Category Archives: Mountains

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Great Wheel, Mountains, Myth and Story, Poetry, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

Spring

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Imbolc                                      Black Mountain Moon

“Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly–and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.”
–  Omar Khayyám

March 1st is the beginning of meteorological spring. The three coldest months of the year are over and the next three are a transition between the cold of winter and the heat of the growing season, the three warmest months of June, July, August. Meteorological spring, though, is a creature of averages, a soulless thing with no music. I prefer the emergence of the bloodroot (in Minnesota) as the true first sign of spring.

On March 20th Imbolc will give way to Ostara, the Great Wheel’s spring season, on the day of the vernal equinox.

I do not yet know the traditional first signs of spring for the montane ecosystem, but I will. Nor do I know the tenor, the rhythms of the seasonal change here in the mountains. I look forward to learning them.

I’m reading the Thousand and One Nights again, a new translation, so right now Arabic and Persian stories, poetry fill my head. Khayyam’s Rubaiyat was my earliest introduction to Persian culture and one I found magical from the beginning.

There is, today, the slightest touch of spring longing in me. And so I wrote this.

Colorado, Family, Mountains, The West, Third Phase

Here. And Not.

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Imbolc                                   Black Mountain Moon

IMAG0948

With the books in organized clumps, art still in boxes, files in the horizontal file, journals, dvds and novel notes stacked together in banker’s boxes, and the exercise area functional I’ve reached a stasis in terms of organizing the loft. Kate got back to sewing yesterday, making a table runner from a pattern both she and Annie bought this last week. Her sewing area has also begun to take shape with her table, cutting surfaces, stash, sewing machine and Matilda (the dress mannequin) in usable, if not permanent places.

We await now the new Stickley table we purchased for downstairs, which will make that space more flexible when entertaining or during family game nights. The reading room, the bedroom, the living room and the kitchen all have usable, if not permanent configurations. The garage and the homeoffice remain hangouts for the cardboard set, art in the latter and mostly gardening/beekeeping/tools in the former.

Over the next few weeks Jon will install built-in bookshelves up here, attach my pull-up bar and help us IMAG0950hang art in the house. He’ll also develop plans for linking the house and the garage, a current problem spot for us. Why? There’s no straight line into the house from the garage and no path that can be cleared. We have to move through the snow to get to the truck or upstairs to the loft. Not a big deal, but one that could be better.

Kate went in yesterday and had a day as grandma, doubled with Barb’s presence. They were at Barb’s apartment with Gabe and Ruth who were out of school for teacher’s conferences. In one of those mysterious moments we humans have from time to time, Kate went from Minnesota grandma to Conifer grandma, a change that began at the birthday cum house warming celebration on Saturday. She’s now fully here (as I sense it) and in the life she dreamed about as we prepared for and executed the move.

There’s a bit further for me to go. I got a very sweet book from Ruth as a birthday present, a compilation of IMAG0942poems and images about Grandpop plus comments from her. I feel completely here as Grandpop and did perhaps sooner than Kate, but the Self that has begun to grow here, a Colorado, Western Self has barely emerged. In part I need to get my old rhythms back, the ones I mentioned yesterday: Latin, writing, art history, exercise, sheepshead, perhaps some political work. But, too, I need new rhythms: exploring Colorado and the near West with Kate, hiking and snow-shoeing in the mountains, learning the history and the geology and the biology of the land we now call home. It will be the dialectic between the old, stable patterns and ones possible only because we live here that will finally get me all the way here. For now, I’m neither fully here nor fully gone from Minnesota. Liminal. Again, still.

 

Mountains, Poetry

Mountains

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Imbolc                                                                            Settling Moon II

Phillip Levine died yesterday. Here’s a stanza from his poem: Our Valley. Seemed apt to me.

“You probably think I’m nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you’re thrilled and terrified.”

Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Minnesota, Mountains, Sport, The West, Third Phase, US History

Who?

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Imbolc                                                                      Settling Moon II

As the dominant ethos of Minnesota lies in its wild lands to the north, the Boundary Waters Wilderness and Voyageurs National Park emblematic of it, so the dominant ethos of Colorado lies in its wrinkled skin, mountains thrusting up from north to south and from the Front Range to the west. Where Minnesota’s map is essentially flat, marked with depressions filled with either water or wetlands or peat bogs, Colorado’s map is tortured, angular chunks of rock shoved up this way and that, lonely roads tailing off into gulches and canyons and valleys.

