Category Archives: The West

Family, Garden, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West

Family Plots

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Beltane                                                                 Healing Moon

A new seasonal event. Pine pollen gathers on the black surface of our driveway leaving yellow rings where water gathers in the driveway’s low spots. Sweep your hand across a piece of our Stickley furniture, palms and fingers come up yellow. We have only cross ventilation for cooling. Shake a branch of the ponderosa and a yellow cloud fills the air. All about sex of course. No wonder it’s beautiful.

Into Denver last night to check on Jon’s garden. Jon, Jen, Ruth and Gabe are in Chicago for father’s day, visiting Jen’s grandfather and grandmother, both great-grandparents. Her grandfather is 96 or so and his wife around the same age. Barb, Jen’s mom, flew out because her mom fell and broke a hip. She’s headed to a nursing home. error correction: Kate says Barb’s mother has a hair line fracture of the pelvis.

Jon grows quite a garden. He has grapes and currants, potatoes and herbs, tomatoes and carrots, peppers, strawberries and onions. Being a gardener of the arid west he has a drip irrigation system which delivers small bursts of water, around two minutes worth, to each plant via a plastic line connected to a small plastic stake with a watering head. Before they left he positioned garden furniture over his more delicate plants because hail can be a problem.

My job is to make sure the irrigation system works, then to make sure that none of the watering heads malfunction and finally to watch plants that might wilt in the heat. There are two main concerns, one is for the health of the plants, but the second is to make the sprinkler system doesn’t send them into another tier of water pricing by running too long. Colorado is not California, but water, especially municipal water, is still a precious resource and priced accordingly.

 

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?

 

Family, GeekWorld, Mountains, Park County, The West, US History

Summertime

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Beltane                                                               Closing Moon

Summer. A time long ago sealed in our collective memories as special. School ends and a long, delicious emptiness opens up, one filled with spontaneous play, vacations, reading in cool corners of a yard or home. Granddaughter Ruth is here for an overnight after she and Grandma spent the afternoon at the Maker Faire held at the Denver Museum of Science. She built a tool box out of sheet metal, a catapult out of sticks and rubber bands, a musical robot, and a cardboard skyscraper among other things. Just right for summer.

Summer is also the time for family reunions and I’m missing both the Ellis reunion held in Texas and the Keaton reunion held this year at the family farm just outside Morristown, Indiana. The Keatons were my primary extended family since we lived in Indiana, not Oklahoma where most of my Ellis relatives reside. I was born in Oklahoma though Mom, Dad and I moved to Indiana when I was not quite 2 years old.Grandpa and Mabel Keaton

My sister, who is attending the Keaton reunion this year, sent this photograph of my grandfather, Charlie Keaton (after whom I’m named) and grandma Mabel in the hat, the couple on the left. My sister commented on grandma’s hat and the fact that I look like grandpa. Guess I do.

Summer is also a time, for me, when U.S. history seems to dominate my interests. This year, once I get past the interesting literature on my prostate, I’m going to focus on reading about the West and mountains. Before July 8th, my surgery date, I also plan to do some exploring of Park County, southwest on Highway 285.

My hope for you is that you have a summer filled with ice cream, fireworks, family and travel.

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.

Art and Culture, Colorado, Jefferson County, The West, Travel

Golden

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Beltane                                                        Closing Moon

To the Colorado Geology Museum on the Colorado School of Mines’ campus. Introducing Mary to the geological and mining heritage of our new home. Struck up a conversation with the clerk in the gift shop, always a School of Mines’ student. She was a geological engineer and headed for work in a petroleum or mining related job.

“Both are cyclical,” she said, in response to my question, “But both are at the bottom of their cycles right now.” She has no job and her geological engineer spouse does. “But,” she said a tad ruefully (they both graduated last month), “teaching middle school science.” In St. Louis.

I’ve not yet raised the question about environmental effects with any of these students , still feeling my way into the local culture. But, I intend to.

After the Geology Museum we went into downtown Golden. It has this odd theme: Denver stole the title of capital from us and we’ve been working ever since to bring you things worth seeing. Snarky, a self-put down and, to me, unpleasant.

We had some yogurt. Kate and Mary went to the quilt museum which apparently had a wonderful exhibit while I wandered the main street poking my head into shops. None of them really grabbed. The art galleries were full of yesterday’s ideas and tomorrow’s kitsch. The gift shops had the usual assortment of inexpensive gemstones, bottle cap openers with your name on the handle, hats and t-shirts and sweatshirts with Golden somewhere written on them. I did see one piece I liked. A pillow with a hand sewn Colorado flag featured an elk in the lotus position. Sounds cheesy, but the execution was good.

Eventually I sat down in the shade.  Just another 68 year old guy waiting for his wife to come to the quilt shop.

