Category Archives: Weather +Climate

Dogs, Faith and Spirituality, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Weather +Climate

Gold Dust

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Summer                                                             Healing Moon

pollen2300Gold dust has rained down on us since early June. It’s not residue from the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush, but pollen from the many pines. So fine that it passes through screens, it coats furniture, floors, computer screens, door sills and window sills. Yesterday evening we had a sudden, violent downpour of rain. The rain collected the gold dust, then spread it on our driveway in Fibonacci inspired whorls. Daughter-in-law Jen has nostalgia for the time of the pine pollen from growing up in North Carolina.

upstairs downstairs
upstairs, downstairs

About the same time we moved into what the weather folks identify as a more typical pattern, warming and drier. Our house, which has no air conditioning, stays cool in the mornings, evenings and nights, but afternoon can be a challenge. That fact has moved purchasing ceiling fans up on our priority list. Even before, Kate says, the new cooktop, oven refrigerator, and dishwasher. So, pretty important.

Finding the self difficult to nourish right now. Instead of the usual avenues I wrote about yesterday I read, watched a movie, did small chores. Still in distraction mode rather than introspection. It will pass.

Vega, Gertie and Kep all come up to the loft to keep me company. They come upstairs; they go downstairs. Busy.

 

Politics, The West, Weather +Climate

Toddler Politics

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Beltane                                                                         New (Healing) Moon

“People “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” Yuhas fumed recently on social media.”

“Drought or no drought, Steve Yuhas resents the idea that it is somehow shameful to be a water hog. If you can pay for it, he argues, you should get your water.”  Washington Post, 6/13/2015

New hashtags #watershaming, #droughtshaming underscore an intensely personal political divide now being made clear in California. As water recedes, civility is among the drought’s unintended consequences. Steve Yuhas, quoted above, has given voice to what many undoubtedly feel. I have the money to do what I want.

That at least some of the wealthy feel this way should come as no surprise. This is a key difference between those on the right and those on the left. The left believes we are all in this together; the right believes personal accomplishment trumps communal responsibility. To be fair, Yuhas includes in his complaint the fact that he pays high property taxes on his Rancho Santa Fe home. And, he probably does.

Yuhas only states what American culture itself implies. If you can afford it, you can buy it. That can has become should be able to under any circumstances is a logical extension of this idea. No one likes restrictions. I get that. But how many parents have used these words, often in frustration, “You have to learn to share.”

There will always be the 1%’ers who feel as Yuhas does. They are both a historical and current reality. In the ancien regime in France they said the villeins should eat cake. In England they instituted a poll tax under Margaret Thatcher. In Tolstoy’s Russia they worked their serfs like slaves. I don’t personally begrudge them their attitudes; I do begrudge them their sense that they should be able to act on them without consequence.

Perhaps this drought-induced rant will lay clear the difference between right and left. The right want to do what they want to do. Let’s call that toddler politics. The left wants to share the results of our common labors. Let’s call that “You have to learn to share.” politics. Which one makes more sense for a nation?

 

General, Weather +Climate
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Beltane                                                                    Closing Moon

And yet more rain. The weather alert of the month is for flash flooding. June has come on a good bit like May. It’s raining now and the forecast is for more today. This is the remnant of Hurricane Blanca which dissipated in the Gulf of California a day ago. It’s so green here.

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

Fire

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Beltane                                                                  Closing Moon

Fire mitigation is on my mind. Firewise is a project of the National Fire Protection Association and has wide exposure here in Colorado. They recommend defensible space, 30 feet out from the house no trees, shrubs, fuel. Trees out to 50 feet or so limbed up to 10 feet so fire can’t skip from ladder fuels (shrubs, grass) to tree branches. That’s considered only good sense up here on Shadow Mountain.

And, to show you that no good deed goes unpunished, the very wet, fire repressing May and June (thunder outside right now) we’re having, will nourish grass and shrubs. They’ll make excellent ladder fuels in the dry time of late June and July. Geez.

Our property’s not in bad shape in terms of defensible space. The previous owner seems to have done much of what’s suggested. To make sure though I’m having the deputy chief of the Elk Creek Fire District come out next Thursday to do a fire mitigation assessment.

Still working on the idea of an external fire sprinkler system. I’ve read many websites, pdf’s. Lots of options, including a few that don’t use water, but spray fire retardant chemicals. Managed to confuse myself, so I e-mailed the state coordinator for wildfire mitigation and asked her to comment on their utility. Lots of wind apparently renders them near to useless and high winds accompany most mountain fires.

Also, they need enough water for 3 hours of continuous sprinkling, 2 hours before the fire to create a moist micro-climate and one hour afterward to protect against embers blown back. That’s likely a good bit more than our well can handle which would require an in-ground water tank.

A new place, new challenges. All part of becoming native to this place.

