Kiss the Ground. Netflix. Not a huge fan of documentaries. Not sure why. I love fiction, not non-fiction books though I read them from time to time.
But this one. Recommended by long time friend Tom Crane. Didn’t say much new, maybe nothing for me, but it pulled my heart. Reminded me of who I’ve been. Who I’ve left behind.
Gardner me. That guy that used to spend hours planting flowers, amending soil, weeding the onions and the beans. Cutting raspberry canes back for the winter. Thinning the woods. Thinning the carrots and the beets. Lugging bags of compost. Bales of marsh hay. Planning flower beds so there would be something blooming during the entire growing season. Hunting for heirloom seeds.
I had plans. I read books about adapting gardening techniques in xericulture. Thought about this idea and that. Read a lot before our move. But, then. Prostate cancer and a cascade of other distractions. Divorce. Arthritis. Kate’s troubles.
The whole horticulture act slipped into yesterday. And I miss it. Even the cussing at the critters. A notable reminder. Heirloom Tomatoes. Oh, my god. I buy them when they’re good. Five bucks a pound. I eat them like the fruit they are as a fruit. The taste. So good. No comparison to those raised for mechanical harvesting. Not even the same thing, imho.
Our carrots and beets and leeks and garlic and beans. Our honeycrisp apples. Granny. Plums. Cherries. The onions drying on the old screen door in the shed Jon built. A basement pantry filled with canned vegetables, canned fruit. Jars of honey from Artemis Honey.
A greenhouse. That’s the only way I could return to gardening. I’m no longer strong enough for the kind of gardening we did in Andover, Minnesota. I’d need plants on a bench about hip height. But I’m seriously considering it. The dogs. Yes. Kate. Yes. But, plants, too. Our own food on our table. Nurturing plants. I’m sad I left it behind.
Thursday gratefuls: Alan. Dr. Gustave. Kate. Angelique. Rigel. Kep. The night sky. A decent night’s sleep. Cool. The Denver Post. Life. In all its forms. Animacy in its unexpected forms. The turning of the Great Wheel. Old friends. The buck in our yard yesterday afternoon.
A Mule Deer Buck jumped our fence yesterday afternoon to eat Grass. Kep and Rigel were outside, wandering around the back, too. Just us animals here. No barking. No disturbed looks from the Deer. Yeah, we all live up here on Shadow Mountain. Our place.
Alan’s coming by at 7:30 to take me to the Cherry Hills Surgery center near Swedish Hospital. Old cataract out, new lens in. Dr. Gustave at the robotic controls. With Kate’s multiple medical procedures, appointments, conditions this surgery seems ho-hum. I’m neither excited nor fearful. Gonna go do it. Come home.
Go back on October 8th. Repeat. Tomorrow I have an appointment with Dr. Gustave. Post-op. Another on October 2nd. Then, post op the 9th. And follow up on the 14th. Then, a month after that. Lots of miles for a better way to see the world. Way worth it.
Used gift cards to buy more easy entrees for Kate. More meatloaf. Mongolian beef. A salad. Easier for me, what Kate wants to eat. Perfect match.
Tomorrow at 5 pm we go to Swedish for a drive thru Covid test. This is for Kate prior to her catscan on Tuesday and the thoracentesis on Wednesday. Hope all this provides her some relief from her extreme shortness of breath.
Continuing the medical theme. Kep sees a doggy dermatologist next Thursday. The last two times we’ve had him defurminated he’s broken out with serious hot spots, lesions on his back. We need to figure this out so we can have him groomed. Otherwise his hair piles up around the house.
Speaking of Dogs. Brenton White, the kind man in Loveland who is caring for Murdoch, had a small tragedy. Seventeen days ago he brought home Mocha, a very cute chocolate lab puppy. Murdoch loved him. They played together. Then, two nights ago, he died. Heart. Likely a congenital anomaly Kate believes.
