Imbolc Stock Show Moon
Go now, the snow has ended. This paraphrase of the last words of the Catholic mass sums up life after 18 inches of snow. Things get moving again after the last snow falls and the plows get roads opened and sanded. That last being especially important for those of us who live in the mountains.
Snow storms bring beauty in their wake unlike their wilder cousins tornadoes, hurricanes, derechos. Here are a couple of photographs from this morning.
Imbolc Stock Show Moon
The snow. A lot more overnight. Beautiful, foggy on Black Mountain. Lodgepole branches white and bowing toward the earth awaiting a wind to slough off the snow. We become snow hermits, watching the flakes fall in our forested backyard, feeling a part of the mountain in a way not possible under other weather conditions.
It’s funny, but the snow, which dominates life when it comes in this quantity, is more important than Cruz beating Trump or Bernie tieing Hillary. We are apart from the lower, literally lower, 48 states, sitting up here on Shadow Mountain surrounded by other peaks and covered in white. The dominant note here is silence. Politics are too noisy, too bright and colorful to matter. And faraway.
This will change of course. In the way of Colorado the roads will be clear soon. The driveway, after I blow it, will also clear. The quiet will last a while though, as will the snow in the yard. Even warmer temperatures won’t touch that in the near term.
Right now our solar panels have a snowy cap maybe a foot deep, so no electricity from them until a melt. I’m going to investigate deep cycle batteries and see if there’s a combination of deep cycle batteries and our generator that might carry us off the grid entirely. That is not yet, however. For now we’re relying on IREA to pump electricity into our system.
Yule Stock Show Moon
You wanna find Stock Show weather? Go to Minnesota this weekend. Friend Tom Crane sent me a link to the Updraft blog of MPRNews. “Thought you might want to know what you’re missing,” he said.
Paul Huttner, the meteorologist for the Updraft blog, repeated a Minnesota weather nostrum often used at times like these: “The only thing between Minnesota and the North Pole is a barbed wire fence.”
In Minnesota, not often, but often enough, you realized the weather could kill you. No winds necessary. This will be one of this times.
Colorado, at least for us so far, doesn’t produce weather like this. If you go higher in altitude, then yes, you can find extreme winter cold, but even at 8,800 feet nothing like this. Can’t say I miss that bitter cold. though looking out the window from a warm house, over a snowy frozen landscape has its charms.
Yule New (Stock Show) Moon
Called up our solar array on Alternative Energy Systems. Each of our microinverters, one per panel, sends out a message about its panels performance. 27 panels, 27 graphics with the amount of energy in watts being produced at any one moment. Very cool. Except for the fact that we have snow on the panels and only a few are producing at near optimum. Plus, even with tree cutting we’re still getting some shading. This will take some time, maybe a full year, to assess. The good news is that electricity now comes from the sun through the photovoltaic panels and into our home. (chart from today)
Samhain Christmas Moon
Flour sifter snow has fallen steadily since early morning. We’ve had several inches, maybe 6. Slowed down for now, the weather forecast has another storm coming on Tuesday. Sitting in the lower room looking out over the backyard all that can be seen are lodgepole pines and snow drifting down in thin columns tracing their way to the ceiling of the sky.
In to Sushi Harbor this evening to celebrate Jon’s birthday, as I said yesterday. The traction law is in effect for Hwy. 285: snow tires, 4 wheel drive, AWD, or chains for passenger vehicles. If you don’t have them and get stopped, the fines are hefty. A new law in effect this year. Colorado is trying to cut down on poor equipment caused traffic accidents and backups during snow season. We’re fine. We have Bridgestone Blizzaks and 4WD. Plus forty years of Minnesota driving experience.
Might haul out the Cub Cadet, the yellow snow eater. Haven’t decided yet.
A lazy Saturday here on Shadow Mountain.
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
At 4:30 this morning the Thanksgiving moon hung to the north of Shadow Mountain, obscuring Orion and most of the stars. Luna was the first light polluter. The lodgepoles glisten faintly, the snow on their branches catching a bit of the moonlight. It’s quiet, too, a Saturday on a holiday weekend, so few cars on Black Mountain Drive.
