Category Archives: Jefferson County

Bees, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

Summer Begins

May 31, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creek Moon

So. A rookie takes the Indy 500. The Warriors outlast the Thunder to make the NBA finals a second year in a row. School has begun to wind down. The rhythm of our national life slips into summer, a season forever shaped by the farm, the growing season, even though the number of family farms has continued to sink since the middle of the last century. The kids get out of school to work on the farm, at least they used to. Now most school kids have probably never been on a farm, perhaps find them as foreign as they find the North Woods or the Rocky Mountains.

Here, so far, we’ve had a wet May and forecasters think that may extend into mid-to-late summer. The deeper into the fire season the moisture remains the better off we are. With one exception. All that rain encourages the grasses, shrubs and smaller plants. They in turn can become the fuel that advances a fire.

The fire mitigation process has the flavor of seasonal work in that it needs to finish before the mountains dry out. Hard physical labor in the early summer fits the mood. Here in the mountains the mornings remain cool, pleasant for working outside.

A couple of days ago I noticed an odd newcomer in the mountain meadow the cattle company uses to grass feed some of its stock. A beehive. A single beehive surrounded by metal posts with both barbed wire (I think. From the road it’s hard to tell.) and electric fencing. It intrigued me, looked like a simple set up. Sort of rejiggered the beekeeper in me. Hey, maybe I can do that. I’m going into the meadow someday this week and check out the setup.

Jefferson County, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

New Tricks

May 26, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creek Moon

two topper limbed — Two topper limbed. Today I cut this one into fireplace size logs.

Kate got outside today and moved slash, stacked wood. After completing the cutting up of all the trees felled by Always Chipper, I moved back into tree felling. Since this was the first I’d done since last fall, I started further away from the house. Still know how to do it.

Always Chipper’s Kevin and Tom taught me a new trick. When they felled the trees that were too tricky for me, they let them fall on top of each other like pick-up sticks. At first, I thought, what? That seems lazy. But, when I started limbing and cutting them up, I discovered that the jumble of logs lifted most of them off the ground. Easier to limb and easier to cut up. No Peavey necessary.

Guess what I did? Yep, dropped three trees one top of the other. Much simpler and faster. It’s always good to learn from people who know more than you do.

Rained later in the morning so the work will have to wait until tomorrow, but I’m making progress.

Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West

Fire

May 26, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

Both stamina and strength improving. Worked most of the morning yesterday, then an hour plus in the afternoon. This is work that needs to get done and has a meteorological timetable. When the forest dries out, it might be too late. The risk of fire here is real. According to the Elk Creek Fire Department Deputy Chief who came out last fall, there’s not been a big burn in this area for a hundred years. That’s a lot of fuel.

Confession. I always wondered how people could choose to live on a floodplain, in an earthquake prone area, on or near a volcano. I was scornful of their choices. What were they thinking? As I cut down trees on our property so a probable forest fire might not burn down our home, I know. They wanted to live there. For some reason. Whether motivated by poverty, beauty, family or something else.

In our case we wanted to live in the mountains and enjoy the cooling effect produced by 8,800 feet in altitude. Find such a place close enough to the Denver metro-to make seeing the grandkids feasible-meant buying in the front range. Most of the front range near Denver is in the red zone for fire risk. As the climate changes, forest fire danger increases. “…fires up to this point have been five times worse than last year, and last year’s season as a whole set a fire record.” Agriculture department 2016 fire season forecast.

It has taken me years, decades really, to learn that the best antidote to anxiety is action. And, of course, a good dose of Zoloft. So we’re following the firewise policies of defensible space, fuel free zones. This means we will have done what we can, what makes sense. After that, we drive away with the dogs, taking our emergency kit with us, find a hotel or motel and wait.

If a fire comes and destroys the house and garage, we’ll rebuild. The fire risk will be much lower, at least for a while. In the interim we keep the fire mitigation up to date. That same Deputy Chief told me our house was well-positioned for survival. We live off the main road which makes access by the fire department easy. We have a flat, short driveway with the same virtue. Our roof is class a. Soon we will have completed a fire mitigation plan. After that? Taking our chances.

Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

Chain Saw Days

May 25, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creek Moon

Photo diary: the day so far

Anoka County, Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Jefferson County, Latin, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate, Writing

Write It Out

May 25, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creek Moon

freshman year — Freshman Year, Alexandria H.S.

Ever since the great iconoclasm, my voice has been muted. Not sure why. Topics don’t seem to occur to me. I’ve never had a theme, a particular ax, though felling and limbing the occasional political issue shows up once in awhile. Philosophical, quasi-theological pondering. That, too. Lots of did this, did that. The online continuation of a journal keeping way I’ve had for decades. Art. Yes, but not as much as I want.

