Category Archives: The West

Beyond the Boundaries, Colorado, Mountains, Science, The West

The Rio Grande Rift

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                Black Mountain Moon

Into the Colorado School of Mines last night, its Museum of Colorado Geology, for a second lecture to the Friends of the Museum. This one: Whither the Rio Grande Rift?

The significance of the title escaped me until Vince Matthews, former Colorado State Geologist, explained that the rift was a spreading of the earth’s crust, a spreading that thins the mantle and increases volcanism and creates faults. Then it hit me. Oh, a rift. Like the Olduvai Gorge in the horn of Africa.

There are three faults within the Colorado portion of the Rio Grande Rift that made it onto the USGS hazards map, one believed capable of producing a 7.5 magnitude quake and another of producing a 7.0 quake. Logarithmic scale. Those would be powerful and they would come in the middle of Colorado, toward the New Mexico border.

He used two terms in this dense, finely argued lecture that were completely new to me: graben and lineament.

Graben: In geology, a graben is a depressed block of land bordered by parallel faults. Graben is German for ditch or trench.

 

Lineament: A lineament is a linear feature in a landscape which is an expression of an underlying geological structure such as a fault. Typically a lineament will comprise a fault-aligned valley, a series of fault or fold-aligned hills, a straight coastline or indeed a combination of these features.

The focus of his presentation was the true northern extent of the Rio Grande Rift. Here’s a map that shows its extension in the consensus view (more or less). In this map you can see the Rio Grande rising in southwestern Colorado, then flowing through the San Luis basin into New Mexico and then onto its more familiar location as a major boundary feature between the US and Mexico.

Vince said that current thinking took the Rio Grande Rift as far as Leadville.

 

Leadville in this map is the first black lettered city above the C in Colorado. I use this map to show you the San Luis Basin (the light tan opening to the left of Highway 25 and starting at the New Mexico border. The San Luis Basin is a major feature of the Rio Grande Rift as it comes north out of New Mexico.

Matthew’s argument extended the Rio Grande Rift considerably further north and then hypothesized a turn from its primarily north/south axis to an east/west one. This map of the Colorado Plateau can be used to illustrate his argument:

 

Matthews extended the boundary of the Colorado Plateau east to include the Rio Grande Rift, then proposed that the rift extended east/west toward the area here marked as the White River Plateau. He based his argument on indicators of a rift zone (which I won’t go into here) and on an experiment on a clay model of the Colorado Plateau.

In essence he argues that the Colorado Plateau is a tectonic feature that has been rotated clockwise. When asked how that could have happened, he said, “I don’t know.” But, if you imagine the Plateau as a piece of the earth’s crust that has physical integrity, then a motion pushing up on its southwestern edge would turn it clockwise. One of the other geologists in the room proposed the San Andreas Fault as it developed. (I got lost right here, but I followed the argument up to this point.)

Very interesting. These lectures are helping me orient myself to the unusual topography of Colorado and some of forces that shaped it.

BTW: I loved Matthew’s description of two cinder cones as “very young.” They were only 640,000 years old. Puts 68 in a very satisfying context.

Colorado, GeekWorld, Great Work, The West, Weather +Climate

The Weather

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                  Black Mountain Moon

                                                                            Syntax: Physic Opera

 

The bar at Syntax: Physic Opera. This is a bar for working artists on South Broadway in Denver. A physic opera is a medicine show and Syntax says that everything in the place is medicine. This includes a rye whiskey, cinnamon and other spices drink called Tornado Juice and homemade Cucumber Gin. Other specialty drinks of the house are Pop Skull, Taos Lightning, Snake Oil and Brain Salt.

The guns you can see in the case to the right are works of art made by a graphic artist/welder who enjoyed making unique guns. They have a distinctly steampunk look to them. There are works by other Denver artists hanging on the walls.

The Weather5280 blog brought me to Syntax. It was a meetup of folks interested in the weather, meeting to talk weather then listen to three presentations by some of the folks responsible for the blog. I had an easy 30 years on everybody there. This was a young, hipster crowd with knit hats, blue jeans and retro dresses.

During the conversation before the presentations one guy said, “My wife and I have 5 or 6 quarters just over the line in Texas.” That’s as in 5 or 6 quarters of land, each quarter defined as a mile square or section has 640 acres. “We rent it out to our cousins. They run a few cattle, some sheep. We also just put up some wind towers.” A Chinese professor talked about the inadequacy of certain weather models. A tall blonde, beautiful, was eloquent on troughs and ridges.