Black Friday has been on my mind. Maybe yours, too. This morning I contrasted the peaceful moments I have looking up at the night sky with those, who at the same time of day, waited in line in the cold for the chance to save big on some item or another.
It’s an easy target, Black Friday. The crazed shoppers banging carts to get there or there or there, first. The notion of a “holiday” devoted to retailers finally easing out of the red into profitability. The mission creepiness that caused Black Friday to ooze backwards into Thanksgiving Day. Trying to find a connection with the holiday of the incarnation or any of the wonderful celebrations of Holiseason.
Yet. For all the blackness and greed and confused motives Black Friday seems more sad to me than blameworthy. The assumption that somehow, if only I can get it, that cheaper something will heal me or make someone else happy. The frantic desire of parents to find the it toy of the season for their kids. The real underlying issue, the squeeze of the 99% by the 1%. Then twisting that squeeze into a way to wring more money out of the 99% and funnel it to the 1%.
Feels more like desolation, despair. Bordering on hopelessness.
Give me the Thanksgiving moon north of Black Mountain. The forest covered in snow. Orion above the house. And the gifts that are my family, the dogs, my friends, this wild and stony place.
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Still new to winter in the mountains. A beauty I’d not known before. Different from the silent deep cold of Minnesota.
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
And so, we spent Thanksgiving on Shadow Mountain, watching the snow come down in lazy lines, thinking of Gabe and his second surgical procedure in a week, the roast and the pies and rolls in the freezer. It was downbeat, too quiet for a holiday.
Kate the clinician, a person with a bias for action, stewed. She wanted to do something, fix something, but the snow came down and no roast could be cooked, no salad prepared, no engagement with the medical issues of her only grandson. Impotence, or the feeling of impotence, is a terrible burden because it shrouds the capacity to act with an inability to do so. So many revolutions have been borne. So many political movements.
Later, after Gabe’s delayed procedure was over in the late afternoon, she relaxed. Jon had called and asked us not to come. The snow. The stress of the day. All made sense to me.
The holiday hung in the air like a sneeze not completed. Thankful, of course, for the good outcome with Gabe’s procedure. Thankful for the snow and the flocked lodgepoles, snowy Black Mountain, the dogs running pushing muzzles into the snow, rolling. Thankful that Kate and I were together, playing Bethumped, talking.
I ate too much of the sugar cream pie I made. Really more like a delicious pudding. It didn’t set up. No matter. We had shrimp with Bookbinder’s sauce while we answered questions about word origins, eponyms, general history, homophones and pushed our plastic markers around the board.
It wasn’t the Thanksgiving we had prepared for, but it was the one we had. And it was a good one.
In fact, this year we’ll have two Thanksgivings, yesterday and the delayed meal on Saturday around noon. Now, there’s plenty to do. Gabe’s better. Kate will have tasks to be done. And that prime rib roast. Well, I’m looking forward to that.
Samhain Thanksgiving Moon
Flocked lodgepoles fill a south facing window. Black Mountain has become visible once again, lost in a whiteout all afternoon yesterday. The air is clear and cold, 8 degrees. Winter on Shadow Mountain.
More loft work over this weekend. Getting closer and closer to a finished space.
Kate and I had planned to go to services at Beth Evergree’n last night, a reggae shabbat, but snow closed I-70 from 470 to Silverthorne and made a mess of the mountain roads. So, we stayed home, concentrating instead on the chick flick series we’re watching now, Murdoch. Yes, Detective Murdoch and Dr. Ogden finally get back together. A relief.
Thanksgiving is coming with grandkids, their parents, and Barb, Jen’s mom. We’ve decided on a prime rib roast this year. Sugar cream pie, that sugar and fat dense Hoosier dessert, is on the menu, too. Some signs point to a big holiday storm. We’ll see.
Holiseason continues.