Category Archives: The Move

Dogs, Elk Run, Friends, The Move

Transition

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Not sure how I missed yesterday. But, I did. I’m here now.

To chatgpt: My dog, Shadow, an Aussie Cattle Dog/Border Collie mix, moved with me from Shadow Mountain to Elk Run. She gets walked at least 5 times a day from caregivers. They love and treat her with kindness. She learned pooping and peeing while on a leash quickly. She no longer pees inside at all. She has regressed on pooping, now pooping in my bedroom and not outside. Looking for help to get her back on track.

A transition for both of us. For me: meeting new people. Regular meals. Smaller space. Much less daily responsibility. Getting help with dressing and showering. For her: many new friends– caregivers, staff, other residents. Regular walks on a leash. Less personal freedom.

We’ll get it worked out.

Yesterday Robin worked away while I chatted with Alan. I saw both Rubin’s this week. They leave next Thursday for a luxury cruise featuring Athens, Istanbul, and several Greek islands. They will have a butler. Of course they will.

Long term care claim working through its process. My house is very popular on the MLS. That’s fine. Though. I need one of the lookie loos to commit.

 

Elk Run, Fourth Phase, Great Wheel, Holidays, Plants, Shadow Mountain, The Move

Next up: A time of rest

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Ah. A rainy, cool Thursday. Fall declaring itself. My neighbor and friend John went back to his hometown of Rome, New York for a wedding. A plant guy at heart he reported on the reds, the oranges lighting the upstate New York landscape.

A fiery end to the growing season. Leading up to Samain, Summer’s End. In the ancient Celtic calendar there were only two holidays: Beltane, the start of the growing season, and Samain, Summer’s End, which marks the turn toward the fallow months. The season of life abundant and the season of life at rest.

Robin came yesterday. She has her ways, honed over thirty years in senior moves. Decluttering. Organizing. Making a space both useful and beautiful. I’m her last move. She retired this month.

I’ve appreciated her guidance, her persistence in clearing out my house. She and her husband Dennie are also buying my car. I had Melissa help me figure out how to value it and sell it.

Cheri Rubin, Alan’s wife, came by for a visit. She’s high energy, already back at salsa dancing, her passion, after hip surgery earlier this year. A fun talk with her. Another instance of location, location, location. Cheri left Elk Run for the synagogue.

In the last three days I’ve seen a fox, a bear, and two elk yearlings. Love the mountains.

 

Colorado, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West, Weather +Climate

Moving On

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Smokey the Bear has his finger on low fire danger. The North American Monsoon produces rain and thunder storms, as the mountains cool and condense water from the Gulf of California and Gulf of Mexico brought here by shifting winds. This was the old pattern which made early July into September a safer wildfire season. Glad to see it asserting itself. May it continue.

I like the rainy afternoons, the sounds of thunder in the distance. Evokes Midwest memories.

The Midwest, my home for most of my life, has a hick reputation among the coastal airplane crowd. It’s the flyover. Whatever happens down there doesn’t impact (they think) their important lives.

Milk, meat, flour. Dear to the diets of even a Wall Street financier. They don’t just appear on restaurant memos or in the aisles of grocery stores. Dairy farms in Wisconsin. Countless acres of wheat, corn, soybeans. Feedlots for cattle and pigs. Grain silos. Combines lumbering down a gravel road. The world of farms and farmers. My world.

Until. Kate and I left it behind following Horace Greely. We permanently crossed the 100th parallel, the traditional dividing line between the rainy and bountiful east and the often forbidding arid west. Now I am a mountain man. Living at altitude with Lodgepole Pines and Aspen, Mule Deer and Elk.

You can take the boy out of the Midwest… So, I’m a mountain man with an older and more mature regional base in Indiana and the Upper Midwest states of Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Kate said often, “I feel like I’m on vacation every day.” I’m glad she felt that way. Yet it also means she nurtured, maintained, her Midwest sensibilities about landscape, about what’s usual. And why not? Like me she spent almost all of her life in Iowa or Minnesota.