Mostly I was out of my depth. These were weather geeks, many of whom had studied meteorology with Sam, the professor, and Matt, Brian and Brendan, the meteorologists who write Weather5280. Sam gave a mostly incomprehensible 20 minutes on snow banding, focusing on instabilities that cause it. Incomprehensible to me, that is. Others were nodding.

The most accessible presentation of the night was Brian, the longrange forecaster for Weather5280. He used analog years and maps focused on the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PD) and the ENSO regions where El Nino and La Nina come into being. One thing he said had me nodding. “This is not a historic drought in California. Show me a drought that stretches 65 years, then I’ll call it historic. This is weather. It’s cyclical. The real problem is the number of people using the water. That’s what’s historic.”

(PDO is the blue blob between Japan and the US. The ENSO region stretches from Melanesia toward South America, most of it here is in orange.)

It was, overall, an interesting evening. After it was over, I headed out into the snow and navigated snowy roads all the way back to Shadow Mountain.

 

Colorado, Family, Mountains, The West, Third Phase

Here. And Not.

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                   Black Mountain Moon

IMAG0948

With the books in organized clumps, art still in boxes, files in the horizontal file, journals, dvds and novel notes stacked together in banker’s boxes, and the exercise area functional I’ve reached a stasis in terms of organizing the loft. Kate got back to sewing yesterday, making a table runner from a pattern both she and Annie bought this last week. Her sewing area has also begun to take shape with her table, cutting surfaces, stash, sewing machine and Matilda (the dress mannequin) in usable, if not permanent places.

We await now the new Stickley table we purchased for downstairs, which will make that space more flexible when entertaining or during family game nights. The reading room, the bedroom, the living room and the kitchen all have usable, if not permanent configurations. The garage and the homeoffice remain hangouts for the cardboard set, art in the latter and mostly gardening/beekeeping/tools in the former.

Over the next few weeks Jon will install built-in bookshelves up here, attach my pull-up bar and help us IMAG0950hang art in the house. He’ll also develop plans for linking the house and the garage, a current problem spot for us. Why? There’s no straight line into the house from the garage and no path that can be cleared. We have to move through the snow to get to the truck or upstairs to the loft. Not a big deal, but one that could be better.

Kate went in yesterday and had a day as grandma, doubled with Barb’s presence. They were at Barb’s apartment with Gabe and Ruth who were out of school for teacher’s conferences. In one of those mysterious moments we humans have from time to time, Kate went from Minnesota grandma to Conifer grandma, a change that began at the birthday cum house warming celebration on Saturday. She’s now fully here (as I sense it) and in the life she dreamed about as we prepared for and executed the move.

There’s a bit further for me to go. I got a very sweet book from Ruth as a birthday present, a compilation of IMAG0942poems and images about Grandpop plus comments from her. I feel completely here as Grandpop and did perhaps sooner than Kate, but the Self that has begun to grow here, a Colorado, Western Self has barely emerged. In part I need to get my old rhythms back, the ones I mentioned yesterday: Latin, writing, art history, exercise, sheepshead, perhaps some political work. But, too, I need new rhythms: exploring Colorado and the near West with Kate, hiking and snow-shoeing in the mountains, learning the history and the geology and the biology of the land we now call home. It will be the dialectic between the old, stable patterns and ones possible only because we live here that will finally get me all the way here. For now, I’m neither fully here nor fully gone from Minnesota. Liminal. Again, still.

 

Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Minnesota, Mountains, Sport, The West, Third Phase, US History

Who?

Leave a comment

Imbolc                                                                      Settling Moon II

As the dominant ethos of Minnesota lies in its wild lands to the north, the Boundary Waters Wilderness and Voyageurs National Park emblematic of it, so the dominant ethos of Colorado lies in its wrinkled skin, mountains thrusting up from north to south and from the Front Range to the west. Where Minnesota’s map is essentially flat, marked with depressions filled with either water or wetlands or peat bogs, Colorado’s map is tortured, angular chunks of rock shoved up this way and that, lonely roads tailing off into gulches and canyons and valleys.

These two states share a common theme, wild nature at their core. You may live in these states and never trek in the mountains or visit the lake country; it is possible, but if that is you, then you shun the basic wealth of the land which you call home. In these two states, as in several other western states like Idaho, Washington, Montana, Oregon the political borders that mark them out matter much less than the physical features that define them.

