Category Archives: The West

Family, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West

900 lbs .10 oz

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Beltane and the Moon of Sorrow

Friday gratefuls: Shavuot. Rabbi Jamie. Tara. Marilyn. Alan. Ron. Rich. Judy. Susan. Sleeping well, always good. Oxygen concentrators. The engineers who designed them. As Mark said yesterday in an e-mail, remember your well pump. Wildfire. Soap. Lysol. Used in the right places, of course. Bleach. Shampoo. Laundry detergent. The world beyond our driveway. The moose and the hummingbird.

I saw a moose! About a half mile from home. A mature, and very big, female. She was in a neighbor’s yard, heading toward the back. I could see her against the house so scale was pretty obvious. Moose cows can be be up to 1,100 pounds though I doubt she was that big. Maybe 900? And tall. Around six feet at the shoulder.

Moose do wander around our area, though they’re not common. Folks have seen them at Flying J Ranch, in the meadow at the bottom of Shadow Mountain Drive, Kate and Gabe saw a female at the pond in the little meadow about a mile down the hill from us. This one was in the opposite direction, on Black Mountain Drive headed toward Evergreen.

She looked back over her shoulder at me as I drove by, then sauntered off toward the forested incline that began behind the house. If you go up and over Black Mountain or Conifer Mountain near our house, you find yourself in Staunton State Park, a large and beautiful place. No roads that way though. To reach it by car you have to get on Hwy 285 and drive a few miles. I imagine that’s where they come from.

But, wait. That’s not all. Both Kate and I rescued hummingbirds yesterday. One was in the loft and the other in her sewing room. My little guy wanted to get out the window facing Black Mountain Drive. After opening the window and trying to let him out on his own, I picked him up in a kleenex and let him fly away. Kate used cloth.

The moose was fun. But, the hummingbirds seem meaningful since both Kate and I did the same thing, maybe to the same bird, on the same day. Gonna have to think about it. Let it sink in.

Hummingbirds are sort of the local bird. Many people put out hummingbird feeders. They come here in large numbers. We have a feeder, still hanging in the same place it was when we moved in. I don’t fill it because feeding wildlife of any kind leads to habituation. And, habituation is not good for wild animals.

Based on some quick googling, I’d say mine was a broad-tailed male. Our eyes met when I opened the window and his small body moved slightly toward me. I could feel his intelligence and his calm. He was not anxious, just wanted back outside. When I picked him up, he did not struggle. I used the Kleenex to keep my scent off of him. It fell to the driveway as he flew quickly away.

The female moose, maybe 900 pounds. The hummingbird, .10 ounces or 3.16 grams. Life in its extremes. Both living in these mountains. Both with intention and mobility. Our neighbors. Our wild neighbors.

Lucky we live in the Rockies.

Beyond the Boundaries, Coronavirus, Friends, Great Wheel, Great Work, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Shansin. Again.

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Beltane and the Corona Lunacy II

Monday gratefuls: Shansin. Four Mule Deer Does in the yard this morning. Romertopf. The Chicken that gave its life for our meal. Potatoes. Onions. Carrots. Garlic. Sesame oil. Old friends: Tom, Bill, Mark, Paul. Poetry. Wine for Kate. Those who wear masks. Those who don’t. These Mountains. Their Trees. Their Water. Our Wild Neighbors.

At a time of frustration and anxiety Shansin, our home which honors the Korean Mountain Spirit, and Shansin Himself, have gifted me a token of peace. At 5:30 this morning I went out for the newspaper, as I have hundreds of times since we moved here in 2014. A Mule Deer Doe looked up at me from the yard. Good morning, I said. She looked at me, her huge ears standing out from her beautiful face, alert.

Somewhat further away three of her Sisters ate, too. Good morning. Good morning. They each looked at me and continued eating. As I walked along the driveway to the mailbox, they continued eating, occasionally looking up as I moved by them. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re enjoying the grass.

