Category Archives: Mountains

Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Water. Psyche.

May 8, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

Went into Evergreen yesterday hunting for truffles-no, not nose to the ground, nose to the display case-and a bottle of Chardonnay. On the way down Shadow Mountain and whatever other mountains I descend on highway 78 (Shadow Mountain Drive, Black Forest Drive and Brook Forest Drive) Maxwell Creek tumbled down its narrow bed toward the rocks of Upper, then Lower Maxwell Falls. Further down Cub Creek came crashing down the mountain, headed toward a rendezvous with Maxwell. This time I realized that the creek going over the concrete spillway further on down 78 was neither Maxwell nor Cub, but a third creek coming down and out of Shadow Mountain like Maxwell. This one hits either Cub Creek or Maxwell somewhere, I couldn’t find the spot, but in any case all three join below Lower Maxwell Falls parking lot and speed toward Evergreen.

Not so long ago, I think it was 2012, these same three creeks overwhelmed Evergreen, causing considerable flooding. That was the same year that Golden and Manitou Springs and Boulder had flood problems, too. This is not that kind of year, but the amount of energy in these creeks impresses me.

The stolid, deeply moored mountain shows its power to create movement, the opposite of its apparent nature. Which might say something about us, about what we perceive as permanent and unchanging in our Selves. Look for what movement it creates, perhaps unknown to us until we look.

Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

Running Creeks Moon

May 5, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane New (Running Creeks) Moon

Shadow Brook, Forest Brook, Maxwell Creek, Deer Creek, the mountains streams I see regularly, are full. The snow melt obeys the law of gravity, following the twists in spacetime toward lower points. They boil at rock beds and turns, often muddy water capped with white foam.

With all the recent snow fields have begun to green and our aspens have leaf buds. The lodgepoles look healthy. That 10 inch snow last weekend has already melted and the snow drifts even in our north facing back yard have begun to diminish. Time to get back to I’m a lumberjack, yes I am.

Wildlife is more in evidence, too. On the day of Vega’s death Kate saw a red fox on the roadside, as if Vega’s spirit were saying the good-bye we didn’t get in person. We’ve several small herds of mule deer and Kate saw four elk does yesterday. Pinecam.com, source for all things local, has had mountain lion photos and reports of hungry bears causing mischief. The Denver Post reported a bear rummaging through a man’s refrigerator in his second floor apartment.

The bicyclists also return with the clearing roads, joggers, too. Crankshafts of motorcyclists also begin to appear. And that seasonal bird, the tourist, begins to clog highway 285, racing around curves and down the 7% inclines. There are grumbles on Pinecam.com. Here in Conifer 285 is still four lane, but south (really west) of us about seven or eight miles it goes down to two lanes. That’s the direction the tourists head and it makes for dangerous driving in the summer months.

So a seasonal change is upon us, though a very different one from the flowering, leafing, sprouting spring of Andover.

Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Again. More Snow.

April 27, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring(?) Wedding Moon

As Weather5280 keeps reminding those of us who live near the Denver metro, but in higher elevations, April is our snowiest month. Well, geez. Another big storm rumbles toward us for the end of this week. This stuff is heavy, wet. Not good for snowblowers, my chief tool in snow clearing.

I just put out a note to a local snowplower who also does high altitude gardening. We’ll need help. Ironically, our neighbors who cleared our driveway for us when we got 46 inches or so last week, left last Friday for Tijuana, driving. We’re watching their property. We may get a chance to return the favor.

Well over 170 inches this year. That’s a lot of white coming from the sky. It’s a good thing for the snow pack and at least for the early fire season. Another way of saying the transition here goes from winter to summer is to say we go from ice to fire. Makes for interesting living. And I mean that.

Life here, like life in Minnesota, finds mother earth a constant presence, one that cannot be sidelined by furnaces, air conditioners and trips to the beach.

Asia, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Hot and Cold

April 16, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Wedding Moon

The oddities of traveling. On Wednesday Kate and I walked from the Botanic Garden MRT stop to its Visitor Centre, maybe halfway across this large park, a Unesco World Heritage Site. We knew it was hot, our bodies told us at every step with an oppressive clamping feeling as the humidity and the heat forced out sweat but didn’t allow it to cool us down.