This mountain life has changed me, made me attuned to lenticular clouds, full and overflowing streams in spring time, the hyperphagia of Black Bears in the fall. This is my world now, not the mile square fields of corn or the grain trucks unloading at the elevator.

I choose to stay here. Develop the Westerner.

Memories, Minnesota, Shadow Mountain, The Move

At Home

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Friday gratefuls: Jackie and Rhonda. Ears lifted. Diane. Kristin. Jennie. Artemis. Ruby gleams. Aspens. Lodgepoles. Lycaon

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Jackie

Week Kavannah:   Yetziratiut. Creativity.   Feedback on my new writing style.

Tarot: #13, the Journey

I’m in clinical trial world, my cancer path, once stable, turned over to randomization and hope.

One brief shining: A lightness in my step. Decision made. Eager to get on with it. Hair cut and beard trim. Agency lifts the heart, the lev. Dance to the music.

Most of us old folks want to stay home. Not as shut-ins, but as persons living where the grandkids came for Hanukah. Where Kate and I came when the mountains called us. To this spot on Shadow Mountain.

Home. Minnesota, forty years. Andover, twenty years. Shadow Mountain, in the twelfth year. Competence. Autonomy. Belonging.

I took care of Kate here.

I take care of myself.

Alone, but not lonely. Congregation Beth Evergreen. Here, I’m at home.

Memory plus strong emotion. Embedded, lasting. So many memories. Jon and Ruth, with her little plastic shovel, removing snow on our new driveway so the moving van could park. Tom and I letting the dogs out after the long drive from Minnesota. They ran around the yard once and jumped back in. Ready to go home.

311 E. Monroe Street. Alexandria, Indiana. Where our milk came each day by horse drawn delivery wagon. Where mom and I watched the yellow and black garden spider live her life.

419 N. Canal. I used a slingshot to break the windshield of an insurance agent visiting mom and dad. Paid for it by washing dishes at twenty-cents an hour. I listened to the Ring cycle in my bedroom. Mom died.

Andover. Flowers. Raspberries and leeks. Honey and the Orchard. The firepit. Seventeen dogs.

Home.

Not only shaping home with garden trowels and dog bowls, but being shaped in turn by the homeplace. In Andover we had two and a half acres, partially wooded, and room for gardens, for dogs to run free. Kate and I chose to live into that place filling it with flowers, vegetables, dogs.

On Shadow Mountain we lived (and I live) in rarified air. Lodgepoles and aspens. On an ordinary day driving by Black Mountain. Following Maxwell Creek down the long slope of Shadow Mountain. Kate said she felt like she was on vacation every day.

Home.

 

Great Wheel, Holidays, Judaism, Paganism, The Move, Torah
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Yule and the Yule Moon

Shabbat gratefuls: Esau. Israel. Jacob. Joseph. The Angel. The struggle. Parsha. Genesis. Rabbi Jamie. Gordon. Luke and Ginny. Tanakh. Torah. Torah study. Shabbat. Lox. Bagels. Capers. Cream cheese. Onions. Chai. Sisyphus. Ancient Brothers. The W.U.I. Shadow Mountain Home. Well within the WUI.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Stories of long ago

Kavannah: Bimah and Ahavah

One brief shining: Under a covering lay a dozen bagels, lox and smoked salmon, by those platters a tub of cream cheese and a small container of capers, Gordon sat beside me as did Ginny, Luke and Rabbi Jamie across the wooden table, Tanakhs in the middle of the table, and we began to talk about Jacob and his struggle with the Angel/Himself/God.

 

 

The long night has fallen. The longest night. The night of the Winter Solstice. When darkness folds itself over and over again, deepening and spreading until it seeps into your heart, your lev, your nefesh.

I intended to burn my Yule log(s) tonight, but the day wore me out. I’ll fetch them from the garage tomorrow, make a Solstice plus one fire. A little Pinõn thrown in for the nose.