Paper in hand, the latest coronavirus news buzzing off its front page, I walked back to the house, to Shansin with Shansin. They all grazed, content. I was part of their morning, They were part of mine. Neighbors on Shadow Mountain.

Yes, we belong here. Together. Whatever might be elsewhere, we belong here. Our lives continue in mutuality with those others who live among us. Fox. Cougar. Bear. Elk. Moose. Pine Marten. Canada Jay. Magpie. Raven. Crow. Spider. Mouse. Vole. We are all under the protection of Shansin.

At crucial moments in our Mountain time Shansin has sent his angels, his messengers. That first day here on Samain of 2014 when the three Mule Deer Bucks and I met in the back. The first day of radiation therapy when two Elk Bucks jumped our fence and stayed a day and a night eating dandelions. This morning, when my patience and emotional reserve had frayed, left me feeling beleaguered.

It may be the apocalypse(s). It may be. But here on Shadow Mountain I am part of something that will survive. That will flourish in spite of and in part because of them.

This is what the end times look like up here. A newspaper in its tube. Four Mule Deer grazing on our land. A cool Mountain morning underway.

Coronavirus, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, US History

HOWL

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Spring and the Corona Lunacy

Tuesday gratefuls: All those protesters, Corona Lunacy in full bloom. Seoah shopping at Safeway. The vast amounts of creative energy flowing into peak TV. Game of Thrones. The earlier rising of the sun. Kep and Rigel, still on the 4:30 am clock. Now 5:30. Cool air. Books. Books. The coronavirus, cutting right through the veneer of civilization in the U.S. Friends. You know who you are.

Howling. 8:00 p.m. Go outside. Howl. Continue until it fades. Since early in the lock down neighbors throughout Conifer: Kings Valley, Aspen Park, Evergreen Meadows, up here on Shadow, Conifer, and Black Mountains, we go out at 8 and howl. Doesn’t last long, two minutes, three minutes, but the sound is authentic enough to get Rigel’s attention.

Started out in support of the medical personnel. Now, though. I’m here. I’m here. Still alive. Still ok. This is us. Like the old ladies in the Italian city who threw open their windows and sang into the plague. But this is the mountains, not the land of opera. So, we howl.

Reminded me. A night several years ago in January, north of Ely, on a lonely road leading into the forest. I stood with the eight other students and howled into the night. The wolves answered us. This was a week long educational program put on by the International Wolf Center.

Howling is about solidarity, about personal presence, about territory. It’s also a bit silly up here, and fun.

Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Family, Friends, Politics, Shadow Mountain, The West, Writing

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Covid

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Spring and the Corona Lunacy

Monday gratefuls: Kate in her sewing room. Making cloth masks. With pockets for coffee filters. So good. Oh Death by Ralph Stanley. Talking about death with my old friends on Zoom. Mario, it’s still too abstract. More real in our 80’s or 90’s. Glad he thinks so. The Riyadh, Singapore, San Francisco, Rocky Mountain connection. Got out Jennie’s Dead, started reading. Will start writing when I’m caught up. Feeling better overall.

Might be the imminence of spring. Might be the space between bloody January and today. Might be Kate’s incremental improvements with her fingers and her leaking problems. It certainly is not the current state of Covid-19 testing. Whatever it is, maybe just my cyclical psyche ready for a new era, I’m feeling strong.

Organizing my loft. Again. A periodic task necessitated either by a long down period like this last one or a time of full on work like I’m entering now. Another facet of this change might be an inverse response to cabin fever. I can’t go out, so I may as well go in.

Brother Mark sent me a picture from a rally, a sign that said, Give me Liberty or Give me Covid. These folks understand liberty and freedom in their most restrictive meaning. Liberty means you can’t tell me what to do and freedom means only freedom from, not freedom for, too.