These two states share a common theme, wild nature at their core. You may live in these states and never trek in the mountains or visit the lake country; it is possible, but if that is you, then you shun the basic wealth of the land which you call home. In these two states, as in several other western states like Idaho, Washington, Montana, Oregon the political borders that mark them out matter much less than the physical features that define them.

In these places the heart can listen to the world as it once was and could be again. This is a priceless and necessary gift. It may be found in its purest form in the areas designated as wilderness, but these lands participate in wild nature in their totality. Those of us lucky enough to live within them have a privilege known only by occasional journeys to city dwellers. With that privilege comes, as with all privilege, responsibility.

These places which speak so eloquently, so forcefully when seen are silent out of view. On the streets of Manhattan, inside the beltway of Washington, in the glitter of Las Vegas and the sprawl of Los Angeles these places shimmer only in photographs, movie and television representation, books and their power is not in them.

Who will speak for the mountains? Who will speak for the North Woods and its waters? Who will speak for the trees?

Colorado, GeekWorld, Health, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Mr. Atom and Back to the Treadmill

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Imbolc                                                                             Settling Moon II

62 here yesterday. A record warm spell for Denver, not sure about up here on Shadow Mountain. Kate and I went out in shirtsleeves, looking at plants in the front, trying to decide what they were. Bearberry, I think, or kinnikinnick, which it turns out is used as a tobacco by Native Americans. A small, evergreen shrub that lies low to the ground, kinnikinnick is a ground cover I tried to grow in Minnesota but could never make last. It grows on the edge of Montane forests where it’s sunny. Just where this is.

Had the Geowater folks here yesterday testing our water from various spots in the house.Looking mostly at corrosivity and radionuclides. We have a radon mitigation system in place so the latter is not out of the realm of possibility. Corrosivity will test the ph of the water, specifically to see if our well is the source of the acidic water in the boiler.

Started my exercise regime yesterday evening. Painful. I have detrained aerobically and in terms of resistance, plus there’s the effect (complicated) of altitude. I started over after a 7-week layoff during our cruise and this is about the same length of time away, so the difficulty getting back to it is familiar, if not welcome.

 

Colorado, Cooking, Jefferson County, Mountains, The West

The Fort

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Winter                                                                                       Settling Moon II

 

Took my sweetheart out to eat last night. We went to The Fort. This unusual restaurant is about 30 minutes from Conifer in Morrison, near the Red Rocks Amphitheater. It began as a suburban foothills home, but when the cost of the adobe construction began to exceed budget the lower level became a restaurant, The Fort, and the upper level family living space.

The Fort models itself to some extent on Bent’s Fort, a trading post that was “the only major white American permanent settlement on the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and the Mexican settlements” according to Wikipedia. (Bent’s Fort reconstruction)

In addition to the adobe facade the Fort took as its guide the cuisine available in the 1830’s along the Santa Fe trail and served at Bent’s Fort.

Kate and I chose their game plate:  “Our most popular dish! A bone-in Elk chop, Buffalo sirloin medallion, and a grilled teriyaki Quail. Served with seasonal vegetables, Fort potatoes, and wild Montana huckleberry preserves.” The buffalo was tender and cooked perfectly. The elk chop, while tasty with the huckleberry sauce, had some gristle. Kate enjoyed the quail.

Our table over looked night time Denver in the distance to the east, twinkling in shimmers of air rising from the plain. It was not cheap, but the ambiance, the unusual menu and the company made it worthwhile.

 

Colorado, Mountains, The West

Weathering

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Winter                                                                             Settling Moon II

Another 68 degree day. This has moved past a January thaw into a January spring time. I walked around in the back, on the completely thawed out areas and did find some green leaves, especially a thick velvety leaf. There was also bright green moss growing on the ground and a dull green lichen spreading over a rock. The ice melts and flows around the tiny rocks, flakes, large flakes of a tannish-pink rock, then seeps into the soil at least part way.

This kind of thawing, followed by freezing, is a soil-making process. It is the slow, very slow process of eroding away Shadow Mountain. First the rock becomes soil, then rain and streams carry the soil down the mountain. Eventually, there are soft foot-hills or aged peaks like the Appalachians.