This is my favorite holiday. Solitary. Dark. Quiet. Perfect in Mountain stillness. All the Wild Neighbors either tucked into their hiding places or out on the prowl looking for food. No commercial hoopla. No bonfire. At least for me. Just an awareness, a tactile sense of the holy found in the nurturing Night. Fecundity. It’s the right time of the night for making love.

For over two, maybe three decades, I’ve tilted my allegiance toward the long night, toward the occult, the below ground wonders, hidden from the light obsessed who thought it brave to burn candles, throw parties, dance in the face of imminent disaster. No more Great Sol. No more life. I defy them.

And yet. The last couple of years I find myself moving back toward the full cycle, admiring and reveling too in the heat of the longest day, the one they experienced yesterday in Australia. Bringing them into balance, the yin and yang, black and white, yin in yang, yang in yin, light in dark, dark in light.

Even so. My first love is this long blackness, the visible world obscured from view. The inner world gaining prominence. Perhaps because, as the Mexica say, life is a dream between a sleep and a sleep.

 

Just a moment: A full ten years. A decade. 67-77. No longer adapting or adjusting, but now a Westerner, a Coloradan, a harari, a Mountain man. Also a man of loss and death, disease. Of Wild Neighbors. A member of the tribe.

Two days ago I opened my front door to go get my trash bins from the end of the driveway. To my right, perhaps 10 feet away, maybe less, a large eyed mature Mule Door Doe looked up. Welcome, I said. I hope you enjoy the food.

She looked at me, clear eyed, neither afraid nor desiring to come any closer. Mirroring my own feelings. I went on talking to her in a calm voice, then headed on out and got the garbage bins, rolled them back into their positions under the kitchen window. She and her four friends ate near my Lodgepole Companion.

Colorado, Dogs, Family, Friends, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The Move

Ten Years ago on a cold dark Night

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Samain and the Yule Moon

Friday gratefuls: Winter Solstice at 2:21 am tomorrow. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Robert Frost. Walt Whitman. Jim Harrison. Billy Collins. John Berryman. Marge Piercy. Mary Oliver. Louise Gluck. Amanda Gorman. Langston Hughes. Emily Dickinson. Maya Angelou. Wallace Stevens. “Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction”

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Poet’s Lev

Kavannah: Chesed

One brief shining: Ten years ago a long ride through the day, then well into the night, sleeping dogs huddled in the back of the white Rav4, Tom at the wheel, Snow already coming down, several inches, welcome to Shadow Mountain.

 

Here’s a memory sliver from that day:

OK. Now can we go back home, please?

“The moving moon has waned, a sliver this early. It will go dark tomorrow, the Winter Solstice. Our first full day and night here at Black Mountain Drive. Tom Crane, Rigel, Vega, Kepler and I pulled into the garage about 12:15 am this morning. We drove in over several inches of snow, so a first task will be getting the driveway clear for the moving which comes on Monday.

The three dogs slept or rested quietly the whole way. I gave them a trazidone dose at the kennel at 8:30 am yesterday. That calmed them for the first few hours and after that the buzzing of the tires and the constant motion lullabyed them. It was a surprise, but a pleasant one.

Tom drove the whole way, 14 hours in one whack, stopping only briefly for food and gas. It was a great treat to be able to watch the miles roll away.

When I left Anoka after getting the dogs yesterday morning, I crossed the Mississippi at 9 am, realizing as I did that this time I would be not crossing back over it for some months. The Mississippi was now a dividing line between my former homelands east of it and my new one west of it. An American narrative, for sure.

                                 Where’s Gertie?

We passed over the Minnesota state line at approximately noon. The state sign, which reads Thank you for visiting made us laugh. Yeah, a forty year visit. But it is now over.

Kate stopped for the night in Lincoln, finding a place where she and Gertie could sleep. She’ll be getting in later this afternoon. Then, the unloading of the cargo van. New tasks in a new place but tasks which, with the exception of clearing the driveway can wait until we’re ready. We have the next several years to get settled here on Shadow Mountain.”