The Atlantic Monthly sent out an article by e-mail yesterday. Said it couldn’t wait for publication. I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s about November 3rd and the potential democratic crisis. The Election That Could Break America.
Tuesday gratefuls: Kate resolving the missing $5,500.Rigel eager to get up this morning. Orion in the south. Mars in the west. Venus in the east. Sirius in the southeast. Small bursts of color. The Great Wheel, turning.
The vernal equinox. When the night hours increase. Daylight shortens. Crops come to fruit. The Earth begins to gather back to itself the plants that grew in fields and meadows.
The Elk rut. That strange strangled cry of the bugling bull Elk. The cough of the mountain lion as they hunt in the dawn and twilight. Bears in their hyperphagia phase (a new word for me), 20,000 calories a day. Preparation for hibernation. Upturned trash cans, detritus on the roads.
Orion returns to the night sky. Getting the paper while feeding the dogs. In the dark now. Seeing the stars. Or, rather, their cataract driven explosions of light.
Earth/Sky, a favorite website, has a fascinating short article about the Chinese sense of autumn. This observation I found significant: “…it’s part of Chinese culture to maintain and add to ancient wisdom. In contrast, we in the Western world tend to replace old ideas with new ideas. So – although our Western way of thinking encourages advances in things like technology and economics – the Chinese understanding of natural cycles remains far deeper than ours.”
The emotions associated with autumn for the Chinese, courage and sadness, rise in full measure this 2020 harvest season. Sad. The feeling of Leaves falling, Grasses withering, light diminishing, the Sun’s angle shortening. RBG’s tzaddik death. The pandemic. Our beleaguered and chaotic nation. Isolation and its discontents. Courage. Facing the election, doing what’s necessary. Mourning, then fighting. Going on as the Vegetative world dies, changes. Living with the pandemic instead of in spite of it. Leaning into the third phase for those of us old hippies and radicals still here.
The Great Wheel is ancient Western knowledge. I have chosen to maintain it and, I hope, add to it. As the Earth/Sky article notes: “To the Chinese, nature means more than just the cycling of the seasons. Nature is within and around us…” It used to meant that in the West, too, but our emphasis on reason, on results, on arriving at destinations, on a monotheistic creator who controls nature, have become mature cataracts for us, occluding our vision.
We see what we believe useful. We find the laws of nature, then proceed to own them, use them. This gives us the impression that, like magic or miracles, we can control nature. The rapid warming of our planet gives the lie to that.
I’m neither a Luddite nor anti-reason, anti-science. I am sad about what we’ve lost in our rush to understand and after having understood, manipulate.
I find comfort in knowing as autumn comes to the Rockies, it has also come to me. My life has matured, has headed for the fallow season, the long season in which I return those borrowed elements, become again one with the universe. Though of course I’m one with it now, too.
Which makes me feel the turning of the wheel, it tugs on me, pulls me toward not only death, but also spring. The cyclical renewal. Who knows? Maybe autumn prepares us not for annihilation, but transformation and renewal. It does for Mother Earth. Why not us?
Tuesday and Wednesday gratefuls: Kate’s DEXA scan for bone density. Ruby’s a.c. for the drive. Euphoria on HBO. Ruth’s new favorite show. Rigel’s improving appetite. Amber. Mountain Waste. The blood red morning Sun. Teenagers. The complexity of their lives, made even more complex by Covid. The orange excrescence and what he’s showing us about our country.
The dawn Sun here bleeds for the Fires burning through the West. The clouds show their concern with reflected color. Northern California and the Western Slope of Colorado are aflame. Their smoke and ash foul the Air we breath even up here on Shadow Mountain.
We live in the Arapaho National Forest, filled with Lodgepole Pine and Aspen stressed by drought, valley meadows with a summer’s growth of Grasses, also dry. The National Forest Service warning signs have pegged their highest mark, Extreme, for weeks now.
