Category Archives: The West

Whispering Wind Designs

March 31, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Maiden Moon

Drove to Golden today to meet Jerry of Whispering Wind Designs. He had my birthday present finished and we agreed to meet at the Golden Diner for breakfast. Jerry has the whitest teeth I’ve ever seen on a guy. Movie star twinkly. With his weathered face from years as an airplane mechanic and his long gray hair swept back into a ponytail the teeth and his direct gaze gave him an intensity I had not expected.

His work shows a craftsman’s attention to detail. The legs on the table, for example, are made from four pieces of knotless beetle killed pine, then fitted together with tongue and groove joinery. The surface, coated with an industrial quality sealant, retains the slightly wavy grain of the bluish wood, a color given by the progress of the beetle as it kills the tree, and the ends have a curved piece of pine joined to the main body of the table.

Supporting craftspersons and artists means there will be a next generation of makers. When I can, I prefer to buy this kind of product. He’s going to give us a bid on benches and a table plus four chairs for our dining area.

Colorado, Dogs, Great Work, Mountains, Science, The West

Beast

March 27, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Maiden Moon

Finished a 2010 book, The Beast in the Garden, today. By David Baron, an NPR reporter, Beast examines the changing nature of the wildlife/human interface especially through an examination of mountain lion activity in and around Boulder, Colorado in the late 1980’s into the mid-1990’s.

Baron did an exhaustive amount of work. He recreates the time period in which Boulder’s love for nature and its actions to both create and preserve a natural setting resulted in tragedy and conflict. After several years of encouraging wildlife into the city through tolerance, rings of urban parks and conservation of land outside its limits but contiguous, Boulder had an irruption of deer. An irruption is, as Baron says, very similar in meaning to its volcanic homonym.

There’s a saying here on Shadow Mountain, “If you have deer, you have mountain lions.” That proved true in Boulder. The problem was, that since the elimination of the wolf, mountain lions no longer had any predator of their own and had become desensitized to their ancient foe: the canid. No longer did just any dog barking drive away mountain lions. That meant the lions could follow their main food source, deer, into human inhabited areas where they could encounter dogs.

Some cougars began to hunt dogs. The combination of hunting deer, their ancient and still most frequent prey, and dogs, kept as pets and therefore nearby human’s daily life, led to certain cougars becoming habituated to humans. Habituation involves suppression of the once instinctive fear of humans engendered by early farmers and ranchers near extermination of the species. Once that fear is suppressed humans are bipedal potential sources of dinner. Dogs were eaten. Cougars lounged in people’s backyards. A few attacks occurred. Then, a couple of deaths. This book tells that story.

Colorado, GeekWorld, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Making Our Peace With Wildfires

March 24, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Maiden Moon

Figured out yesterday how to use Amazon’s Unlimited Photo cloud service. It comes free with Prime. Because I put so many images in my blog, I have an unusually large number filed away for future use. I began the uploading of the photos yesterday and the service is about 2/3’rds done this morning. It will finish sometime today.

Then, I sat down and learned how to use Dropbox. It’s free storage, about 2GB, is plenty for my novels, short stories, essays. I started copying files there yesterday, too. It will take a little time, but once I’m done, I’ll just have to update whatever current work I’m doing.

These two are in anticipation of a possible wildfire. No need to lose your work these days.

Today I’m going to work on putting together our emergency kit which will include the memory card which has the photographs of all our stuff. In there will also go insurance policies, titles, deed and manuals for various things since they will testify to exactly what we own. Our estate documents and our living wills. That sort of thing.

After a year of trying to put together an external sprinkler system, I’ve decided to not pursue it. Why? Well, for one thing nobody here builds the kind of simple system I want. I’ve investigated all the possible vendors in the state. That would mean I’d have to work with somebody who didn’t know what they were doing. Which would make two of us.

Perhaps even more to the point, I read an article by a wildfire expert who said that if you follow the firewise zone recommendations, which I am, that most houses will survive a fire. The deputy chief of the Elk Creek Fire district said that our house was well situated to survive a fire, in large part because we have a short, level driveway on a primary road, Black Mountain Drive. The perception of the fire department is important because during a fire they drive through the area and in essence do triage. These homes will be ok on their own. These can survive if we protect them. These homes will burn. You want to be in the first two categories. And we are no matter the sort of fire.

Also, I decided to make my peace with losing our house and garage. After I finish the fire mitigation work, taking down trees and making sure we have a our zone free of combustibles around the house, I’m going to rely on luck and the Elk Creek Fire Protection District. Should that not prove enough and we lose everything except our lives and the lives of our dogs, we’ll build again. What could be safer than an area that’s already burned out?

