night and day extend for months exuberant plant life can overtake whole regions. Or, at the poles ice can become so thick and vast that it covers hundreds, thousands, of square miles.
The Summer Solstice and the Winter Solstice then are not opposed to each other. The transitions from light to dark and dark to light for which they are the zenith are necessary engines for the well-being of all of us who call this planet home.
Thus we might consider the transitions from light to dark in our psyche, in our soul, as variations necessary for a full and rich life. Of course we need the sunshine of children, of love, of hope, of success. The times in our lives when those can dominate are like the summer, the growing season. Yet, grief and failure are part of our soul’s turning, part of our reaction to and integration of life’s darkness. Also, those practices which can take us deep into our inner life are like the fallow times of fall and winter providing rest and rejuvenation to us.
Today we celebrate the solar equivalent of our live’s growing season. Mark out those matters in your life that flourish, that bring joy and love, that encourage your fulfillment. But, know as well that even events like divorce, like the death of a loved one, like the failure of a dream can enrich the soil of your life, must enrich the soil of your life or else we pretend that the Great Wheel does not turn, but rather stops and becomes one season, to the eventual death of all we know.
The Summer Solstice begins the gradual victory of dark over light, the one we celebrate at the Winter Solstice. Light and dark are not opposite, but parts of a whole, parts of your soul and its ancientrail toward death.
The slash is gone. Chipped and carted away. We had two big days of chipping, one from work done last fall, this one from work done over the last three weeks. The bulk of the fire mitigation project is now over. The remaining logs will be stacked by the end of the week.
Taking the branches off up to ten feet will happen this year, though I’m not certain yet whether I have to wait until fall to protect the tree’s health. We’ll mow the fuel in the back so it doesn’t get higher than six inches, maybe two to three times, maybe a bit more if we continue to get rain. Screening all the vents and other openings in our house is another fillip, as is taking the few pine needles out of our gutters.
Slash June 1 treetops and limbs
After the electricity production limitations of snow and gloomy skies comes pine pollen. This yellow maker of new pines comes off the lodgepoles in wind driven clouds. And, it coats solar panels, reducing their effectiveness. It appears to pare between 10 and 20% off their regular capacity. It rains tonight so I’m going to wait and see if that eliminates the effect. If not, up on the roof with a hose and spray nozzle.
Even though it is 76 here today, the humidity is only 33%. But, it’s 92 in Denver. Gotta love the altitude effect on air temperature.
We went to Dinosaur Ridge this morning, the place where the first stegosaurus bones were found in the U.S. It was 92 when we got there. A ride in the vanasaurus, an unairconditioned bus like airport rental shuttle rides, took us up the ridge where we saw bulges in the rock created by brontosauruses walking on their tippy toes and squishing mud far down with their huge tonnage. We also saw a large collection of dinosaur footprints laid down on a beach a hundred million years ago. Grandma and Grandpop enjoyed the tour as much as the kids.
After Dinosaur Ridge, we went to the Red Rock Amphitheater, not for a concert but to find a picnic area. We found one high on a Fountain Formation (red sandstone) ridge overlooking all of the Denver Metro. The breeze was cool, the food was good.
The drive into Denver to drop off Ruth and Gabe with their Dad was hot. As we got further and further into Denver proper, the heat went to 98 degrees. A bit later it hit 104 on our way back toward the Front Range and home. Yike. Fortunately, it was only 74 on Black Mountain Drive.
As the Running Creeks Moon fades from the sky Deer Creek, Shadow Mountain Brook, Maxwell Creek, Cub Creek, the mountain streams I see frequently, have all subsided. Running full, yes, but not tumbling and roaring and foaming as they did a couple of weeks ago.
The aspen leaves are still coming, now a bright chartreuse against the gray/white bark. They soften the always green needlescape of the lodgepole pines. Solar production is up, the blue ribbon trees are down and tourists have begun to clog up Upper and Lower Maxwell Falls trail heads. We’re shifting from the more inward days of cold and snow to the more outward time of warm, clear days and cool nights.
A seasonal change. Not really the spring to summer transition of Minnesota, more like a late winter to summer shift.
A Native Plant Master class focused on the montane ecosystem (6,000 to 9,500 feet) starts in July at Reynolds Park here in Conifer. This time prostate cancer will not interfere. I want to bump up my knowledge of the ecosystem.
After several weeks of image expunging and fire mitigation, a less harried time is near. More creative work, much less destructive work. Looking forward to it.
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.
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 limbsSlash 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.
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.
That garage looks better now. Over to Mountain Waste System’s transfer station outside Pine Junction. Backed up to a big trench, a mega trash compactor. Boards, pieces of old kitchen counter, some plastic bins, a too damaged drafting table, and a printer stand with a slot for the paper feed from a dot matrix printer went in. Would have been a perfect place to dispose of a body. Paid the guy $10 and left.