Colorado, Dogs, Family, Friends, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The Move, The West

The Doggie Drive

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Samain and the Full Moon of Growing Darkness

Shabbat gratefuls: Tom. Conversation with him. His kindness. The Truth. A CBD ointment for aching joints, pain. Worked on my trigger fingers. Happy Camper. Evoke 1923. Mt. Rosalie covered in Snow. 13,575′. Long tie guy and his in your face appointments.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Friendship

Kavannah: Perserverance

One brief shining: Sitting at the table where I found my pearl, in what is no longer the long time Bistro now the Evoke 1923, Rebecca took our orders, delivered a tasty filet mignon tartare, a beet salad, and our entrees: duck for Tom and filet mignon for me while we struggled to hear, especially after the piano player started up, two old guys trying to parse the future of A.I. largely overwhelmed by the clink of silverware on porcelain, happy chatter from the table of six, the limits of hearing aids reached and exceeded.

 

It’s nearing 10 years since the long doggie drive of December 2014. Tom and I together with Rigel, Vega, and Kepler on I-90, then I-76, finally 285 to Shadow Mountain. 15 hours or so of conversation, attention to dogs and the eventual end of the Great Plains where they wash up against the hogbacks of a precursor Mountain Range to the Rockies. That was the first phase of the actual move, Kate arriving later with Gertie and that van we had packed in Andover.

On the Winter Solstice of that year our moving van came and promptly got stuck in a ditch. Eduardo and friends pulled it out. Snow fell and the temperatures hovered around zero. Not willing to try again the van driver took the whole load off Shadow Mountain to a more level spot, rented two u-haul trucks and shuttled the whole truckload from some spot on Hwy. 73. This lasted far into the night with dogs and movers crossing and intersecting.

From that day until the day she died Kate said she felt like she was on vacation living up here. Six and a half years of vacation. A good retirement for her. Glad she didn’t see the MAGmA overflow decency and justice. She would have been angry and disappointed.

Over the course of those years I’ve become Harari, a man of the mountains, now wedded to this place through location and intense experiences. Many, many memories. Some difficult, sure, but also many more intimate, fun, bound up with the wild nature of this place, with Judaism, Kate’s final gift to me.

Mountains. If I have my way-Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise-I’ll live out my final days here, too.

 

Just a moment: A life lived from, say mid-20th century to the first quarter or so of the 21st, has already passed, as few lives ever do, from one millennium to the next, the second to the third. We’ve also seen what may be the end of a political era begun under FDR. I’d call it whiplash, but the change has been more gradual than the crack of a whip. A new world is being born, but despite long tie guy’s next fast-food adventure on Pennsylvania Avenue, neither he nor his minions will define it.

This new world will emerge from the tension between the mindless governance of, as Kamala Harris rightly said, an unserious man, and cultures political, artistic, and economic which my generation assumed to be stable. Oh, my.

 

Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Shadow Mountain, The Move, Travel, Woolly Mammoths, World History, Writing

Guests

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Summer and the Summer Moon Above

Monday gratefuls: Tom. Roxann. Lodgepoles. Aspens. Sunlight. Another blue Sky day. Ruth and Gabe in North Carolina. Joan. Tal. CBE. Israel. Trip payments. Fixing the wireless keyboard. Dead hearing aid. Marilyn and her award. The Bread Lounge. Quiet days, cool nights.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Guests

One brief shining: Sentences can run from harsh to gentle, grating along the tongue of the mind or softly caressing it, making the tongue recoil or roll over in delight sentences can be funny or serious delighting the mind or causing it to work carefully and sentences can confound the mind throwing it into utter confusion what power sentences have!

 

Tom’s visit comes to a close with our final breakfast out this morning. It’s been a real delight to have him here, continuing our Colorado conversation begun on December 19th, 2014 when he drove Kepler, Vega, Rigel, and me out here. We slept on the floor in sleeping bags that night. Gertie came with Kate in a packed rental van. She fed Gertie cheeseburgers along the way.

He returns to the heat and humidity of a Minnesota Summer. Different from the arid West.

It’s been a season of visits for me. Ode and Dennis in May. Mary a week ago Saturday. BJ and Sarah that Sunday night. Tom last Thursday until today. Nice to have folks in the house for a bit.