It felt freeing to come to this decision. Both Kate and I agreed that losing our stuff would be very, very far from a cataclysm. We could rebuild an energy efficient house suited to our needs.

All part of settling in.

Aging, GeekWorld, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

Knee, Snow, Travel

March 23, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Maiden Moon

The knee, 20 hours later. Feeling pretty good. Almost normal. A bit creaky, a little twingey, but otherwise, pretty damned good. The cortisone effect can last from weeks to months. I’m hoping months. The big issue with the knee, beyond Asia, is my regular workout. High intensity workouts, which I’ve been doing for a while, require some speedier, more stressful moments on the treadmill. The cortisone will make them easier for now. Worth it.

In other news here on Shadow Mountain we’re getting what may well may be another foot of snow. And this stuff is wet. And therefore heavy. Of course it’s Wednesday, when the trash goes out. Gonna get the yellow Cub Cadet out, but if it plugs up all the time, I’ll wait for the solar snow shovel or find somebody to plow us out.

Up here the forecast can change quickly if a system moves a bit further north or south. Last night the forecasts were for 2-7 inches. But in reality.

Today, and maybe tomorrow, is going to be largely trip related. Finish photographing our stuff. Get necessary information onto a flash drive for portability. Open a dropbox account to put my writing in the cloud. Get our emergency box of important papers put together. Sign up for international cell phone plans. Figure out how folks can contact us when necessary. Fussy stuff.

Jefferson County, Mountains, The West

Black Mountain White

March 19, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Maiden Moon

Black Mountain is white. I can see it out of two windows here and its looming shape, it’s about 1500 feet higher than our altitude here on Shadow Mountain, blends in with the sky. The lodgepole pines and the few aspen that cover it are snow covered. The mountains, which seem-and are-the definition of stability and bulk still surprise me by how frequently they change appearance. In the fog Black Mountain disappears. After a heavy snow it changes color, becomes different from its green and rocky self. At night, if Bishop Berkeley was right, it goes away, only to return in the morning light.

(Black Mountain is above the trees on the left)

In the fall aspen light up its elevations, gold against green. The green becomes more vivid.

The Front Range is a physical barrier to a traveler from the east as they head west along the 40th parallel. It marks the end of the Great Plains and does so in a sudden upsweep of rock. Those of us raised in the humid east find ourselves in a new, startlingly new, land. A big part of the fun of being here.

Colorado, Mountains, The West, Weather +Climate

Snowpack

March 18, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Maiden Moon

Winter snows have more long term relevance here than in Minnesota. The snowpack in the Rockies, especially the mountains whose melting snows feed the Colorado River, influences water availability in nine states including drought battered California. So when we get a late March snow like the one going on right now-about a foot when it’s done according to Weather Underground-there are lots of happy people. This snow and a couple more apparently coming next week are welcome because we had a dry February and a dry, up until now, March.

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

Still Trying to Get This Done

February 21, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

As the chinook winds have eaten our snow cover and dried out the grasses and downed trees, the fire hazard went up to a red flag warning on Wednesday. That means that if a fire happens, it has a good chance, a very good chance, of getting out of control. Not that I needed more to concentrate my mind on fire mitigation.

The chainsaw has sat idle for some weeks now as arthritis and snow cover combined to keep it in the garage. Though I could get out now, I haven’t. On some days the winds have been too high, on others I just didn’t feel like it. I still have several trees to remove, almost all now in the back, a few trees to limb and several trunks to cut into fireplace size logs for curing.

That I can do. What I also want are external fire sprinklers. They exist. It’s possible to imagine a system for our home, but external sprinklers are not part of the fire mitigation culture here. Even the Colorado State Forest Service recommended against one in a letter to me: “…too many variables that could go wrong with the system, including losing power during a wildfire, or forgetting to drain the system during cold weather and the pipes freezing.” Well, we have a working generator. At last! And, draining a system…well, we can get that done.

Still, because of this hesitancy, the folks who do fire mitigation have not developed products or services for homeowners. So this week I’m going to start contacting irrigation companies. They understand the technology and might be able to construct our system.

When I had the assistant chief of the Elk Creek Fire Protection District come out and do a fire mitigation analysis for our property, he said that external sprinklers do work and they would work here. Just not many folks doing it. Well, we’re gonna be among them, one way or the other, and I need to get this work done before May.

Colorado, Dogs, Family, Holidays, Memories, The West, Third Phase

Super Dogs

January 19, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Yule Stock Show Moon

Took Gabe and Ruth to Superdogs at the National Western Stock Show yesterday. We started attending back in 2010. That year I took Ruth on the shuttle. We got about two miles from home. She turned to me with a slightly scared, sad look, she was 3 I think, and said, “I miss my mommy.” I called Jen, she talked to Ruth and we went on.