We learned on Friday that this was the hottest day in a decade, 36.7 centigrade or 98.06F. The hottest temperature every recorded here is only .3 degrees warmer, 37. Kate recognized that one immediately as 98.6. The difference between this heat and Colorado heat, which can reach well over a 100, is the humidity which has stayed mostly in the 95% range and the dewpoint, also very high.

Meanwhile back home a huge late winter snowstorm headed toward Colorado. The foothills were smack in the middle of the highest forecasted snowfalls, 1-3 feet, with some predicting as much as 4 feet. Odd junction. Last I looked Conifer Mountain, across the valley from us, had 32 inches with another foot on the way. Since this is spring, it’s a very heavy snow, but it will melt fast, long before we get home on Thursday.

Today in Singapore it’s 84 now, headed toward 93, feels like 110 (not kidding).

Asia, Family, Garden, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Travel

Living in the present, surrounded by the past

April 9, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Wedding Moon

Yesterday we took a trip to the past. To Seoah’s family home and the village of the Jang family for at least four generations. The neighbor women sat at a low table eating from dishes and dishes of food. They looked up curiously as we came in the small traditional house, then went back to their meal.

(Kate took all the rest of these photos.)

The house had little furniture, mostly low tables and one chair, a massaging recliner that Mary (my sister) says is common in Singaporean households. Often the only chair in the house.

We met many black-haired children who ran around, curious and a little uncertain, Seoah’s two sisters and her older brother. Seungpil, husband of her younger sister, has been our taxi driver in a sleek, well-maintained black Hyundai, a Grandeur.

Seoah’s mother had charge of a compliment of women in the kitchen which had food plates and bowls and pans on all of its surfaces. Her father, a trim man, 71 moved with the grace of a 30 year old. He farms a large number of plots, some vinyl greenhouses, a rice paddie and several fields. I asked to see it and we walked around it all.

He proudly pointed to a tractor and said, in clear English, “John Deere!” He had a combine, a grain drier and a second Massey-Ferguson, older. He grows vegetables, hay and some fruit. Like any good farmer in the spring, after we left his home for the Bamboo Museum, he headed back into the fields.

Seoah’s home village nestles among low mountains that look (and probably are) ancient. They’re very beautiful, often mist covered and extending in ranges for some ways. Sangkuk is well beyond the metro region of Gwangju, in the country. As nearly as I could tell, the area around Sangkuk is only agricultural, no folks living the country life and commuting into the city.

fields and tombs — Jang family fields. Note tombs in forest clearing toward the right

Colorado, Dogs, Great Work, Mountains, Science, The West

Beast

March 27, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Maiden Moon

Finished a 2010 book, The Beast in the Garden, today. By David Baron, an NPR reporter, Beast examines the changing nature of the wildlife/human interface especially through an examination of mountain lion activity in and around Boulder, Colorado in the late 1980’s into the mid-1990’s.

Baron did an exhaustive amount of work. He recreates the time period in which Boulder’s love for nature and its actions to both create and preserve a natural setting resulted in tragedy and conflict. After several years of encouraging wildlife into the city through tolerance, rings of urban parks and conservation of land outside its limits but contiguous, Boulder had an irruption of deer. An irruption is, as Baron says, very similar in meaning to its volcanic homonym.

There’s a saying here on Shadow Mountain, “If you have deer, you have mountain lions.” That proved true in Boulder. The problem was, that since the elimination of the wolf, mountain lions no longer had any predator of their own and had become desensitized to their ancient foe: the canid. No longer did just any dog barking drive away mountain lions. That meant the lions could follow their main food source, deer, into human inhabited areas where they could encounter dogs.

Some cougars began to hunt dogs. The combination of hunting deer, their ancient and still most frequent prey, and dogs, kept as pets and therefore nearby human’s daily life, led to certain cougars becoming habituated to humans. Habituation involves suppression of the once instinctive fear of humans engendered by early farmers and ranchers near extermination of the species. Once that fear is suppressed humans are bipedal potential sources of dinner. Dogs were eaten. Cougars lounged in people’s backyards. A few attacks occurred. Then, a couple of deaths. This book tells that story.

Colorado, GeekWorld, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Making Our Peace With Wildfires

March 24, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Maiden Moon

Figured out yesterday how to use Amazon’s Unlimited Photo cloud service. It comes free with Prime. Because I put so many images in my blog, I have an unusually large number filed away for future use. I began the uploading of the photos yesterday and the service is about 2/3’rds done this morning. It will finish sometime today.

