Category Archives: Third Phase

Great Wheel, Great Work, Holidays, Third Phase

Crossing the Shadow Line

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Yule                                                                    Christmas Moon

A Christmas cold came to me three days ago. Nice present. On its way to other hosts now, still causing a bit of havoc here. My first one since April of 2014. I will get that nice post-illness bump in energy and joy just as we cross the shadow line into New Years.

Of course, this book metaphor is true every day, but somehow it feels truer right now. I’m looking forward to 2016, lots of plans, important events.

We’ve had single digit, below zero temps and look to have them for a while. We’re also snow covered, including much of our solar panels. They’re not switched on yet, but today around noon they should be. Golden Solar is redoing some electrical and hooking up our monitoring device. We’ll be able to read the output of each panel on our own solar internet page.

Ancientrails turns 11 in 2016. And turns out to have been the great writing project of my life. See you on the trail next year.

Third Phase

Unlucky Days

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Yule                                                                     Christmas Moon

Today begins the five unlucky days at the end of the year. This is a Mayan idea and the basic path through them was to go quietly through, letting them slide past until the new year could be entered. I long ago took up this time as a period for research into a favorite topic, but the last few days have been so swirly and wonderful and strange that I forgot.

What to focus on? I will be checking my translation of Medea and Pelias against other English versions, then figuring out how and why we differ. In the off time I’m going to get the loft as close to finished as I can. This will involve reorganizing my books, getting what clutter is left moved and stored, more art hung and placed. This way I’ll get into the new year ready to work on my major projects: reimagining, a new or continued novel, learning about the West (probably through the Rocky Mountain Land Library) and something to do with art.

Hope your five days go well and without incident.

Friends, Third Phase, Woolly Mammoths

Lunch

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Samhain                                                                          Christmas Moon

Holiseason. Well underway. Two important holiseason gifts with a day of each other. (see post above for the second.)

Woollys in ElyTom Crane, who flies the skies a lot, used some frequent flier miles to come out to Evergreen for lunch with me yesterday. We ate at the Willow Creek restaurant across Upper Bearcreek Drive from Evergreen Lake. It was, of course, a great feeling to see this long time friend and his willingness to trade his Saturday for lunch 900 miles from home made it even more special.

(Tom, on the far left, at an end of our 2015 retreat breakfast in Ely, Minnesota.)

It was, in the best sense, an ordinary lunch. We covered children, wives, parents, friends in the Woolly Mammoths and what Tom called an unusual number of infrastructure projects. This last referred to sleep studies, blood pressure measurement, a new furnace and a.c. unit at his house, a split pipe in the shower fixture, my prostate cancer, various arthritic ailments, hearing aids, our new boiler, kitchen and our still ongoing attempt to install the generator.

We’ve been friends now for over 25 years, meeting in the Woolly Mammoths where we’ve spent twice monthly meetings and annual retreats together over all that time. The nature of our meetings have been intimate and personally revealing, the length of our time together adding group history to personal history.

Both of us sense that we don’t have time to replicate that kind of intimacy with others, the third phase has its inexorability. It means we need to go the extra 900 miles to retain and maintain what we’ve created.

Thanks, Tom, for the gift of your presence.

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Holidays, Jefferson County, Mountains, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase

Lights by the Lake. With Latkes

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Samhain                                                                 New (Winter) Moon

Watched several different people, a rabbi, a politician, a cantor, a newspaperman and a Chamber of Commerce woman struggle with lighting a menorah on the shore of Lake Evergreen. We’ve had chinooks for the last few days and though muted at night they still made the bic auto-match flicker and the temporarily burning wicks blink out.

The politician, Tim Neville, is a conservative Republican. He had real difficulty getting the shamas lit. It was as if the winds were saying this one has no light within him. To be fair, others had difficulty, too.

This was a pan-Judaism event with Beth Evergreen, where Kate and I have attended educational classes, Judaism in the Foothills and B’Nai Chaim reform synagogue collaborating. It was not a huge crowd, maybe 75 to a 100 people: a few boys with prayer shawl fringes dangling beneath their t-shirts, two rabbis and a cantor, tables with Hanukkah gelt, dreidels, a two table set up for the latke cookoff* and an adorable two year old girl whose body posture said she was ready to rule the world.

The evening was enough for Kate to say, “I want to join.” She means Beth Evergreen.

I was happy the event took place to a giant fir tree festooned with many lights. That’s my religious tradition, Germanic paganism.

*Kate’s latkes are superior, in every way, to the ones I tried last night.