Since then we’ve seen rodeos, dancing horses, many superdogs, lots of cattle, some pigs, sheep, alpaca. The exhibit halls are full of large metal pincers to hold cattle and other large animals while branding and medicating, fencing, horse stalls, lots of pick-ups and other motorized things like Bobcats, Kubota tractors and John Deere machinery. Trailers of all kinds and lengths. Rope. The big Cinch booth with all things denim and boot.

That first year Jen and Ruth were watching a sheep competition and a reporter from the Denver Post caught them in a picture that went on the front page. It’s become a family tradition although this year it was just Grandma, Grandpop and the kids.

We ate lunch at the Cattleman’s Grill, a large open air restaurant with oilcloth covered 8 foot tables put together in long rows. Like a big family reunion. Lots of cowboy hats and boots, kids.

After that we wandered the exhibit halls. Gabe and Grandma went to the petting zoo where they got their hands on sheep, goats, pigs while Ruth and I examined the Western Art Show and Sale. Ruth and I liked the show. It had some wonderful sculpture, especially a small stone owl, landscapes done in non-traditional (that is not sentimental) manners, and some excellent paintings of animals, in particular one Brahman bull. He was a distinct individual in this full head portrait.

The Superdogs show either has gotten better since we first saw it or I’ve lowered my standards. This year was fun. These canine athletes, most of them rescue dogs, catch frisbees, do the high jump, run through plastic tunnels at speed, race along raised platforms and have a helluva good time. They are high energy, eager animals.

We’ll be back next year. Who knows what wonders we’ll see?

The West, US History

January 15, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Yule Stock Show Moon

The High Country News is excellent progressive journalism about the West. I discovered it not long after moving to Colorado and read it cover to cover every time it comes. At HCN.org there is a link to a compilation of articles HCN has published over the years about the sagebrush rebellion.

I’m currently reading through those articles plus articles I’ve collected at various news outlets. The sagebrush rebellion, I’ve decided, is going to be my entré into the dynamics of the New West. As I read and learn, I plan to report here on my new, adopted region.

The West is simpler than the Midwest. Its regional status is newer, really only coming into its own in the mid to late 19th century as native peoples were pushed out and East coast railroad and mining magnates moved in. It is, too, a region built on exploitation, first of the native population, then of resources.

This point is interesting in regards to the sagebrush rebellion which has fixated on the government as the main tyrant. Any cursory reading of Western history would point to railroads and mining companies, then other East and Left coast financiers, corporate boards and offices located outside the region, as the true tyrants here. This is still the case in many ways .

The overlay from that relatively recent past makes Westerners sensitive to control of any kind that bypasses locals. The birdwatching militia occupying Malheur are a symptom of that acuity, acting on the feeling of outside interference, with no sense of nuance about either the history of government lands or the real villains who have their hands on the throat of the West.

More to come.

Colorado, Humanities, Latin, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The West, US History

Stock Show Weather

January 8, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Yule New (Stock Show) Moon

The Denver metro has Stock Show weather. Stock Show weather is cold as opposed to snowy, not surprising since the Stock Show runs the three weeks after the first week of the New Year.

We got 5 or 6 inches of snow overnight. The next few nights will be in the single digits or low double digits, cold by Colorado standards. Just getting cool by Minnesota’s. It rarely gets chilly here, that is well below zero, though it does happen. Still, as I told Greg, my Latin tutor, this morning, I wouldn’t care to visit Minnesota during a chilly period. Not anymore.

A couple of weeks ago Greg gave me an assignment. Match my English translation against other English translations, then figure out where and why we differ. This means I’m moving closer to the sort of translating I sought when I began this long journey. In order to proceed honestly I still have to translate the Latin first, then check others. This way I don’t engage in cheating, making my translation fit someone else’s interpretation. But, done in the proper sequence this method allows me to begin polishing my language, getting beyond a more literal translation to a more literary one.

Getting back to regular, that is daily, Latin work has been frustratingly slow. I’ve allowed holidays and illness to intrude. Understandable, not helpful. After this morning’s session though, I have a feeling I’m back at it. Greg said I did very well with the material I prepared. That means, when we sight read the Latin, I easily and accurately translated what I had put through the English translation match.

With my workouts somewhat regular now, illness and holidays again, it feels as if I’m returning to the productive rhythm I had in Minnesota. Now I need to add writing on a novel and/or the reimagining book. Working out, Latin and creative writing are the three legs to my stool, each necessary in their own way.

The art will come along, too.