In these places the heart can listen to the world as it once was and could be again. This is a priceless and necessary gift. It may be found in its purest form in the areas designated as wilderness, but these lands participate in wild nature in their totality. Those of us lucky enough to live within them have a privilege known only by occasional journeys to city dwellers. With that privilege comes, as with all privilege, responsibility.

These places which speak so eloquently, so forcefully when seen are silent out of view. On the streets of Manhattan, inside the beltway of Washington, in the glitter of Las Vegas and the sprawl of Los Angeles these places shimmer only in photographs, movie and television representation, books and their power is not in them.

Who will speak for the mountains? Who will speak for the North Woods and its waters? Who will speak for the trees?

Colorado, Cooking, Jefferson County, Mountains, The West

The Fort

Leave a comment

Winter                                                                                       Settling Moon II

 

Took my sweetheart out to eat last night. We went to The Fort. This unusual restaurant is about 30 minutes from Conifer in Morrison, near the Red Rocks Amphitheater. It began as a suburban foothills home, but when the cost of the adobe construction began to exceed budget the lower level became a restaurant, The Fort, and the upper level family living space.

The Fort models itself to some extent on Bent’s Fort, a trading post that was “the only major white American permanent settlement on the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and the Mexican settlements” according to Wikipedia. (Bent’s Fort reconstruction)

In addition to the adobe facade the Fort took as its guide the cuisine available in the 1830’s along the Santa Fe trail and served at Bent’s Fort.

Kate and I chose their game plate:  “Our most popular dish! A bone-in Elk chop, Buffalo sirloin medallion, and a grilled teriyaki Quail. Served with seasonal vegetables, Fort potatoes, and wild Montana huckleberry preserves.” The buffalo was tender and cooked perfectly. The elk chop, while tasty with the huckleberry sauce, had some gristle. Kate enjoyed the quail.

Our table over looked night time Denver in the distance to the east, twinkling in shimmers of air rising from the plain. It was not cheap, but the ambiance, the unusual menu and the company made it worthwhile.

 

Colorado, Mountains, The West

Weathering

Leave a comment

Winter                                                                             Settling Moon II

Another 68 degree day. This has moved past a January thaw into a January spring time. I walked around in the back, on the completely thawed out areas and did find some green leaves, especially a thick velvety leaf. There was also bright green moss growing on the ground and a dull green lichen spreading over a rock. The ice melts and flows around the tiny rocks, flakes, large flakes of a tannish-pink rock, then seeps into the soil at least part way.

This kind of thawing, followed by freezing, is a soil-making process. It is the slow, very slow process of eroding away Shadow Mountain. First the rock becomes soil, then rain and streams carry the soil down the mountain. Eventually, there are soft foot-hills or aged peaks like the Appalachians.

Shadow Mountain is even more basic an environment than Anoka County in Minnesota. Northern Anoka County has a high water table that has resisted development and retained the rural, northwoods atmosphere that has made it special. Yet here on Shadow Mountain even development is not as much of an active force as snow and rain, cold and heat. To transform northern Anoka County all that would be required would be an increased drainage of wetlands. Unlikely to happen now, yes, due to stringent requirements on the conservation of wetlands, but possible. Here it would require explosives, massive earth and rock moving equipment and years of time. Even then there would still be the bulk of Shadow Mountain left. It’s just not economically viable, thank god.

Colorado, Minnesota, Mountains, The West, Weather +Climate

Ordinary Things

Leave a comment

Winter                                                                            Settling II Moon

Exactly a month has passed since we got here. A lot of ordinary things have happened: boxes opened, license plates changed and driver’s licenses as well, found a vet, a place to do our business meetings, grocery store and pharmacies, furniture assembled. That sort of thing.

Each one of these and others like them have begun to layer over our Minnesota identities, helped us reorient to Colorado, to the mountains, to our new home. Like those Russian nesting dolls, we will not so much replace the Minnesota identity as overlay it with a new one, pushing the Indiana and Iowa, Wisconsin and Texas identities further down in our psyches. In that sense we are hyphenated so I am an Okie-Hoosier-Badger-Gopher-Coloradan while Kate is a Gopher-Iowa-Texas-Gopher-Coloradan.

Taking Gabe to the National Western Stock Show yesterday (Ruth got sick.) was a not so ordinary part of this process. Though I’ve taken the grandkids to the Stock Show for several years this was the first time I went as a Coloradan and Westerner. When the Westernaires, a precision and trick riding group from Jefferson County, rode out during the rodeo, we cheered. These were the home county kids.