 

GeekWorld, Great Work, Jefferson County, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

2015 Home Project Year

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Samhain                                                                          Thanksgiving Moon

A father and son team came over Monday morning to do a site survey. Their task is to create a reliable internet connection between the modem and the garage. Might be wi-fi. Might be hardwired. Hardwired is the preference and that’s what they’ll work on first. Hopefully they can make all the ethernet jacks live at the same time. That would make positioning things in the future much more flexible. They’ll be back next Monday to work.

The kitchen remodel is on hiatus right now, waiting on the countertop’s creation and the arrival of various doors and a large cabinet injured in the first shipment. Kate’s got great ideas for color once the remodel is done. Slowly, slowly.

20151119_134627_001The December 29th date for switching on the solar panels has me a bit twitchy. The new rule promulgated by IREA (Intermountain Rural Electric Association) goes into effect on January 1st. It makes demand charges for peak load times, evenings here, so high that the result is solar panel investments will not pay out. IREA needs to install our net meter before January 1st for us to be grandfathered in under the old rules, rules that allow our solar investment to go positive in about 12 years. Having the same people in charge of installing our net meter who benefit if it’s done late doesn’t seem like the best thing, but it’s the way it is. And the 29th. So close.

Back to the fire mitigation today. I have some free time and warm weather has melted snow cover from downed trees I need to limb. This is an all winter project, taking advantage of various windows of acceptable weather conditions.

grandpop 300We’ve had a long string of projects this year. Makes sense since we’ve moved into a new house.  After 20 years in Andover we’d adapted 153rd Avenue to our peculiar needs and values. Now in some sense we’re starting over. Each step, the bookshelves in the loft, the generator install, the new gas lines, the new boiler, the new stickley table, sealcoating the driveway, fire mitigation work, solar panels, the new bed and tempurpedic mattress, the kitchen remodel and now the loft internet connection have met some priority or another.

A few, the generator, gas lines and boiler, were driven by necessity. The seal coating was timely. The bookshelves, the kitchen remodel and the solar panels on the other hand are projects designed to make our home more responsive to our values. The new bed and mattress made sense given aging bones and joints. The fire mitigation is necessary, but also enjoyable, something I can do.

We are in these ways becoming native to this place, learning its contours and possibilities and just as important, it’s limitations. Home. Black Mountain Drive. On Shadow Mountain.

 

Commentary on the news, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, US History, World History

Sad

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Samhain                                                                       Thanksgiving Moon

Routine disrupted. My loft computer is now downstairs where I can hook it up to the internet. On Monday I have a serious computer service company coming out to create a wi-fi or hardwire setup. Calmed down after I made a decision to get it done once, then forget about it. My problem is that I obsess about these things until they get taken care of. If I’m trying and failing to fix things, then I keep obsessing. Tiring.

Sad about guns, about the killing, about terrorism, about the obtuse beliefs of NRA fanatics, about climate change deniers, about the too slow pace of change toward a sustainable future. Angry, too. Yes, angry. In the past sadness and anger have pushed me into political work. Got started when I was a freshman in high school and found the school itself a barrier to learning.

Today, though, I find myself on the sidelines watching a circus where the acrobats miss the trapeze, where the fire eater gets consumed by his element, where the animals smash the cages and trample the crowd. The world has once again sunk into madness.

Yes, the world is always mad. War began thousands of years ago. Slavery, too. People without power did terrible, unthinkable things to break free. So, in a way, the diagnosis of madness, of chaos and insanity, is a tautology. The world is. The world is mad.

It’s also true that any one action, any one person, even any political movement has little chance of creating change systemic enough to bring sanity. Yet, as Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” It might be this action, this person, maybe you. It might be this political movement, this one you choose to support.

Where am I going here? What I want to say is that the only way to avoid despair is to choose to act in some way. I won’t be on the sidelines much longer, the projects of our making this home ours will finish and I’ll find somebody to team up with. Somebody to shake a fist with. To make what strangled sort of cry we can. Fatalism just doesn’t work for me. Might be about the third phase and our lives in it.

Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Monday, Monday

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Samhain                                                                  Thanksgiving Moon

A midnight clear on a joyous night of old. The waning Thanksgiving moon has a huge moondog encircling much of the sky to the west. New snow, about five inches, so fresh white sparkling. Quiet. Wonderful.

Thanksgiving, our first here on Shadow Mountain, is behind us now. Memories have begun to accumulate, still fresh like the snow. That delayed kitchen remodel gets underway today. Over the last week we’ve been moving pots and pans, spices, plates and cups, flour and tea and coffee to temporary locations.  Todd and his crew will dismantle, then rebuild our cabinets, install a new fridge and dishwasher, a new countertop and sinks, build in some new cabinetry.