Family, Health, Weather +Climate

This and That

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Beltane                                                          Closing Moon

Mt. Falcon
Mt. Falcon (in May)

Neighbor Jude, after describing in detail his woes with his $400 Ford Bronco, “I’m now $6,000 to $8,000 into it.” said, “Here in Colorado we have 330 sunny days a year. And we just used up 28 of the not sunny days in May.” Which is true since 28 of May’s days had precipitation and clouds. A very unusual May. (as to our sunshiny days, see this: Colorado sunshine more myth than reality.)

Kate’s home. Over dinner last night at Chandeliers, the fine dining room at Brook Forest Inn, just a couple of miles down Black Mountain Drive, we both agreed that life was better when we’re together. I got distinctly out of balance over the last week, gradually worn down by the tests and the still unknown.

My O2 saturation dilemma just got some good news. When Kate did hers yesterday, it was 87. And this morning 88. That seems to mean there’s some reacclimatization process after visiting sea level. I had come back the week before from Minnesota when I started measuring mine. I’d like to take this whole question out of consideration.

Forgot to mention that the results of my echocardiogram came back in 1 day, rather than the 7-10 Noah said they would take. My heart is structurally normal. That’s good news. In fact it’s better than good news because it means I have resolved, over the intervening years, a diagnosis of left ventricular hypertrophy, presumably through exercise. I still have to get the holter monitor on though. That’s Tuesday, the same day sister Mary is coming.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

For Millions of Years

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Beltane                                                      Closing MoonUpper Maxwell Falls Trail350

 

A mile or so from our driveway is the trailhead for Upper Maxwell Falls trail. I went once in the winter and didn’t take my yak-traks with me. It was too icy to navigate the altitude gain.

Today, as the gloom began to settle in late afternoon, and as my own mood began to mimic the gray overhead, I set out for Maxwell Falls.

Upper Maxwell Falls Trail1350The trail is not long, about a mile and a third round trip, but it does climb, then decline through ponderosa forest. Piles of large boulders, weathered and jumbled together, cling to the side of Shadow Mountain above and the trail, while Maxwell Creek flows with equal parts power and grace, going white over rocks in its way, curling around them, too, in gentle embrace.

The falls themselves are modest in height, but there are several, one after another, giving more speed to the already rapid water. This is the way it’s been here for millions of years after the snow melt and when rains come. The water starts up high and finds these channels that allow it to collect and be the chisel. Later, it will grow calm after having taken a fast ride, perhaps pooling behind a beaver dam or a spillway or flowing into a lake or pond.Upper Maxwell Falls1350

It is a privilege to live so close to this magic. It dispelled the gathering gloom in my Self, allowed me entrance to the Otherworld, the place where humans are still one among many and not more important than any other.

Colorado, Mountains, Weather +Climate

Monsoon Season

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Beltane                                                            Closing Moon

Clear, bright mornings with afternoon, early evening rain or thunderstorms.That’s been the pattern the last few days. A photographer I met at the Shadow Mountain Artist’s co-op in Evergreen said May was usually Monsoon season. Seems like a tropical pattern to me, but I like it whatever it is.

Right now the sun lights up a cloudy, blue sky, making the greens of the well watered ponderosas and aspens vibrant. Weather5280 says changing weather in the Pacific, especially a strengthening true El Nino, may keep us cool and wetter through the rest of the year. But, it also says, drought and dry will return, possibly in 2016.

If we stay cooler and wetter this year that should give us an opportunity to get our fire mitigation projects completed with less exposure to wildfire.

 

Feelings, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Lucky Guy

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Beltane                                                                           Closing Moon

A beautiful day in the neighborhood. Clear blue skies, fluffy clouds over Black Mountain, the air cleared of dust by last night’s rain. Driving to Evergreen on Interstate 70 yesterday afternoon, there were cars pulled alongside the road taking photographs of the snow-capped mountains to the west and the buffalo herd to the north. On an Interstate. Tourist season must be getting underway.

Looking southeast from Sushi Win
Looking southeast from Sushi Win

And I was driving home, turning into the Front Range mountains that surround Evergreen. On a nearby one, Shadow Mountain, is our house. It’s a feeling I have often, feeling lucky to drive these mountain roads to get home.

Eating raw fish is an important part of my occasional diet and Sushi Win in Evergreen got good reviews. It was off Co. 74 and on my way, so I stopped there. The view from the window. Well.

Weather +Climate

9 months of snow

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Beltane                                                                  Closing Moon

May snow deck
May snow deck

Learned reading 5280, the local weather blog, that May is our area’s 8th snowiest month. That’s out of 9 months, with September being the least snowiest, averaging 1.1 inches while May averages 1.7 inches. These are Denver averages; we get more snow up here on Shadow Mountain.

The weather out here continues to teach this pupil its ways. I’m guessing it will take years to integrate the patterns. And climate change alters them, so new shifts will come, ones that don’t reflect old averages or historic seasonal expectations.

As Heraclitus said, you can’t step into the same weather pattern twice. Not with climate change.