The gestalt of being at the Stock Show was different, too. Before I would look at the rhinestone jeans, the oversized belt buckles, Stetson hats and cowboy boots as evidence of a different tribe, one that lived far from my Scandinavian minimalist home in Minnesota. Now I have to take them as my neighbors, my fellow Coloradans. That means I have to place myself among them, rather than apart from them. The difference may seem subtle, but in sizing up this new, outer layer of the nesting doll that I am, it makes a big difference.

Another gestalt that has a lot psychic friction is geological. Mountains not lakes, pines not deciduous, arid not wet, high not flat, thin dry air not moist heavy air. These are not subtle dialectics that gradually make themselves felt, but insistent, body changing realities that affect daily life. All this frisson enlivens me, makes me wake up to my world. It makes the change worthwhile.

Colorado, Family, The West

Stripping Away the Minnesota Identity Markers

Leave a comment

Winter                                                                    Settling Moon

Over to Evergreen today. Jefferson County Sheriff’s office verified the VIN on the Rav4 so it could have its title converted to a Colorado one. That got done. Only time I can remember when I thought (semi-) fondly of Jesse Ventura. Since he drove a Porsche, he made a key point of his administration lowering vehicle registration costs. He has not been governor here.

More fun than that. Right next door is the Evergreen branch of the Jefferson County Public Library. New library cards! Libraries are one of the world’s key institutions and they relax me the minute I enter them. This one has a lot of good photography hung including one spectacular portrait of a buffalo.

It also has a reading room with a surrounding circle of tall windows. They overlook a lone pine tree with a large boulder just to its left. Felt like good feng shui to me, but then what do I know?

Outings like this, not really all that demanding, wear us out still. Nap.

After the nap Kate went to the King Sooper to get supplies.

The National Western Stockshow starts on the 10th and this will be my 5th year taking the grandkids. This year Gabe and Ruth and I will see Superdogs (not so hot really, but Gabe finds the idea enthralling). The rest of the family will join us later for a chainsaw art demonstration and a bit of time petting the superdogs.

At 6:00 pm Jon, Jen, Ruth, Gabe, Barb and I will attend the MLK rodeo which features African-American cowboys and cowgirls. Family stuff. Good.

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The Move, The West

Signs and Portents

Leave a comment

Winter                                                   Settling Moon

Signs and portents. While studying the Hebrew scriptures, I learned that a true prophet was one whose prophecies came true. A false prophet? Well…

Reading the signs that come into our lives. Difficult, but inevitable. Three instances. When I first came here on Samain, October 31st, for the closing, I found three large mule deer bucks in the backyard. They looked me, curious. I returned the curiosity. I moved closer and they stayed in place. On later reflection they seemed to be spirits of Shadow Mountain investigating a new resident.

Second. When Tom and I drove out here on December 20th, we encountered heavy fog in Nebraska. Then, the sky was clear and the stars out. The suddenness of the change took both Tom and me by surprise. A physical moment crossing from the humid east into the arid west, a welcome home to our new region.

Third. Shortly after crossing this barrier, a very bright and what appeared close shooting star, perhaps multiple shooting stars gathered together, flashed across the northwestern sky. Again, it took Tom and me by surprise. A confirmation of the second sign and welcome to the clan of those who have traveled this way before.

The wonderful thing about omens is this, they are multivalent, open to multiple interpretations. As our life here becomes more settled, their import might change.

Colorado, Mountains, The Move, The West

A Little Hard to Grasp

Leave a comment

Samain                                                        Moving Moon

Jon came and cleared out a path for the movers. Ruth worked at it, too, with a plastic avalanche shovel. Even Jon, living in Denver, got winded shoveling snow up here, another 3,600 feet higher. Throughout this whole process, people have been kind and sweet. Tom’s driving. Jon’s shoveling. The docents partying. Even Eric, the kennel master at Armstrong Kennels told us we were good dog people and he was sorry to see us go. That’s real praise.

The only move part left of the move is the van coming on Monday. After that we’ll be settling. Oh, there are plenty of sequelae like selling that other house we own, paying the movers, doing some reconfiguring in the kitchen, getting acclimatized, but the move itself will be over on Monday once our stuff returns to us. That’s a big deal in my mind and I will retire the Move category from the posts.

The enormity of this change is still a little hard to grasp. We’re no longer Minnesotans, but Coloradans. We’re no longer flatlanders but mountain dwellers. We’re no longer Midwesterners. Now we are of the West, that arid, open, empty space. These changes will change us and I look forward to that. The possibility of becoming new in the West has long been part of the American psyche, now I’ll test it for myself.