Our new refrigerator is in the garage and running, plugged into a wall socket. It will get the last of the old fridge’s contents today or tomorrow, depending on when those get removed. Logistics. The new cabinets come today and they have to go somewhere, probably the garage as well.

IMAG0769With the driveway covered again, I’ll have to blow it since we’ve got the kitchen crew plus the Jefferson county inspector for the final inspection on the solar panels both coming today.

We’ve also got a loan to close today. It will help us bridge the gap between paying the last payment for the solar panels and getting our tax credit money next year.

Hanukkah starts this Sunday as well. That means eight days of candles, prayers, grandchildren gifts. The high holy month will be well and truly underway.

 

Cooking, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Holidays, Jefferson County, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

The Year of Two Thanksgivings

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Samhain                                                                     Thanksgiving Moon

Grandson Gabe walked in the door and asked two important questions right away: Grandpop, what’s the password for your wi-fi? This was followed quickly by a pulled down t-shirt. See my new port! It was on his right side, had a small yellow butterfly valve in place temporarily and looked good. The end of a week long saga of hospital, surgery, recovery. That’s what he and his parents did on Thanksgiving day, Thursday.

So, we had a Thanksgiving brunch today: prime rib roast, popovers, squash from Jon and Jen’s garden, a rice dish from Barb, then pecan pie and homemade vanilla bean ice cream.

It was one of those children at the table holiday meals where the kids could hardly wait to get away. God, I remember that feeling. Stuck with the old people talking about grown up stuff. Boring. Really boring. I’m dying here. Let me go, please let me go.

Barb (Jen’s mother) recounted the story of her husband, Henry, and his family’s escape from Romania in 1964. Her father-in-law, mother-in-law and 16 year old Henry plus some other family members got ransomed by a group specializing in getting Jews out from behind the Iron Curtain. Henry’s parents wanted to go Israel. They got a flight to Vienna, then Genoa where they were told it would be six months before they could get papers for Israel.

Old town in Brasov, Transylvania
Old town in Brasov, Transylvania

Henry’s father knew there was a large Romanian Jewish community in Buffalo, New York, so they went there instead. Barb grew up in Buffalo. The rest of the story is Jen, Karen and Andy.

These are the long tendrils that any Thanksgiving meal sends out, connections weak and strong to ancestors who suffered, who triumphed, who slogged out their life and in that way allowed the people around this table to come together.

I’m grateful for each one in that great cloud of past lives who preceded this Saturday Thanksgiving on Black Mountain Drive. Yes, even those we don’t like so much. Without them, we wouldn’t have eaten this meal as a family today.

Oh. And the dogs got the four rib bones with plenty of meat on them. I’m grateful, too, for the doggy ancestors who brought this current pack of ours into existence.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Holidays, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Not the Thanksgiving We Got Ready For

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Samhain                                                                 Thanksgiving Moon

20151117_070312And so, we spent Thanksgiving on Shadow Mountain, watching the snow come down in lazy lines, thinking of Gabe and his second surgical procedure in a week, the roast and the pies and rolls in the freezer. It was downbeat, too quiet for a holiday.

Kate the clinician, a person with a bias for action, stewed. She wanted to do something, fix something, but the snow came down and no roast could be cooked, no salad prepared, no engagement with the medical issues of her only grandson. Impotence, or the feeling of impotence, is a terrible burden because it shrouds the capacity to act with an inability to do so. So many revolutions have been borne. So many political movements.

Later, after Gabe’s delayed procedure was over in the late afternoon, she relaxed. Jon had called and asked us not to come. The snow. The stress of the day. All made sense to me.

The holiday hung in the air like a sneeze not completed. Thankful, of course, for the good outcome with Gabe’s procedure. Thankful for the snow and the flocked lodgepoles, snowy Black Mountain, the dogs running pushing muzzles into the snow, rolling. Thankful that Kate and I were together, playing Bethumped, talking.

I ate too much of the sugar cream pie I made. Really more like a delicious pudding. It didn’t set up. No matter. We had shrimp with Bookbinder’s sauce while we answered questions about word origins, eponyms, general history, homophones and pushed our plastic markers around the board.

It wasn’t the Thanksgiving we had prepared for, but it was the one we had. And it was a good one.

In fact, this year we’ll have two Thanksgivings, yesterday and the delayed meal on Saturday around noon. Now, there’s plenty to do. Gabe’s better. Kate will have tasks to be done. And that prime rib roast. Well, I’m looking forward to that.