Both have more expansive connotations. Liberty is also the ability to choose for others, to use your power, your resources on behalf of your neighbors. Freedom is not only freedom from the unreasonable intrusion of the state or the opportunity to follow your own dreams wherever they may lead. It’s also freedom to choose community responsibility. Freedom to vote, to organize, to lift up your nation. To stay in your home not only on your own behalf, but also in service to your elders, to the vulnerable.

Give me liberty or give me Covid illustrates too well the blinkered version of Lady Liberty, the one proclaimed by those yellow flags with the snake. That liberty means stay the fuck outta my way. Or, else. Misunderstanding the nature of liberty can be fatal. That sign proves it. Not sure how, or even if, this truncated view of two basic American values gets remedied. Especially if the false choice between liberty and illness gains traction.

What do you when the treasonous bastard encouraging these already misguided folks is the President? Save your sacred Second Amendment, he says. And the connection to all of this is what? Shoot the sick ones? As a New York Times story title says: Head of Government Encourages Anti-Government Protesters. This is where Kristallnacht came from. We’re way past the turn off for a reasonable resolution to this stand off.

What comes next? No idea.

Colorado, Commentary on the news, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain, The West, US History

The Cowboy Way

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Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

When we moved here, I imagined a lot more cowboy boots, stetsons, and cowboy themed places. There are cowboy boots, our hair stylist Jackie says she wears nothing else, and in any restaurant (back when we could go to restaurants) a certain percentage of folks will have on a pair. Same with Stetsons and western shirts with the pleat in the back and pearl faced buttons. The Buckhorn, Denver’s restaurant holding the first liquor license the city issued, has a definite cowboy feel. Buffalo Bill and Wyatt Earp ate there. So they say.

Rather than clothing and decor, the cowboy way is evident here in a love affair with guns, the second amendment, and libertarianism. Let me alone so my cattle can roam. Out where you can’t hear nothing all day. Unless it’s me, a good guy with a gun, taking out a varmint tryin’ to steal ma stuff. Then you might hear me exercising my second amendment rights. (No, not me, as in me, but, you know.)

A gun shop owner, the Denver Post reports, said he’s seen a huge uptick in business. Part of, he said, is because “folks went to King Sooper, trying to track down some toilet paper and saw grown men and women fist fighting to see who gets the last pack of tissues.” Later in the article he tagged panic as the reason for the sales, not the virus. “You can’t shoot a virus,” he said.

Another guy, owner of Devils Head Choppers in Castle Rock, a joint gun and motorcycle shop, ran out of ammo. He said such a run responds to unusual events or even elections, particularly ones that favor Democrats. sbradbury@denverpost.com 3/18/2020

Up here in the mountains a lot of folks say their security company is Smith and Wesson. Isolated property, long driveways, uncertain response times from the Jeffco sheriff’s office reinforce these attitudes. These postures ride along with government can’t do it right, ever, thinking.

Darwin is having a partisan political moment. Look at this from Slate: “…in the United States, poll after poll shows the virus has found a population that’s particularly likely, through nonchalance and neglect, to help it spread. That population is Republicans.” Slate The whole article is interesting if you have time.

If a number of the red state folks, Trump fans, go out to scoot boots, bowl, eat chili, then there might be fewer of’em to line up in the voting booth. Damn science.

Fun times the good ol’ U.S. of A.

Beyond the Boundaries, Colorado, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Park County, permaculture, Plants, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, US History, Weather +Climate

Deep Guidance

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Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

Sunday gratefuls: An extra day in my birthday month. DogsonDeployment and the three folks who responded right away. Seoah’s careful scrutiny of the profiles. Kate’s help with Corrine, who called from DoD. Blue skies and warm temps. Atlas Obscura. The Rocky Mountain Land Library. Jon’s offer to stay with Kate while I take the kids on a road trip.

Just signed up for a Food and Land Bookclub. My real interest in it is its association with the Rocky Mountain Land Library in next county over Park County. When I bought the books for the book club, four in all, I found my powers returning. Oh, this is what I’ve got energy for my body said. Book titles: Mayordomo: chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico, Braiding Sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants, One Size Fits None: a farm girls search for the promise of regenerative agriculture, and, The Seed Underground: a growing revolution to save food.

