Category Archives: Mountains

Family, Jefferson County, Mountains

Ruth

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Imbolc                                                                               Valentine Moon

Meyer-Ranch-across-US-285-0Ruth and I went for a long walk yesterday at Meyer Ranch Open Space Park. Gertie, our wire haired German pointer, came with us. Along the way we talked about a possible erratic (“I know what an erratic is,” Ruth said.) because it’s top had jagged, thin sheets exposed. I wondered why it hadn’t eroded.

We saw huge Lodgepole pines that had recently been cut to protect power lines in an easement running up Doublehead Mountain. When I started to count the rings on one stump easily 3 feet wide, Ruth asked, “Are you going to count all of them?” Yes, I was. The tree was between 75 and 80 years old. We’d been alive for much of the same time.

lodgepole loop meyer ranchThe trail went took went through forest. Ruth picked up branches along the way to make rings. I told her I admired how she found things to make wherever she went. “It’s good to have projects.” “Yes,” she said, “I have two, three, maybe five projects at home.” Ruth paints, sews, does fashion design, builds robots and reads in a way that gives me a shock of recognition.

Meanwhile, Gertie pulled me along, straining to get to the smells along the side of the trail. We rarely walk our dogs since they have a fenced in yard to roam, so they’re leashed train only enough to get into the vet and out. When we got back to the Rav4, we were all tired.

 

 

Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

The Beauty Way

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Imbolc                                                                              Stock Show Moon

Go now, the snow has ended. This paraphrase of the last words of the Catholic mass sums up life after 18 inches of snow. Things get moving again after the last snow falls and the plows get roads opened and sanded. That last being especially important for those of us who live in the mountains.

Snow storms bring beauty in their wake unlike their wilder cousins tornadoes, hurricanes, derechos. Here are a couple of photographs from this morning.

Feb 3 500 Feb 3 2500

Family, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Park County

Seafood Paella and Spanish Music

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Yule                                                                      Stock Show Moon

Kate and I went to the Aspen Peak Winery in Bailey last night for seafood paella and Spanish music. I love local events and this one had a good combination of homemade ambiance and terrific food.

On the drive to Bailey, about 20 minutes under normal circumstances, we experienced rush hour on Highway 285. The event was at 6 pm and Bailey is west of us in Park County. Rush hour is rush hour, even in the mountains, and I would not want to make this commute every day, especially after a big snow storm.

Saw a pick-up with a funny, but biting bumper sticker: Save an elk, shoot a land developer. Sort of the flip-side to a 1970’s bumper sticker that has remained in my memory: Sierra Club, kiss my axe. That was in Ely, Minnesota during the debate over the creation of the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area.

Kate’s had a good, but long week organizing the kitchen. She’s ready to get back to sewing. Golden Solar is coming to finish the critter guards on our micro-inverters today. Tai Chi later this morning. Probably chainsaw work later today. The weekend.

Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Never Considered This in Andover

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Yule                                                                                   Stock Show Moon

from Nextdoor Shadow Mountain today:

“Please be very careful if you are outside tonight and if you have animals. My next door neighbor was outside with her dog about 6 tonight and a mountain lion ran out from under her deck and ran between our houses. She got her dog inside quickly.”

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Jefferson County, Mountains, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

Meet and Greet

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Yule                                                                                   Stock Show Moon

Kate’s at the Bailey Library, a sewing day from 9 to 3 with the Bailey Patchworkers. They make stone soup and work throughout, stopping only for a brief business meeting. Quilting and handwork have been Kate’s entré to local folk. She has been invited to join a needlework group, too. It meets next week. All part of settling in.

Even though we’ve had a bumpy road with many of our house related projects, it occurred to me that even a bumpy start still grounds us in the local culture. We’ve learned about the shortage of folks in the skilled trades, an apparent difference of work ethic between here and Minnesota and had to adjust our expectations about how long projects will take, to get started and to finish. There are local habits and customs, a mountain way of doing things, that we have had to adapt to.

