Category Archives: Jefferson County

Family, Great Work, Jefferson County, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Cutting Down Trees Is Easy

November 16, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Thanksgiving Moon

“Cutting down trees is easy,” Gabe said with all the confidence and bravura of an opera soloist. At 7 things still happen because we think them. So, he put on his black snow boots, orange gloves and partially zipped coat-he seems to have a similar metabolism to Grandma-and came outside.

I had begun to move limbs. It was Sunday morning and I didn’t want to run the chainsaw, cut into a neighbor’s deserved rest or their (less likely) morning contemplation. The trees I had limbed on Friday had branches ready for transfer to the chipping piles. Grabbing limbs by their smaller branches, slogging through the now crusty snow, the piles along either side of the driveway grew taller.

Kate had suggested a saw for Gabe, so I had found a suitably light pruning saw. “Why don’t you work on taking off these branches, Gabe,” I said. Thinking smaller, easier to cut. Some early satisfaction. “I can show you how to use the saw.” “My dad already showed me.” OK.

He began, the saw at an angle too broad to achieve any result. Frustration. I could see it. He moved up to a smaller branch, a twig really. Tried that. The saw slipped and nicked his finger. The finger came up, examined closely. Hemophilia. Makes him take care. Probably too much care.

Moving limbs seemed like the next thought. Nope. Gabe, “I want to cut down a tree.” All right. “Let me show you to use the ax.” No chainsaws for Gabe. Way too heavy, not to mention noisy. It’s still Sunday morning. Also, chainsaw plus young hemophiliac. Hmmm. Not so good.

The ax it is. Feed spread wide apart, at a 90 degree angle to the cut, left hand on the heft and right up just below the ax head, I brought the right hand through to the left, angling the ax blade down and in toward the tree. The ax bit and a small moon shaped piece of wood showed phloem, the delicate living cambium and the xylem. Gabe was eager.

He stood, feet apart at almost 180 degrees from the tree trunk. The ax. He held his left near the heft, but the right up only half way. The weight of the ax head, I imagine. With a not too aggressive swing he brought the face of the ax blade into contact with the tree. Nothing. Again. Nothing.

Show him again. Correct the stance, go through the motion with him, ax in both of our hands. A sliver of tree cut open.

Feet apart, a bit better angle. Left hand on the heft, right midway, he swings again, more like a baseball bat, a familiar wooden tool, but moves neither hand. Face of the ax against the bark. Cutting down trees may not be so easy after all.

This went on until, “I’m going inside.” “Why?” “Just because I want to.” And with that the would-be lumber jack made his slow wander to the house, stopping now and then to break off a branch, kick the snow. Wonder about things in the way of 7 year olds.

All the limbed branches made their way to the piles.

Only a few smaller trees remain to be removed in the front. Four trees cut down last Friday still need to be limbed and the limbs moved. Always Chipper will come out and chip the slash, fell the problem trees.

Soon, after the snow, I’ll take my smart holder and the peavey out and begin cutting tree trunks into fireplace sized logs. They’ll get stacked between trees, well over 30 feet away from the house where they’ll remain until next year about this time. Then they’ll be seasoned, ready for the fire.

(This is the big lodgepole just before felling. Another, slightly smaller, behind it may have to go as well.)

Jefferson County, Our Land and Home

Mother earth is crying

November 10, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain New Thanksgiving Moon

Took down the nicest lodgepole we have on our property, about 40 feet tall and healthy. It hit the driveway with such a thump that Kate thought I’d hit the house. When she came out and saw it, Kate said, “Mother earth is crying now.”

Over the last week I’d begun to have mild guilt feelings about cutting down trees. The ones that were deformed or diseased I had no problem felling since the act was similar to weeding in a garden, or more accurately, thinning. And, the rationale for most is fire mitigation, something necessary because of where we choose to live. The other rationale, the one that led to cutting down the 40 feet lodgepole, is the solar installation.

40 feet high means casting a long shadow and it hits the panels, taking each one it touches out of commission for as long as it covers any part of a panel. So, it was a tradeoff. A fine tree for solar generation of electricity. Not everything you do for what you believe in will feel good. And this one didn’t feel good.

Cutting it down, limbing it, stacking the branches and the top, then moving the large logs I cut the lodgepole into took almost an hour. I got one more tree down and hung a third. It’s still up because I had to take my chainsaw to Chainsaw Bob’s. More on Chainsaw Bob and his unusual business model in the next post.