When we first moved here, over five years ago now, I wanted to garden, to learn the native plants, to hike the mountains, learn the land and streams and wildlife. Prostate cancer, bum knee then knee replacement, COPD. Kate’s various medical dilemmas later. Distracted. Accomplished little of these. Some hiking, not much thanks to the COPD and the bad knee. Gardening here required more physical energy than I have available. My first native plants class got interrupted by my prostatectomy. Life. Stuff.

I first discovered the Rocky Mountain Land Library in 2015, our first year here. It was only a dream then, an idea concocted by the former owners of Denver’s most loved book store, Tattered Covers. It now has a ranch in Park County, south of Fairplay, a bit over an hour from here. Buildings and projects have begun to come together. It wasn’t ready when I found it and, as it turned out, neither was I.

During Gertie’s last days I reflected again on my instinctual opposition to euthanasia for dogs. It’s no longer absolute because I saw its necessity as Gertie suffered, but it’s still strong. Were there any other instances in my life where I made choices from an instinctual level?

Instinct? Intuition? Deep inner guidance? Link to a source of knowledge I can’t access consciously? Instinct in any formal sense is probably wrong, but the feeling involved, a strong compulsion, a certainty that this path was mine, had that flavor anyhow.

Turns out there were other such choices. When I turned 32, I knew I had to be a parent. Got a vasectomy reversal. Didn’t work. OK. Adopt. First child, a girl, died in a salmonella outbreak at the orphanage. Raeone didn’t want to go forward. She’d just gotten a new job. My deep push made me agree to take care of the new baby myself, no matter what it took. I took him to work with me until he was 18 months old.

After an Ira Progoff workshop in Tuscon, an intentional stirring of my inner life, I stopped by Denver to see Ruth and Gabe. By the time I left I knew Kate and I needed to move to Colorado. She agreed and so we did. We wanted to live in the mountains and to be in our kids and grandkids lives.

Other less dramatic instances. Saw a movie while in college that featured Manhattan. Put my thumb out and spent the summer of 1968, the summer of love, not in San Francisco, but in Manhattan. Curator of Asian art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Bob Jacobson, gave a lecture on Angkor. Specifically he showed the amazing stone bas relief sculpture that runs for a quarter mile around Angkor Wat’s great Hindu temple. And in particular the churning of the sea of milk where gods and demons struggle for a magical elixir. Had to see it. When my dad died and left me enough money to do some travel, I went.

A related but less pressured decision came when I realized I was no longer Christian, that I had to leave the ministry. Had I not met Kate, this feeling would have been tested, but I met her and she allowed me a graceful exit.

Right now I’m feeling a similar push, perhaps not only to the Rocky Mountain Land Library, but to reawaken the me who woke up for twenty springs, twenty summers, and twenty falls glad for the chance to plant lilies, weed onions, harvest garlic, trim the raspberry canes. The me who woke up for several years and knew tending the bees was in the day’s labor. The me who came here excited about the West, about the mountains, about being in a brand new place. We’ll see where this goes.

Aging, Astrology, Colorado, Dogs, Family, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Living

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Imbolc and the waning crescent of the Shadow Mountain Moon

Sunday gratefuls: Jen. Who called my attention to a lapse in judgement. King Sooper. Who will load my groceries this morning. Tony’s where I’ll get the pork schnitzel. The crescent moon above Black Mountain. The Storm Glass Ruth got me for Hanukah. Jon home from the hospital.

I reported something here said to someone else about yet another person. That was a lapse in judgement and I apologize to Jen for that.

Past the seventy-three marker and heading into another Aquarian year. Might be a good time to get my chart read again. Sorta put all that away after an initial burst of interest. Maybe an annual thing? Like an oil change and vehicle inspection? Time has slipped by, following the trails of Maxwell Creek, Upper Bear Creek, Cub Creek. Running toward the sea of souls.