Sometime soon we’re going to start attending services at Beth Evergreen, a small Jewish reconstructionist congregation in Evergreen. They have a more relaxed worship schedule, none during the Christmas and New Year’s holiday time and when they are regular they alternate between Friday night and Saturday morning. I’m looking forward to an opportunity to meet folks.

 

 

Family, Mountains, Weather +Climate

Flour Sifter Snow

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Samhain                                                                          Christmas Moon

Flour sifter snow has fallen steadily since early morning. We’ve had several inches, maybe 6. Slowed down for now, the weather forecast has another storm coming on Tuesday. Sitting in the lower room looking out over the backyard all that can be seen are lodgepole pines and snow drifting down in thin columns tracing their way to the ceiling of the sky.

In to Sushi Harbor this evening to celebrate Jon’s birthday, as I said yesterday. The traction law is in effect for Hwy. 285: snow tires, 4 wheel drive, AWD, or chains for passenger vehicles. If you don’t have them and get stopped, the fines are hefty. A new law in effect this year. Colorado is trying to cut down on poor equipment caused traffic accidents and backups during snow season. We’re fine. We have Bridgestone Blizzaks and 4WD. Plus forty years of Minnesota driving experience.

Might haul out the Cub Cadet, the yellow snow eater. Haven’t decided yet.

A lazy Saturday here on Shadow Mountain.

 

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.

 

Faith and Spirituality, Jefferson County, Mountains

Mountains and Menorahs

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Samhain                                                                  New (Winter) Moon

A public menorah lighting at the Lake House in Evergreen tonight. Kate and I are going. There’s also a latke cook-off and I look forward to helping assess the entrants. Evergreen is a downhill ride, 7,200 feet to our 8,800. We take county 78, which starts out at county 73 as Shadow Mountain Drive, changes, very near our house to Black Mountain Drive, and then, 2 miles further down mountain toward Evergreen, becomes Brook Forest Drive. It’s a curvy, forested, rocky road with the Arapaho National Forest on both sides for much of the way.

A joy of mountain living is that the quotidian can be extraordinary. On these drives we often encounter mule deer, elk, occasionally fox. Kate saw what must have been a mountain lion, long and catlike, slink away from the road. In the spring snow melt fills Shadow Creek, Deer Creek, Cub Creek with water churning and roiling. As the snow melt wanes, these same creeks become lazy wandering streams and must, in drier years, lose their water altogether at some point.

The flora, seemingly sparse in that only two species of tree, lodgepole and aspen, live in any numbers at our altitude, changes once in the fall to a minimalist palette of gold and green. Once the golden aspen leaves become skirts, the trunks of these trees become bony fingers, white and twisted. In the spring the green leaves return and the mountain views become more uniform for a time.

Black Mountain, Shadow Mountain, Conifer Mountain and all the others around our neighborhood change, too. The flora goes up and down them, different with the seasons, but on display in often vertiginous falls and in huge rock gardens where outcroppings are bare but surrounded by trees. At night the mountain sides light up with homes also up and down, a sort of external dwarfheim, often invisible in the day. Precipitation, especially snow, alters the mountains immediately, sometimes obscuring them, most often painting white over their peaks and valleys.

We have found a new place to live, our mountain home. It suits us now.

Dogs, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Good Morning, Snowshine

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Samhain                                                                Thanksgiving Moon

Gertie nov 20Flocked lodgepoles fill a south facing window. Black Mountain has become visible once again, lost in a whiteout all afternoon yesterday. The air is clear and cold, 8 degrees. Winter on Shadow Mountain.

More loft work over this weekend. Getting closer and closer to a finished space.

Kate and I had planned to go to services at Beth Evergree’n last night, a reggae shabbat, but snow closed I-70 from 470 to Silverthorne and made a mess of the mountain roads. So, we stayed home, concentrating instead on the chick flick series we’re watching now, Murdoch. Yes, Detective Murdoch and Dr. Ogden finally get back together. A relief.

Thanksgiving is coming with grandkids, their parents, and Barb, Jen’s mom. We’ve decided on a prime rib roast this year. Sugar cream pie, that sugar and fat dense Hoosier dessert, is on the menu, too. Some signs point to a big holiday storm. We’ll see.

Holiseason continues.