Holidays, Jefferson County

Holiseason Events

November 7, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Moon of the First Snow

Over to Conifer Mountain for a Christmas craft boutique at the Conifer High School. Bespoke soup kits, mountain honey, glass cutting boards with mountain scenes, pine cone wreaths and bowls cut from 2 year dead aspen. Bob, who made the bowls, says, “If you get the wood too soon, it’s all white. If it’s too old, it’s crumbly.” He has, he says, a garage full of aspen trunks neighbors have brought him. In another room Mountain Mama Knits, pottery of various sorts, crystals, Three Hands Traders with handmade leather books and 1790’s wooden portable writing desks, quill pens and powdered ink.

Kate’s on her way to the Episcopal Church for another one. Not me. One leg wobbling shopping event a day for me, thanks.

It’s in the very low 50’s/high 40’s today so the snow has begun to melt. The next few days will be good ones for fire mitigation work. The front has to be finished before the third week of November because the solar panels may go on then. Always Chipper, LLC, will chip our slash and cut down trees I can’t fell.

Feeling that weekend malaise setting in. A powerful urge to stop whatever seems intentional and watch TV. Maybe even go to a holiday craft show?

German safety goggles, knit hat and Honolua hoodie. The perfect fashion statement for Shadow Mountain lumberjacks.

Family, Jefferson County, Mountains, Third Phase

Down the Mountain

November 7, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Samhain Moon of the First Snow

Date night. Kate and I found a new restaurant, The Bistro. It’s between Conifer and Evergreen on Hwy. 73. Excellent food, a piano man and a wonderful dining companion.

We both agreed last night that our move here has been good. Black Mountain Drive fits our lives extremely well. The surrounding geography is varied and beautiful. We’re closer to the grandkids.

Getting older has been wonderful. Sure, there’s the pain and the cancer, yes, but the joy of time together, time we can order as we wish, is delightful. We’re living into our highest and best selves.

Jefferson County, Mountains, Weather +Climate

First Snow

October 21, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Mabon Moon of the First Snow

First snow today. Mixed with rain and gone now. But there it was, snow between and among the raindrops. Now the day has settled in wet and cold, great for fire mitigation. The cooler weather and overcast skies feels like November come a bit early.

More work in the garage today, moving things around because the solar panel people have to have room to store things inside for a couple of days before installation. As in the loft, there’s still a fair amount of organizing to do in the garage, but that is the last task downstairs. The loft still has some shelving to come and some more boxes to relocate.

The mountains become more intimate as the skies close in and the temperatures drop. Where once the sky expanded above them, now it lowers itself, covering Black Mountain all morning in a shroud of chill moisture, gray to the eye and to the touch. I welcome this weather since it encourages the inner life and that’s where I need to go.

Colorado, Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Plants, Shadow Mountain, The West

Verticality and Aridity.

October 18, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Mabon Moon of the First Snow

When I went into Evergreen yesterday, just after turning off Brook Forest Drive I went past a house that had a bull elk and his harem resting in their front yard, maybe 15 does. A stream runs between the highway and this house. The trees gave shade from the brutal morning sun. A domestic scene with wild animals. It came to my attention when a large bulk moving caught my peripheral vision. That’s the paleolithic helping in the here and now.

It amuses me, when I go to Evergreen, to see the number of people who gather at the lake. All these wonderful mountains and the locals come to look at the water. I imagine only a former native of a water rich state would notice the irony.

Vertical and flat. Humid and arid. Those are the big differences between our new home and our old one. Here I drive through canyons, over high passes, around stands of rock with the view often limited to a few hundred feet on either side, sometimes less than that. When we leave Conifer and go into Denver though, we immediately return to the far horizons common to the midwest. We frequently transit between the great plains and the mountain west, living as we do in the borderlands between the two.

Though we have had a wet summer and somewhat wet fall, when the rains cease, things dry out fast. We can go from low fire danger to high in a day. That’s why fire mitigation is constantly on my mind.