Maybe there was a more intimate link between the images and the vitality of this blog than I realized. Apres le mitigation the whole copyright issue, the fate of images in an age of digital reproduction, will occupy some of my time.

Work on both Superior Wolf and Jennie’s Dead have been ongoing, though not yet much writing. Reimagining Faith occupies a lot of my free thinking time, wondering about mountains, about urbanization, about clouds that curve and mound above Mt. Evan’s, our weather maker. No Latin yet. Not until I can have regular time up here in the loft. Not yet.

Could be that underneath all this lies a reshuffling of priorities or a confirmation of old ones. It’s not yet a year since my prostate surgery and a friend of mine said it took her a year to feel right again. This year has felt in some ways like my first year here, a year when I can take in the mountain spring, the running creeks, the willows and their blaze of yellow green that lights up the creek beds, the mule deer and elk following the greening of the mountain meadows.

My 40 year fondness for Minnesota has also begun to reemerge, not in a nostalgic, wish I was still there way, but as a place I know well, a place to which I did become native, a place which shaped me with its lakes, the Mississippi, Lake Superior, wolves and moose and ravens and loons. Where Kate and I became as close as we could with the land we held temporarily as our own. Friends. Art. Theatre. Music. Family. Perhaps a bit like the old country, an emigre’s memories which help shape life in the new land. An anchor, a source of known stability amidst a whirl of difference. The West. Mountains. Family life.

So. There was something in there anyhow. Now, back to fire mitigation.

Anoka County, Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

Becoming Native

May 23, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

“…I am at home in the West. The hills of the coastal ranges look “right” to me, the particular flat expanse of the Central Valley comforts my eye. The place names have the ring of real places to me. I can pronounce the names of the rivers, and recognize the common trees and snakes. I am easy here in a way that I am not easy in other places.” Joan Didion, California Notes, NYRB, 5/26/2016

Becoming native to a place implies the opposite of what Joan Didion recalls in this fine article taken from notes she made in 1976 while attending the Patty Hearst trial for Rolling Stone. The becoming process implies not being easy where you are, not knowing the place names as real, not knowing the common trees and snakes.

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is not a real place to me. Neither is Four Corners nor Durango nor the summit of Mt. Evans, only 14 miles away. The owls that hoot at night, the small mammals that live here on Shadow Mountain. No. The oak savannah and the Great Anoka Sand Plain. Familiar. Easy. The Big Woods. Yes. Lake Superior. Yes. The sycamores of the Wabash. Yes. Fields defined by mile square gravel roads. Pork tenderloin sandwiches. Long, flat stretches of land. Lots of small towns and the memories of speed traps. Yes.

A local photographed yesterday near here. from pinecam.com by serendipity888

With the fire mitigation this property here on Shadow Mountain is becoming known. It has three, maybe four very fine lodgepole pines, tall and thick. A slight downward slope toward the north. Snow, lots of snow.* Rocky ground, ground cover and scrubby grass.

Denver. Slowly coming into focus. The front range, at least its portion pierced by Highway 285, too. The west is still blurry, its aridity, mountains, deep scars in the earth, sparse population. The midwest clear, will always be clear.

Becoming native to a place is the ur spiritual work of a reimagined faith. First, we must be here. Where we are.

*”Snowfall for the season on Conifer Mountain now stands at 224 inches (132% of average).” weathergeek, pinecam.com

Great Work, Jefferson County, Shadow Mountain

Big Fun on Shadow Mountain

May 14, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

Wildfire mitigation. Still at it, today by proxy. Always Chipper, a small company run by Kevin Breeden, husband of our former housecleaner, came over today. I had asked him last fall to come and chip the slash from my fire mitigation work then. But. The day he was to come we got two feet of snow. And the piles remained covered all winter. As I blew the snow off our 200 inches or so of snow (one of the five biggest since the 1990’s), I covered the slash. Over and over again. It wasn’t until this last Sunday that the snow melted and Kevin could come.

As Kevin said, he widened our driveway. He and his partner Mike also took down several trees I felt surpassed my skill level, either too close to the house, the fence or the powerline. I only had him fell them. I’ll limb them and cut them up along with the remaining blue ribbon trees, then have Always Chipper come back and eliminate that slash, too.

My goal is to have all this done before Memorial Day, before the El Nino inspired precipitation leaves us and we’re barenaked again to a normal wildfire season.

At the same time our neighbors, Holly and Eduardo, decided to move a shed from one side of their property to the other. This is the Han Motogear shed, the one that contains their side business making women’s apparel for motorcyclists. It took a lot of jacking up, positioning on cement blocks, then setting it down on a trailer, moving the shed about a hundred feet and reversing the process. By late this afternoon our properties looked significantly different than they had in the morning. Big fun on Shadow Mountain.

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.

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).