Shadow Mountain is even more basic an environment than Anoka County in Minnesota. Northern Anoka County has a high water table that has resisted development and retained the rural, northwoods atmosphere that has made it special. Yet here on Shadow Mountain even development is not as much of an active force as snow and rain, cold and heat. To transform northern Anoka County all that would be required would be an increased drainage of wetlands. Unlikely to happen now, yes, due to stringent requirements on the conservation of wetlands, but possible. Here it would require explosives, massive earth and rock moving equipment and years of time. Even then there would still be the bulk of Shadow Mountain left. It’s just not economically viable, thank god.

Colorado, Minnesota, Mountains, The West, Weather +Climate

Ordinary Things

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Winter                                                                            Settling II Moon

Exactly a month has passed since we got here. A lot of ordinary things have happened: boxes opened, license plates changed and driver’s licenses as well, found a vet, a place to do our business meetings, grocery store and pharmacies, furniture assembled. That sort of thing.

Each one of these and others like them have begun to layer over our Minnesota identities, helped us reorient to Colorado, to the mountains, to our new home. Like those Russian nesting dolls, we will not so much replace the Minnesota identity as overlay it with a new one, pushing the Indiana and Iowa, Wisconsin and Texas identities further down in our psyches. In that sense we are hyphenated so I am an Okie-Hoosier-Badger-Gopher-Coloradan while Kate is a Gopher-Iowa-Texas-Gopher-Coloradan.

Taking Gabe to the National Western Stock Show yesterday (Ruth got sick.) was a not so ordinary part of this process. Though I’ve taken the grandkids to the Stock Show for several years this was the first time I went as a Coloradan and Westerner. When the Westernaires, a precision and trick riding group from Jefferson County, rode out during the rodeo, we cheered. These were the home county kids.

The gestalt of being at the Stock Show was different, too. Before I would look at the rhinestone jeans, the oversized belt buckles, Stetson hats and cowboy boots as evidence of a different tribe, one that lived far from my Scandinavian minimalist home in Minnesota. Now I have to take them as my neighbors, my fellow Coloradans. That means I have to place myself among them, rather than apart from them. The difference may seem subtle, but in sizing up this new, outer layer of the nesting doll that I am, it makes a big difference.

Another gestalt that has a lot psychic friction is geological. Mountains not lakes, pines not deciduous, arid not wet, high not flat, thin dry air not moist heavy air. These are not subtle dialectics that gradually make themselves felt, but insistent, body changing realities that affect daily life. All this frisson enlivens me, makes me wake up to my world. It makes the change worthwhile.

Colorado, Dogs, Family, Mountains, Our Land and Home

Early On

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Winter                                                                                    Settling Moon

A few photographs

IMAG0897 IMAG0906 IMAG0923_BURST002 1419364036295 1419364035669 1419364037138 1419364036149

 

9358 Black Mountain Drive

Both shots from the small porch off my loft show Black Mountain in the background

I included the disabled parking sign to prove that even the disabled are more fit in Colorado.

Jon and Ruth (with yellow avalanche shovel) came over to push snow the night before the van arrived.

The dogs were still wary when I took these shots: Gertie, Rigel, Kepler, Vega. Well, maybe not Vega.

Colorado, Mountains

Goin’ Down the Mountain

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Winter                                                                         Settling Moon

As we pulled out of our still early morning driveway, Black Mountain had already picked up the rising sun. Its trees, rocks and snow were lit with the onrushing day. We were off to Evergreen, back to the Wildflower Cafe whose cozy warmth and interesting menu charmed us a week ago.

We wound down Black Mountain Drive, through the Arapaho National Forest, past the trail-head for Upper Maxwell Falls and a trail head for Cub Creek. About two miles from home Black Mountain Drive changes names, becoming Brook Forest Drive. In the mountains after that change in name the homes become much more numerous and their asking prices much higher.

The road into Evergreen, like Black Mountain Drive/Brook Forest Drive, has rocky outcroppings that lean forward almost to the asphalt, pines growing out of narrow crevices and a small brook that shows up just before the beginning of the commercial district.

This is our regular business meeting day where we discuss finances, schedule, feelings. Right now we’re in another liminal space, not unlike the original move time. This one is between purchasing Black Mountain Drive and selling 153rd Ave in Andover. It comes with its own struggles, financial and emotional, as we pay two mortgages, two sets of utility bills and the various costs associated with moving in and with preparing a house for sale. The business meetings allow us to have conversations about all this before any one issue becomes a big deal. Very valuable.