When verticality and aridity intersect, as they do at 8,800 feet and above, a genuinely unfamiliar biosphere is the result. Unfamiliar to those from the rainy flatlands of middle America, that is. On Shadow Mountain we have two trees: lodgepole and aspen. Along streams there are more species of tree and shrub and there are microclimates that might support greater diversity, but on the bulk of the land that can grow anything, lodgepole and aspen. There are grasses, flowers, a few shrubs as understory, but just as often the rocky ground is bare. The mountains have strict limitations for plants.

The plant limits determine the fauna, too. Grass eaters like mule deer and elk do well, as do predators who eat them. There are small mammals that are prey for foxes and coyotes, but there are surprisingly few insects. That limits the birds. We have raven, crow, Canada and blue jays, the occasional robin, birds of prey that feed off food similar to that preferred by foxes and coyotes and other game birds. There are, as well, black bears. We’ve seen all of these save the bear.

Still learning about the mountains. Will not stop.

Jefferson County, Mountains

October 15, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Mabon Moon of the First Snow

First fire.

I now routinely take Turkey Creek Canyon Road to Deer Creek Canyon Road as a preferred route to medical services, most located in and around Littleton, a southern ‘burb of Denver. That meant I missed the road closure on Highway 470, the half ring road that defines the western boundary of the Denver metro area.

470 follows the Front Range starting at I-70, the main route into and through the Rockies going west. About 10 miles south from that point, on the way toward Colorado Springs, the old mountain range that preceded the Rockies creates an upslope that runs maybe 800 feet at a gentle slope from the highway and ends in a ridge of rock that resembles the jagged back of a stegosaurus, Colorado’s state fossil. Bowles Road intersects 470 there.

A helicopter caught my eye as I turned off Santa Fe onto 470 toward Bowles. A news helicopter?

It had a very long cable dangling beneath it with an orange looking pod suspended at the very bottom. Then, the pod opened and a brief spray of water fell toward the earth. Oh.

Okinawa Sushi, a favorite lunch stop is at the Ken Caryl exit, just one before Bowles and when pulling into the parking lot, I saw people standing, looking skyward toward the highway. More helicopters.

After lunch I saw the reason for all this. It was a grass fire that had run from the highway all the way up to the bony ridge of the first elevation. The ground was black in a 33 acre scar. 470 had only one lane open there with several fire trucks, police and other emergency vehicles parked in the other lane and up closer to the fire.

Another helicopter came chop, chop, chop over the ridge, an orange bucket again dangling below. It maneuvered into place and hung there for a bit, presumably awaiting instructions from the ground. Finally, again it released the water which fell onto a scrubby patch of land outside the burned perimeter. When the water hit, spray and smoke billowed up.

Since we moved here last December, the fire danger has been low with a few exceptions. Lots of rain, an anomaly of a year. This was my first exposure to the reality of wildfire. Good motivation for cutting down all those trees. And a reminder of the true nature of our new home.

Friends, Jefferson County, Mountains, Science, Shadow Mountain, Woolly Mammoths

Moon Rock and Baby Mountains

October 11, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Mabon First Snow Moon

Friend Tom Crane sent me a package the other day. It had the familiar Amazon prime tape across it, so I didn’t check the sender. I just opened it. The first thing I saw was a blue nalgene water bottle. Filled with water. What? I ordered water from Amazon?

It was a heavy package for its size, 10# was written on the front. In bubble wrap I found two large chunks of rock, samples Tom had collected near Carleton Peak, east of the Temperance River. It’s anorthosite, he says in the accompanying note, which also identified the water as Lake Superior water.

Knowing me well, he said I’d look up anorthosite. Here’s the first thing I found:

Anorthosite /ænˈɔrθəsaɪt/ is a phaneritic, intrusive igneous rock characterized by a predominance of plagioclase feldspar (90–100%), and a minimal mafic component (0–10%). Pyroxene, ilmenite, magnetite, and olivine are the mafic minerals most commonly present.

Who needs to go further after a description like that?

Phaneritic means it has large, identifiable matrix grains. “This texture forms by the slow cooling of magma deep underground in the plutonic environment.” wiki

“Mafic is an adjective describing a silicate mineral or rock that is rich in magnesium and iron, and hence is a contraction of “magnesium” and “ferric”. Most mafic minerals are dark in color, and common rock-forming mafic minerals include olivine, pyroxene, amphibole, and biotite.” wiki

“The Plagioclase series is a group of related feldspar minerals that essentially have the same formula but vary in their percentage of sodium and calcium.” www.minerals.net

The most interesting thing I learned while looking up Anorthosite is that the highlands of the moon seem to be anorthosite, too. So the ancient Sawtooths, volcanoes of the midcontinent rift which pulled the North American landmass apart in precambrian times, created rock similar to that found on the moon.