Then, I sat down and learned how to use Dropbox. It’s free storage, about 2GB, is plenty for my novels, short stories, essays. I started copying files there yesterday, too. It will take a little time, but once I’m done, I’ll just have to update whatever current work I’m doing.

These two are in anticipation of a possible wildfire. No need to lose your work these days.

Today I’m going to work on putting together our emergency kit which will include the memory card which has the photographs of all our stuff. In there will also go insurance policies, titles, deed and manuals for various things since they will testify to exactly what we own. Our estate documents and our living wills. That sort of thing.

After a year of trying to put together an external sprinkler system, I’ve decided to not pursue it. Why? Well, for one thing nobody here builds the kind of simple system I want. I’ve investigated all the possible vendors in the state. That would mean I’d have to work with somebody who didn’t know what they were doing. Which would make two of us.

Perhaps even more to the point, I read an article by a wildfire expert who said that if you follow the firewise zone recommendations, which I am, that most houses will survive a fire. The deputy chief of the Elk Creek Fire district said that our house was well situated to survive a fire, in large part because we have a short, level driveway on a primary road, Black Mountain Drive. The perception of the fire department is important because during a fire they drive through the area and in essence do triage. These homes will be ok on their own. These can survive if we protect them. These homes will burn. You want to be in the first two categories. And we are no matter the sort of fire.

Also, I decided to make my peace with losing our house and garage. After I finish the fire mitigation work, taking down trees and making sure we have a our zone free of combustibles around the house, I’m going to rely on luck and the Elk Creek Fire Protection District. Should that not prove enough and we lose everything except our lives and the lives of our dogs, we’ll build again. What could be safer than an area that’s already burned out?

It felt freeing to come to this decision. Both Kate and I agreed that losing our stuff would be very, very far from a cataclysm. We could rebuild an energy efficient house suited to our needs.

All part of settling in.

Aging, GeekWorld, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

Knee, Snow, Travel

March 23, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Maiden Moon

The knee, 20 hours later. Feeling pretty good. Almost normal. A bit creaky, a little twingey, but otherwise, pretty damned good. The cortisone effect can last from weeks to months. I’m hoping months. The big issue with the knee, beyond Asia, is my regular workout. High intensity workouts, which I’ve been doing for a while, require some speedier, more stressful moments on the treadmill. The cortisone will make them easier for now. Worth it.

In other news here on Shadow Mountain we’re getting what may well may be another foot of snow. And this stuff is wet. And therefore heavy. Of course it’s Wednesday, when the trash goes out. Gonna get the yellow Cub Cadet out, but if it plugs up all the time, I’ll wait for the solar snow shovel or find somebody to plow us out.

Up here the forecast can change quickly if a system moves a bit further north or south. Last night the forecasts were for 2-7 inches. But in reality.

Today, and maybe tomorrow, is going to be largely trip related. Finish photographing our stuff. Get necessary information onto a flash drive for portability. Open a dropbox account to put my writing in the cloud. Get our emergency box of important papers put together. Sign up for international cell phone plans. Figure out how folks can contact us when necessary. Fussy stuff.

Mountains, Weather +Climate

March 20, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Maiden Moon

Jefferson County, Mountains, The West

Black Mountain White

March 19, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Maiden Moon

Black Mountain is white. I can see it out of two windows here and its looming shape, it’s about 1500 feet higher than our altitude here on Shadow Mountain, blends in with the sky. The lodgepole pines and the few aspen that cover it are snow covered. The mountains, which seem-and are-the definition of stability and bulk still surprise me by how frequently they change appearance. In the fog Black Mountain disappears. After a heavy snow it changes color, becomes different from its green and rocky self. At night, if Bishop Berkeley was right, it goes away, only to return in the morning light.

(Black Mountain is above the trees on the left)

In the fall aspen light up its elevations, gold against green. The green becomes more vivid.

The Front Range is a physical barrier to a traveler from the east as they head west along the 40th parallel. It marks the end of the Great Plains and does so in a sudden upsweep of rock. Those of us raised in the humid east find ourselves in a new, startlingly new, land. A big part of the fun of being here.