In another liminal space, a large one this time. After Gertie. After Murdoch. As the wounds heal. Quieter, solemn. Rigel and Kep both subdued, following us, I suppose. No plans. One day in front of the other.

Even Trump seems far away, perhaps only an orange smudge floating out over the Atlantic. Our little family so dispersed. Atomic. Held together by the weak nuclear force. Yet, held together.

The two feet of snow melted in the warm days. Our roof not as layered. Our driveway almost clear. Another round coming, maybe today and tomorrow. Colorado.

This space between, a sacred place, a holy place. Happening on our mountain top. In the Rockies, in the West, in Colorado. The Midwest a humid memory. We’ll see what comes. Living. That’s it right now. Living.

Asia, Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Friends, Health, Mountains, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase

Sansin

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Imbolc and the waning Shadow Mountain Moon

Friday gratefuls: For a return to my orbital goal post. Murdoch, bouncy and happy yesterday at Bergen Bark Inn. The Village Gourmet. Dogsondeployment.com, maybe a solution. Chocolate rocks. Jon made it to the E.R.

Moving from the bewildering and sad to the chaotic and absurd. Jon called about 10 last night from the Emergency Room. Yes, really. He’s been sick since last week and that screws up a diabetic’s response to insulin. His blood sugar got very high. He called an ambulance and had himself transported to E.R. He was afraid of dying.

We waited on his lab tests. Don’t yet know what they showed, but the docs transferred him to the hospital. We’ll see him today after Kate’s appointment with hand therapy and her surgeon. I know. Strains credulity, doesn’t it?

In other family news. Septuagenarian adds another year. Valentine’s day. Anti-climatic given recent happenings here, but there you are. The calendar ticks over despite events. 73 seems, unusual. Not sure why. An odd number. Perhaps a bit mystical: 7 and 3.

As I’m entering this phase of aging, the numbers seem to have less and less significance. Days, weeks, years. Artificial, like borders for nations. Irrelevant, too. I’m alive or not. In this moment, alive and typing.

Tom wondered in a recent e-mail about a name for our house. Our place in Andover was Seven Oaks after seven oak trees clustered on a small rise southeast of our home. In looking up matters related to Korean birthdays I found the name of the Korean mountain gods, Sansin. When I came to close on the house over Samain 2014 and on the day before I started radiation, mountain spirits visited me in the form of mule deer and elk bucks. So. Sansin. Full name, Honoring the Sansin of Shadow Mountain.

The Sansin of Shadow Mountain has blessed me through direct visitation twice. We belong here, in this place, on this mountain. I can feel the god’s presence, a massive bulking, a dense collection of ohr on which we have our home. Becoming native to this place.

Aging, Anoka County, Beyond the Boundaries, Colorado, Family, Friends, Great Wheel, Health, Jefferson County, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Myth and Story, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Retirement, Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West, Third Phase, Travel, US History

The West

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Seoah and her light presence as a guest, Murdoch again, the Grandmother Tree at CBE, the night drive up Brook Forest, then Black Mountain drives, the fox that crossed our path, the mule deer doe standing, looking toward the road, the nightlife of the wild, the ultimate wildness of the heavens

December 20, 2014 “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.”

December 18, 2019 The usual mythic significance of the West, where the light ends, where souls go when they die, seems quite different from its American mythos as almost a separate country, an Other World where you could leave Europe behind, leave the East Coast behind and rejuvenate, remake yourself. (yes, Native Americans were here already. But I’m talking about the frontier, the Old West, the place where Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger, and lots of versions of John Wayne lived. And, yes, the Spaniards on the west coast and as far north as what is now New Mexico. The Russians, too.)

Seems quite different. Yes. However, “the possibility of becoming new in the West.” The American mythic West is about where souls go when they die, when they die to a past that had not prospered in the East, to a life no longer well lived, to a life lived in the all too usual way, to a life of boredom.