Western life. Punctuated by drought. Rejuvenated by Fire. Relieved by heavy Mountain Snows. For thousands of years. “Go, West, young man.” We did. But we white folk are not nomadic. We do not know where a village can be safe. We just build. Glass and steel. Hardie board and shingles. Permanent. As if there were no fire. No drought. These are strategies of the humid East, dangerous in the arid West.
As Greeley’s famous invitation flooded the West with people from the East, pushing out, slaughtering the people who knew how to move with the seasons, we made the same mistakes over and over. I’m living in one right now. It’s beautiful here on Shadow Mountain, but this house will burn. And that’s what Lodgepole Pine Forests do. They burn. All the Trees. Leaving fertile ground for a new Ecosystem.
Humans make mistakes. Often. And the consequences are sometimes horrific. Sometimes wonderful. Human life is one long unintentional adventure in empiricism. Oh, if we do that, this happens. Some of our mistakes lead us to lives otherwise impossible. Like our life here on Shadow Mountain.
Kate and I understand that we might be living here when the Forests catch Fire. That our home may be temporary. We choose to stay for the same reasons populations of us Eastern folk spotted all over the Mountains and Intramontane regions out here do. It’s beautiful and close to the Wild Life, a reminder of a world not controlled by humans.
Oh, yes, there’s a paradox. Live where it’s not safe. Why would we do that? We’re mistake makers, non-linear decision makers. We’re human.
Sunday gratefuls: Jon, Ruth, Gabe. All here to celebrate Grandma’s birthday. The specific Animals that gave their lives for our meal: scallops and a tri-tip steak. The heat. When it leaves. Jon and Ruth’s happiness with the gift of Ivory. (our 2011 Rav4). Gabe’s “Air hug. I love you Grandpop.” Rigel at home. The chance to cook for a crowd. Kate. Always Kate.
Didn’t do much for Kate’s birthday on Tuesday. Lots of stuff going on before, that day, and after. But we hit it yesterday. Grandkids. Scallops. The gift of empanadas from Jon and the kids. Rigel up and about. When they left we both collapsed, as usual. A good exhaustion. Happy to see them come. Happy to see them go.
Record heat in Denver. Hot up here, too. Not by other spots standards, I know, but we’ve become acclimated to a cooler day.
You can’t see the Mountains from Denver. Jon. All this smoke and haze, heavy particulates has obscured us. We’re still here. The haze is here and the smell of smoke hangs in the Air like a harbinger. It’s bad further west, but the Wildfire threat is extreme here, too. Humidity at 16. The Ground Water evaporates. The stress on Trees and Grasses grows with the lack of precipitation. A grim reminder that we’re all part of this Ecosystem.
Ruth said that Animals from the Foothills are fleeing into metro Denver. People have been asked to leave water out for them. Can’t do it here. Habituation. Which kills Animals rather than helps them.
The arid West is not the humid East. The Mountains are not the Plains. Whether we realize it all the time or not, our lives have Water as a disruptive actor. The lack of it. Water from the Western Slope, for example, goes to Denver through huge tunnels and pipes. The southern burbs of Denver have depleted much of the Aquifer that sits beneath them. Long periods of dryness lead to extreme conditions for agriculture, Wildlife, and our Forests. The Colorado River Compact promises more Water to its downstream users like Las Vegas, Arizona, and Los Angeles than actually flows through it.
Diane, my San Francisco based cousin, told me about the book, Cadillac Desert, long ago. That piqued my interest in Water. I’ve been fascinated ever since. The way the Plains states like Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and even parts of Oklahoma and Texas have based their economies on the Ogallala Aquifer, an enormous reservoir of mostly ancient Water that underlies them. No Aquifer, no amber waves of Grain, no fruited Plains. The Great Lakes. Now, the Colorado River.
Consider the Water where you are. It is Life itself. Worthy of your attention.
Thursday gratefuls: Rigel’s strength. The docs at VRCC. Tara. Kate. Amber, two gratefuls for Amber. Wildfires. Extreme Fire Danger. Kep. Ruth. Kate’s sisters. Shadow Mountain. Black Mountain. The Arapaho National Forest. All the wild critters that live within it.