Tom and Paul Strickland at the Ely greenstone site in Ely, Minnesota

It’s odd to consider but mountain ranges like the Sawtooths and the Appalachians, ground down by millions, even a billion, years of erosion, were once like the relatively young Rocky Mountains. So here on Shadow Mountain we are in, or rather on, a recent geological event compared to the precambrian era of the Sawtooths. In the Precambrian era life evolved and during its entire millions of years there were only animals with no hard parts.

To walk the shore of Lake Superior, in other words, is to walk on a truly ancient landform. The Canadian Shield, which exposes some of oldest rock on earth, underlies much of Minnesota, from the oldest deposits, gneiss in the Minnesota River Valley like near Morton, to the Ely greenstone found in the town of Ely.

On Shadow Mountain, by contrast, we live on evidence of the Laramide orogeny, (mountain building), only 85-55 million years ago.

Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Final Days. Get It While It’s Hot.

October 10, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Mabon Elk Rut Moon

The final days of the Elk Rut moon are gorgeous, sunny ones. The aspen trees with their leaves still on the tree, lower down from us, blaze like magic lanterns, yellow-gold against deep green. The yellow-gold has faded to a tannish yellow on Shadow Mountain where the leaves remain. Black Mountain, which had yellow gold streaks in its green hair much like grand-daughter Ruth’s pink ones, has bald spots sprinkled here and there with darkish browns, a mountain’s equivalent of gray hair.

A certain laziness comes with the sun’s shine as it sinks lower, rising less and less each day above the ecliptic. This light seems to offer a going out of business sale for warmth. Get it while you can. Don’t waste time. Bask now or be forever chill.

Since we live on a mountain road that connects two towns and provides entry points to the Arapaho National Forest, we get different traffic on the weekend. Often it’s bicyclists, sometimes in large groups. Today it was motorcyclists, buzzing by like formula one cars, riders leaning for the curve that begins where Black Mountain Drive turns into Shadow Mountain Drive. Oddly, I find these weekend events soothing. People want to come where we live. Of course, we also get the family car with a Thule carrier on top, bicycles lashed to a carrier on back, a dog with its head out the window.

Kate’s recovering nicely so far, the pain tamped down by Vicodin and ice. I made a pot of chicken noodle soup this morning. We’re at the beginning of a long trail for her.

Aging, Health, Jefferson County, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Uh-oh. Gotta close the windows.

October 3, 2015 Charles Leave a comment

Mabon Elk Rut Moon

Started physical therapy for my arthritis, scoliosis, muscle tightness on Thursday. Dana, my therapist, is a very sharp woman, maybe early 40’s. She has me tucking my chin into my chest, folding my shoulder blades up, then down and paying attention to the tilt of my head in a mirror. The muscle relaxant I’ve been given is peculiar. It has a sedative effect and knocks me out when I take it. But, each night at 1:15-1:19, it wears off and I wake up. It’s half life goes on a bit longer so I get back to sleep pretty well.

Tonight though, it’s 2:00 a.m. right now, I woke up at 1:15 and noticed a flash of light. Then some thunder. Then the sound of rain drops. Ooops. I’d forgotten to shut the windows in the loft. No. I shut them. No. I didn’t. It’ll be ok. It won’t rain much. You don’t know that. Oh, alright. So up I came. Sure enough the windows were open. Not raining much, but hard to predict.

Kate and I went into Conifer last night for appetizers and every restaurant we tried had 25-30 minute wait times. Unusual. Tourists out for something. People drive away from their homes, even come to stay for a few days, to get to the place where Kate and I live. Sorta neat. Except when the restaurant wait times are 25-30 minutes. We turned around, drove past our house and on down Black Mountain Drive to Brook Forest Inn. Good choice. This old lodge is between Evergreen and Conifer, just like we are, out of the way for tourist traffic unless you’re staying there.

And, the food is good. It’s the local joint closest to our house. We’re semi-regulars there now and are beginning to get to know people. We may go over there on Sunday for the Vikings-Broncos game. Cutting cable means no local channels, so no football.