 

Colorado, Family, Jefferson County, The West

Visiting

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Beltane                                                                  Closing Moon

Mary always brings gifts, this time beautiful cloth for Kate from Indonesia and items of anthropological interest for me, including a small book of odd superstitions common in Singapore. In another post I’ll share some of them with  you.

Visiting family and friends requires real commitment on her part since it’s about 9100 miles from Singapore to Denver. That’s roughly ten times the Minneapolis/Denver distance. How she endures all that international flying, I don’t know. I find it exhausting and maddening, one in direct relation to the other.

Last night we all three went to the Fort, the restaurant I wrote about before that was built to imitate Bent’s Fort, an 1830’s trading company’s place of business in what is now southern Colorado. They serve what would have been available on the menu at Bent’s Fort: bison, elk, quail, lamb, beef though I notice Shrimp Veracruz and Quinoa, which Mary had last night, have been added.

The Fort is all adobe construction with thick tree trunks as support beams and pillars. It overlooks, from high among the red rocks of the Fountain Formation in Morrison, the twinkling lights of Denver about 20 miles in the distance. The staff dresses somewhat like voyageur’s, appropriate since Bent’s Fort did business with French trappers and traders who worked closely with native peoples here as they did in the far north.

 

Colorado, Family, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase

I’m An Old CowHand From the Rio Grand

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Beltane                                                           Closing Moon

Three things of significance today. Picked up Mary for her first visit to Black Mountain Drive. I’m wired up with leads and a belt holster, ekgs available at the push of a button. This is for thirty days or until I have 3 episodes or events.

And. The Andover house closed, almost all of the money is in our bank account. We are no longer cash poor and paying two mortgages. Yippee, Yi, Ya as we say out here in the West. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet, but we’ve looked up our bank balance and it’s pretty damned healthy. Great to have that uncertainty behind us.

Now the entire circus tent has been struck, all three rings, loaded on the train and the train’s left town, heading west. Our last physical and fiscal ties to Minnesota ended today around 3pm. The friendships, the cultural and political ties, those will remain.

But today we are wholly here from a business perspective. Black Mountain Drive already feels like home, as does the Front Range. How long it takes for our souls to take root in the mountains is an unknown, but a pleasant one, a process of taking the mid out of the midwesterner. It’s already begun. Gotta go now and hitch my hoss to a post.

 

 

 

 

GeekWorld, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West

The Well-Watered House

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Spring                                                             Beltane Moon

Wildfire mitigation. That was on my mind when we went to the Conifer/Evergreen home and garden show. And, in a booth for a product that costs between $20,000 and $30,000 I got an idea that will help us a lot, an external fire sprinkler system.

The concept can be implemented far more simply than the battery maintained, 500 gallon reservoir system Waterguard offers. It’s automated and assumes loss of power to the house soon after the fire becomes a problem. Loss of power is a problem unless  you have a stand-alone, gas fueled generator. Which we do. It’s the first block in our system and needs to get installed soon.

After it’s in, we’ll review the various sprinkler systems available, I’m leaning toward one that is plumbed and covers the house, the garage and the defensible space. Defensible space is about 30 feet out from the house. This space needs special, intensive and unsentimental approaches to any fuel source: shrubs, grass, trees. The two together, a solid defensible space and an external sprinkler system, will bring over 90% of homes through a direct burn.

It will take a while to price and get bids for the system we choose, but we should be able to have it in place before the worst part of the wildfire season in late summer, early fall. I get sprinkler systems, having managed a twelve zone system in Andover for many years, and this makes sense to me.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The West

Pulse Flow

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Spring                                                                       Beltane Moon

Building on the Colorado River session reported below, I also wanted to comment on a happenstance that seems significant. When things show up in disparate parts of my life, surprising me by their shared connections, I try to pay attention. That happened on Wednesday night. In the post below I mention the pulse flow that allowed, for 8 weeks, river water to fill the Rio Colorado and reconnect that river with its delta in the Gulf of California.

Last year in April I drove to Tucson for an Intensive Journal Workshop. It so happens that was when the pulse flow was underway. It was a news story the entire time I was in Tucson and it intrigued me, though I had forgotten about it until the presentation Wednesday.

It was the psychic pot stirring that happened for me in the Workshop that led to a conversation with Kate. We decided to move out here. Perhaps an analogy could be made between the pulse flow that revitalized the Rio Colorado basin and the tilling of my inner garden in the Intensive Journal.

So I put it together this way: intra-psychic journey in the Southwest, during an important riverine experiment, which landed me here on Shadow Mountain. Now I’m learning more about the Colorado River, source of the pulse flow, and water usage in the arid West, a topic that has interested me for some time.

Not sure yet what to make of this connection, but there is one, and something may, well, flow from it.