Rigel. Steroids bringing her fever down. Down into normal range. Seeing now if that can last. If so, she may come home today. If not today, tomorrow. She’s strong, otherwise healthy. Dr. Baylis, who diagnosed her allergy to chicken protein, said yesterday that a six week course of oral anti-biotics could find her back to normal. The stroke risk remains though I don’t know how to evaluate it. Guardedly optimistic.
Had a dream last night. A big brown dog bounded through the house. I turned to Kate and said, “Oh, you went in and picked up Rigel!” She’s in my heart. Forever.
Kate seems to have found her advocate about her feeding tube. Amber. Amber is physical therapist with a specialty in wound care. Since the feeding tube goes through the skin, it is a permanent wound. Healing it requires preventing fluids from leaking out onto Kate’s skin.
We’re now thinking that the tube, which was placed in a small part of her stomach left after bariatric surgery, may need to go where we originally thought it was going, into her jejunum. A J-tube. Would require surgery again. Grrr. But if that’s what it takes, we’ll go there.
Amber got the operative report yesterday and found a denser nutrient supplement for Kate’s feedings. That might help, too. It would supply more calories per unit and allow her to slow down the rate of feeding without making it take a really long time. That could help with the leakage.
We’re going back to see Amber today. Might have some news on this later.
Meanwhile my friend Tara has talked me through the recent disturbance in my psyche. She asked me how things were going on, I think, the same day that I told Kate I couldn’t clean the house and cook as much. I told Tara how things were right then. She offered to do many things, but the one I needed was to talk.
So we’ve met for an hour each week since. Three weeks. I calmed down after the first conversation. Over the course of our three talks I’ve come to realize that stuff here: Kate’s, Rigel’s, the house’s, The Denver Olson’s: Jon, Ruth, Gabe, occupy most of my free mental territory. That’s what I meant when I said I could no longer clean and cook as much. Or, rather, at that point stuff occupied more mental territory than I had free. My hard drive had crashed.
With Tara and the Ancient Friends and the Clan I’ve opened up some space and feel better now. Thanks to you all.
Monday gratefuls: Feeling loved. Ruth. Jon. Gabe. Chuck roast in the instapot. Pull apart good. The Maids coming tomorrow. The cool nights. Having the lawn furniture up closer to the house. The Ancient Ones. The duckling rescue. The heart of Bill Schmidt. The openness of Mark Odegard. The sensitivity of Tom Crane. The doggedness of Paul Strickland. My buddies for over thirty years.
Remarkable. Yesterday was remarkable. That is, I will re-mark it again and again as a special day. Let me tell you why.
Ducklings in the sewer. When I meet on zoom with my ancient friends, mentioned above, Tom, Bill, Mark, and Paul, we have a topic chosen by each of us in a rotation. Yesterday was Bill’s day and he gave us this song to investigate, especially it’s lyrics.
This was his prompt: “Bob Dylan is an insightful writer/singer. Here’s a link to his song, It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) and the lyrics are attached in a pdf file. It was released in early 1965 and every verse is for this time, right now. Listen, reflect, and share. Hi light for us any part of this song that says something to you.”
It’s the task of the topic creator to sort of gently guide the discussion, so it was strange when Bill didn’t show up on the call. When we’d all popped up on the screen except Bill, Tom told us Bill had called and said he had discovered a distraught duck mother quacking and looking into a sewer grate. 6 of her ducklings had fallen into the storm sewer.
Bill. I called 911. I said this, This isn’t an emergency, but it’s important. A bit later three trucks and six men show up. A fire and rescue truck among them.
These men didn’t quit. They took the sewer grate off, climbed down. Meanwhile, I talked to the duck mother, tried to calm her down. Eventually I sat down on the curb beside her.
They got five ducklings up and returned them to the mother, who then stopped quacking and waddled off with what she thought was all of her ducklings.