What would we become? When would the West become home? When would this house on Black Mountain Drive become home? All those boxes. All that altitude adjustment. And, we would gradually learn, an attitude adjustment to mountain life.

We have become people of the mountains, in love with them enough to adapt our lives to thin air in spite of the difficulty it presents to us. We have become people of the tribe, of clan Beth Evergreen, part of a strange and intriguing religious experiment, a new community. That was part of what people sought in the West. A chance to build community anew, to different rules.

We have become embedded in the lives of our grandchildren, of Jon. They love the mountains, too. Our choice, to live close, but not too close, has had its challenges, but has worked out well. It’s hard for us to provide day to day support for Jon and the kids. We’re too far away and too physically challenged (of late). We are, however, a mountain refuge for them, a place away from the city where they can come to refresh. We’re also on the way to A-basin, Jon’s favorite ski area.

When we travel now, the return no longer involves a turn north, toward the Pole, but a turn West, toward the mountains and the Pacific. Our friends in the north, in Minnesota have stayed in touch. We’ve not gotten back much; it’s so good to still have solid connections.

We change altitude frequently, often dramatically during a day’s normal routine. No more mile square roads, farmland templates. No more 10,000 lakes. And, up where we live, in the montane ecosystem, no deciduous trees except for aspen. No more combines on the road, tractors, truck trailers full of grain and corn headed to the elevators. (yes, in Eastern Colorado, but we’re of the mountains.)

The pace of life in the mountains is slower. Many fewer stoplights, fewer stores, less nightlife. Service of all kinds is slower, too. Plumbers. HVAC guys. Mail folks. UPS. Fedex. Denver Post. Painters and electricians. Once we quit expecting metro area level of service, especially in terms of promptness and predictability, life got better. The mountain way.

Our life in the West has also been shaped, profoundly, by medicine and illness. Tomorrow.

Beyond the Boundaries, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West, Third Phase

Mountain Living

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Samain and the Gratitude Moon

Thursday gratefuls: Friends who know about your own friendship with a constellation. Mt. Evans, which controls our weather. Black Mountain, which dominates my view from this computer. Conifer Mountain, which graces the left side of our journey up Shadow Mountain Drive. Hell, I’ll even give a shout out to the Verizon cell tower on top of Conifer Mtn. And to the folks who put it there.

Thanksgiving here officially ended. Annie’s cell phone went back to Waconia yesterday afternoon wrapped in bubble wrap.

Going to the Conifer Post Office is always a bit fraught. Our Next Door Shadow Mountain lights up with folks complaining about delivery times, deliveries not made, boxes stolen or misdelivered, letters and other mail delivered to neighbors, boxes shown as delivered and never seen. The staff at the front desk is often cranky, too.

Apparently this is a problem for Morrison, Pine, and Evergreen, too. Rural post offices. Also, mountains. Also, snow and rain and curves. Nothing like stopping your vehicle in the road on a snowy day, around a blind curve. Wouldn’t want this job or garbage pickup either. Having to stop a vehicle on the road in the mountains for any reason is hazardous and these folks do it at every house. Every house.

There are a lot of folks who make mountain living now much different from the Jeremiah Johnson era. The folks at IREA who construct and maintain the electrical grid up here. Mail and garbage folks as previously mentioned. The propane folks. Colorado Natural Gas that piped us and many of our neighbors. The Centurylink folks who build and maintain our phone and DSL lines. Jeffco public works responsible for roads, bridges, shoulders. Truckers who bring groceries and other goods to our stores. Workers in various professions who choose to live up here and often accept lower wages to do it. Think vets, doctors, eye care people, dentists.

We are not, contrary to the libertarian mythology, able to live free or die. We need not only family and friends, but a constellation of services and their employees to maintain ourselves up here. God bless them, everyone. Tiny Tim, too.