Tom has noted it feels strange for there to be no welcoming dog here. And it’s true. I’m dog identified. Yet I don’t feel their absence in the same way. I would love to have another dog, but I’m also enjoying having no one to care for but myself. So easy to contemplate travel, staying longer somewhere in the afternoon. Getting up at any time. Perhaps it’s the memories of so many dogs that keeps me company. Iris and Buck. Celt and Sorsha. Scot and Morgana. Tully and Tira. Bridget and Emma. Tor and Orion. Hilo and Kona. Rigel and Vega. Gertie and Kepler. 18 dogs. All still alive in memory, each one’s memory a blessing. As is Kate’s.

 

How bout those Russians, eh? Can’t fight a war, didn’t stop a rebellion. Putin’s looking a lot less like a strong man since the weekend. Instead of putting down the Wagner group when it seized a military HQ in Rostov-on-Don he allowed Prigozhin to slip away into Belarus and Prighozhin’s troops to stand down with no penalties in either case.

May they both get what they deserve.

 

Lots of ideas still floating around for Herme and Cold Mountain. Enough for a one act play? I won’t know unless I try to write one. The idea gives me energy. I like the idea of a one person play: Herme and Cold Mountain.

I also like the idea which resurfaced as Tom and I talked about cooking yesterday afternoon. A serious class in cooking basics and maybe one on a particular cuisine. At a cooking school. Realized I’ve taken all these other classes, why not one that will positively affect my daily life?

 

 

 

Friends, Judaism, The Move

Alan and Rich

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Imbolc and the Waiting to Cross Moon

Saturday gratefuls: Kep, who nudged and nudged. The New Right. The Dissident Right. The Far Right. Elites and their fantasies. Including me. The USA. Japan. Amazon. Korea. Hawai’i. On energy around lifelong fascinations. ChatbotGPT. Chatbots. The singularity. The Hubble. The Webb. Gravitational waves. The LIGO. Bahrain. Ruby. Getting her detailed. Life on Shadow Mountain.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Alan and Rich

 

Yesterday was a relationship day. Breakfast with Rich at the Muddybuck. Lunch with Alan at Illegal Burger. Rich and I discussed the New Right and his upcoming trip to DC with his honors class at Mines. They’re going to the Extreme Court to hear arguments. But on a silly case: Jack Daniels vs. Bad Spaniels. Jack has sued a dog toy company which made a toy in the shape of a Jack Daniels bottle with a black label that reads, Bad Spaniels. Trademark infringement.

The Muddy Buck occupies the former lobby of the Evergreen Hotel. Western. Old exposed wood ceiling, floor, and support pillars. Tobacco stained a rich dark brown. With a very modern espresso bar and young folks behind the counter serving cinnamon roles, avocado toast, breakfast burritos, and croissant egg and bacon sandwiches.

A few long tables. Four or five high tables. A counter looking out on Evergreen’s main tourist drag. Chairs and a couch in a nook with a fireplace. A gathering place. One table had a family, a little girl with rabbit ears on a head band. Dad hovering. Two other young kids who looked like they’d just gotten up. 8 am.

Rich believes the internal political pressures in the U.S. give us only a hundred more years as a nation. He would vote for a Romney/Cheney ticket if they ran. Why? Because they could be unifiers. Surprised me. A grim forecast.

No wonder Abraham Lincoln is his guy. He even named his dog Abraham Lincoln. When asked by his class to name his five favorite presidents he said: Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln. FDR. Lincoln in his second term. Lincoln in his first term. FDR.

 

Back up the hill from Evergreen to let Kep out, watch a short segment on F1 tv about the upcoming grand prix, then back to the far side of Evergreen, near I-70 to pick up Alan from the car detailing spot. We went to Illegal Burger for lunch. Didn’t even know we had an Illegal Burger.

Given my mostly fish and chicken diet I felt fine having a burger. Clogging my arteries didn’t occur even once to me.