No. I hear another one. One of the rescue guys. One of the ducklings had gone the opposite way from the others, sewer drain pipes lead off in both directions. I hear him. I’ll get him. They flushed out the sixth duckling.
When they got out of the sewer, the mother had disappeared. Four of them took the sixth duckling and began searching for the mother to reunite them all. They found her.
Bill made it back to his apartment before we finished and told us this story. What you do to the least of these, you do unto me. Yes. Bill. Yes.
The mailbox. Jon installed our new mailbox. It took an hour plus, but he worked away at it. I helped a little bit, but not much. My help really consisted of trying to get the old one removed. I told you yesterday how that turned out.
This morning I went out to get the Denver Post, an every morning jaunt. The new mailbox was there and I opened the road facing door. Was it smooth? Yes. It was.
Oh, wait. What’s that? There were two cloth bags inside it, one labeled grandma and the other grandpop. I put Kate’s at her place at the table and brought my bag upstairs with me.
Inside it were several small items. A Donald Duck stuffed animal, a Pokemon card, a picture of a smiling gap toothed man glued to a piece of paper, a small iron coyote baying at the moon, a bracelet, and, a piece of lined note paper.
Ruth. Dear Grandpop, I wanted to do something for you that would help to brighten your day and mood. I collected and made all of these things to make you happy. I made the bracelet of these colors because they reminded me of the sun which I think of as a very bright and happy thing in our solar system, so I hope that when you see it you will feel happy.
Her note goes on this spirit. She found the coyote in a box of her special things, Donald Duck was her favorite Disney Character. “I figured he could be your buddy in the loft.”
“I hope this brightens your day, and mood! Love, Ruthie.” How about my life? She’s brightened it from the beginning.
Saturday gratefuls: Beef stroganoff and egg noodles from Easy Entrees. Waking early. Rigel sleeping, wouldn’t get up. Safeway open at 6 a.m. Nobody there. The Mountains at dawn. Muted behind the tree cover, with the sun coming up as glory, rays leading the way over the peaks to the east. We live here. I kept thinking as I drove. We live here. Then, I realized, we live here.
A word for the dawn. I don’t drive much in the early a.m., but I did this morning. Off to Safeway. Which was clear of unmasked people and almost all shoppers. I felt safe, able to wander a bit. Like B.C. Mostly though I luxuriated in the drive there and back. The Sun sent its emissaries, angels of Light appearing as a crown, streaming high and proud over the eastern foothills. The few Angus Cattle being fed out on the grassy Meadow about a mile down the hill from us. Shadows and darkness still in the Lodgepole and Aspen Forest on the slopes of Black Mountain and Conifer Mountain. Few cars.
We live here, I kept saying to myself. Which changed. We live our life here, we are alive here. Even with Covid. Even with illness and infirmity. Even with Trump in the Whitehouse. Even with the climate changing, moving swiftly toward tragedy. We are alive here.
Thursday gratefuls: Amber. Lisa and the humming bird feeder. Dr. Pullikottli. Kate’s fingers healing. Ruby and her a.c. Mule Deer Buck. The intimacy of difficulty. All those carboniferous trees and plants that gave their lives so I can drive my car. Electric Cars. Go, Tesla. Echocardiograms. Chicken breasts. Read to eat meals.
Two weeks of no workouts. Marking a slow down or at least different focus for daily life. Dug down into my psyche. Like a retreat. Still surfacing. Yesterday I found myself up against it. I can’t keep cleaning the house, I said. I can’t manage the cooking in the way I have been. More tears.
I felt like I was letting Kate down. No, she said. You have been my pillar, my strength. I don’t say it often enough. Oh.
This, she said, is why people downsize. Yes. There’s a moment when you realize, no, I can’t take care of all this anymore.
Is this that time for us? No. We can afford a house cleaner. Kate will find one. I can buy meal kits, ready to eat food. Cook much less. Occasional take-out. Relief.
Derek has done a fabulous job in clearing up our downed trees. The pallets are gone. The front stumps have been ground. The place looks so much better. Will James will take down the remaining fire mitigation marked trees. Next week the gutters get cleaned and the week after the windows.
Ordered beef stroganoff with egg noodles from a chef run ready to eat meal business with an unlikely location. It’s at the base of Conifer Mountain, about 5 minutes away. Ezentrees.com. Looks pretty good.
We both love mountain living, even with its obvious drawbacks for our mutual lung issues. This house suits us. Large enough to house family on occasion, small enough to feel homey for us. The loft for me. These decisions are so fraught, so wrapped up in the past, in our expectations, in cultural values around home. And, independence.
We’ll keep jiggering with paid work, family help, and our own efforts. Hard stuff though.
Summer and the (new moon), the Lughnasa Moon (moon of the first harvest)
Monday gratefuls: Clean floors and toilets. Chex Mix. Cinnamon rolls. Shrimp. Claussen’s picked up the pallets. Neowise. Samwise. Tolkien. Robert Penn Warren. The harem of Elk in the lower meadow. The confused Mule Deer Buck on Shadow Mountain Drive. All of our wild neighbors. And, our human ones, too.
When Kate and I went to see Amber last week, the meadow at the bottom of Shadow Mountain Drive had a harem of 20 Elk Cows, several Calves, and one proud Buck, strutting, head high. It’s a large meadow that lies between Conifer Mountain and Shadow Mountain, at the base of both. It has a Marsh that attracts Moose sometimes and an expanse filled with Grass that gets baled for hay later on in the year, this Meadow also attracts Mule Deer and Elk.
Seeing wild Animals living their lives is thrilling. Makes life in the Mountains awe-full. Delight, joy jumps right into your chest. The Mule Deer Buck that couldn’t figure out what to do with the metal barrier on a curve closer to home evoked concern. I flashed my lights for oncoming cars to warn them. The courteous dirt bike rider behind me was cautious. The Buck was unpredictable. In the five and a half years we’ve lived here I’ve seen only one dead Deer along the road, so these situations work themselves out.
As I reached in to pull out the Denver Post, I looked up at Black Mountain. A few small cumulus Clouds crowned its peak. The ski runs are dry, jagged brown scars down its face.
Unbidden, as happens often, we live in the Mountains wrote itself on my inner screen. A muted sense of wonder followed and I stood there, the latest doom-scrolling in my hand, captivated by the Mountain summer.
When Israel went out from Egypt…The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs. Psalm 114, NRSV
The Mountains are calling and I must go. John Muir
These are not ancient Rocks caught in the stupor of inanimacy. These are not piles of Stone pushed up from the Earth’s Crust and left alone. These are Mountains. Tall, steady, confident. Like Vishnu they are stability, order, toughness made real. Shadow Mountain allows us to live on its peak and on its sides, but it could take away that permission. One massive burn through its forest of Aspens and Lodgepole Pines and our houses would be gone. Shadow Mountain would remain. The forests would grow back.
We are so Mayfly like to these sturdy beings. Our kind may not last as long Shadow Mountain. Surely won’t if we don’t change our behaviors. Yet it gives us a home, like it gives a home to our wild neighbors. A Mountain forgives those who tread its flanks. Except, perhaps, for those who shave off its peaks, ruin it with strip mines. Or, hard Metal mines that pollute Streams, kill Wildlife.
Time though. Time is the Mountain’s friend. It waits as its colleagues Rain, Snow, Ice, Lightning, running Water scour what human’s leave. Tumble it down through Creeks and Streams. Dilute it, spread it out. A million years on Shadow Mountain will look much the same, perhaps a bit shorter, perhaps a bit narrower, but still substantial. 9358 Black Mountain Drive will have long ago become a forgotten pimple.
We can learn from the Mountains. Even our Mayfly lives can gain from patience, from being slow to react, from purification in the waters of the heavens. We need these lessons now, in these Covid 19 times.