Alan and Cheri have empty boxes along the walls. And still a lot of unpacking to do. I’m not moving for another 27 years. Yeah. I get it. Moving is a bitch.

However. Yesterday for breakfast they took the elevator down, walked over to a deli. On the way back they picked up coffee beans at a nearby shop. They’ve been in the building’s hot tub. And ate takeout with friends in the Skytop Lounge. When they wake their view is to the southeast with Pikes Peak in the far distance and 17th Street right below. Urban living. With no forest fire threat.

Glad for him.

Anoka County, Bees, Colorado, Dogs, Family, Feelings, Fourth Phase, Friends, Garden, Health, Hermitage, Jefferson County, Judaism, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Plants, Shadow Mountain, The Move, Writing

Waiting To Cross

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Imbolc and the Waiting to Cross Moon

Monday gratefuls: Dr. Eigner. Dr. Simpson. Kep, the early. Snow. More Snow. Mild temperatures. The Ukraine. Biden. The James Webb. Tom and Bill, the science bros. Max, getting older. Ode, the well-rooted wanderer. Paul, the steadfast. Alan, the cheerful. The Ancient Brothers, a true Sangha. Zoom. Korean fried chicken. Jon, a memory. Kate, always Kate. Ivory. Ruby. Oncology.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: The Ancient Brothers

 

So I said it out loud. My reaction to mom’s death turned me from a confident, ready to take on the world teenager to a frightened, hesitant young adult. One who dropped German because he was failing it. Shame. One who convinced himself there was not enough money for Wabash because he was afraid to go back. Shame. One who entered then a great teacher’s college, but a mediocre university. Ball State University. Shame.

Not a lot of shame in my life. Very little. That’s where it lies. Perhaps now having put it out there. So late. 76. It will fall away. It took me years, nearly three decades, to put the pain of her death in perspective. Treatment for alcoholism. Quitting smoking. Quitting the ministry. Years of Jungian analysis. Finally. Meeting Kate. 26 years later. I finally passed the threshold of grieving mom’s death.

And started living my life. As a writer. A gardener. A dog lover. A beekeeper. An anachronistic blogger. With a woman who loved me as I was and one whom I loved as she was. A love where we wanted and supported the best life for each other. We traveled. A lot. We stood with both sons fully.

Abundance. Yes. Ode’s word for our Andover home. Yes. Flowers. Meadow. Fruits. Nuts. Berries. Grapes. Honey. Plums. Pears. Apples. Cherries. Iris. Tulips. Spring ephemerals. Roses. Hosta. Gooseberries. Beans. Heirloom tomatoes. Leeks. Garlic. Onions. Kale. Collard Greens. Lettuce. Carrots. Ground Cherry. Raspberries.

The fire pit. The woods.

The dogs. So many dogs. Celt. Sorsha. Morgana. Scot. Tira. Tully. Orion. Tor. The Wolfhounds. Iris. Buck. Hilo. Emma. Kona. Bridget. The Whippets. Vega and Rigel. The IW/Coyote Hound sisters. Gertie, the German Short Hair. And Kep, the Akita.

It was so good. Until the work became burdensome. Until I visited Colorado one year and Ruth ran away from the door because she didn’t expect me. A surprise visit. Then we had to come. The two. A push. The work of Seven Oaks had become too much. A pull. We wanted, needed to be there for Ruth and Gabe.

So we packed everything up. And on the Winter Solstice of 2014 moved here, to the top of Shadow Mountain. 8,800 feet above sea level. Into the Wildland/Urban Interface, the WUI. With four dogs: Kep, Gertie, Rigel, and Vega. Again, thanks to Tom for helping with the dog move.

When the time came, we put away Andover and envisioned a life together in the Rocky Mountains. Kate felt like she was on vacation every day until she died. Where she found the Jewish life she had always wanted. Where we both found ourselves immersed in the lives of our grandchildren, of their parents.

Now Kate is dead. Vega is dead. Gertie is dead. Rigel is dead. Only Kep and I remain alive. I’m at another threshold, waiting to cross.