Category Archives: Shadow Mountain

Judaism, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The Move

A Quiet Day

March 14, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Anniversary Moon

A quiet day. Kate had the Bailey Patchworkers, a sewing group that meets once a month, and I stayed home with the dogs. Still transferring files from cardboard to translucent plastic. Slow process. As I touch files I’ve had for years but not revisited in a long while, I stop to read, wonder why the hell I kept this?

These are still remnants of the move from Minnesota, tasks partially done, enough to start functioning, but needing more careful organization for things to really hum. Our two very large paintings done by brother-in-law Jerry remain in their crates, built especially for them. Lots of other art hangs out with its brothers and sisters leaning against walls, shelving, in closets. Slowly. Slowly.

Kate and I have been studying mussar for nine months or so. Tonight Rabbi Jamie has an introductory class in Kabbalah. I know very little about this Jewish mystical tradition (I knew nothing about mussar.), but I’m going to go, find out a bit more.

The lenticular clouds over Black Mountain have mini-rainbows as the sun sets behind them in the west, delicate pinks and blues. It gets cool fast up here when the sun goes down, summer and winter. Part of the joy of living here. For us.

Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

A Flat Out Lie

March 12, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Anniversary Moon

Fire danger continues high. If we don’t get some moisture, it’s gonna be a long summer. Weather5280 says some changes may be ahead in the latter part of March. Go moisture. Bring on some cold. Let it snow.

walnut shelving Jon made and installed this week

Still moving files from banker’s boxes to translucent plastic bins. Finished all my art files yesterday, today I plan to begin on my writing files which make up most of the rest. When I finish this work, I’ll have left only reorganizing and hanging art plus a final pass at organizing the books within categories. It’s funny, but I can feel a growing excitement about having the loft as I envisioned it two plus years ago, a sort of liberation and consolidation of potential. Ready to move forward with writing and Latin and other work facilitated by this amazing space Kate found for me.

Had Sky Country Pump come out on Friday to replace the water pressure tank that had, according to Geowater, gone bad. I called Sky Country because Geowater tried to install things I hadn’t ordered, then ordered a pressure tank replacement, $1,000 plus. I stopped all of it, having them only install the acid-buffering system I wanted. Our water has a ph of 5.2. They were unhappy; I was mad.

So, I wasn’t surprised when the Sky Country Pump folks said, “No problem with the water pressure tank. We’d love to sell you a tank, but you don’t need one.” Ah.

Now that means that either Geowater is incompetent or flat out lied. I’m thinking the latter. In effect it would have been theft had I said yes, go ahead with the tank. It would have appeared to be my decision, but it would have been based on alternative facts, as KellyAnne might say.

Family, Feelings, Friends, Jefferson County, Judaism, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Journeys

March 11, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Anniversary Moon

20170310_174900 The full anniversary moon lit up our way home from Bistro Colorado. It was the 27th time we’ve celebrated our wedding day and it was peaceful, funny, thoughtful. With flowers and chocolate.

I’ve been moving and reorganizing stuff in my loft. A favorite activity. This time though I can see the end. After Jon installed the walnut shelving, it was possible to replace and rearrange stuff I’d had lying around on the floor. Now that’s done and the art cart has been cleared. That means I can put the bankers boxes on it and sort through the files in them, putting them in translucent plastic file bins. Part of my idea with them is to have my files easily accessible and readable. The other is to unify the look of the file holders.

On Thursday I stayed after mussar to attend the adult education meeting at Beth Evergreen. After the meeting both Tara Saltzman, director of life-long learning, and Marilyn Saltzman (not related as far as I know), chair of the committee, made it clear that I was part of the Beth Evergreen community. Just how I can’t quite articulate, but it was an immediate, warm feeling of acceptance. And I felt very good about it. Another mile marker on the ancientrail of becoming Coloradan, of supporting Kate in her journey further into Judaism and of my own spiritual journey.

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Feelings, Health, Judaism, Memories, Shadow Mountain, The Move

Jittery

March 6, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Anniversary Moon

alone Been experiencing an unusual phenomenon, at least unusual for this period of my life. I’m getting all kinds of anxiety signals from my body. My feet rest on their balls when I sit down, not flat on the floor. My gut has this hollowed out and tense feeling. My jaw has small aches as my teeth grind unconsciously. This also makes facial muscles twitch. When lying in bed, I’ll notice that my legs are tight, again an unconscious contraction.

What’s weird is that I can’t identify any source for these unsettling signs. My best guess right now is that they’re the product of a combination of things: the ongoing upset from the divorce and its aftermath, the exhilarating yet internal compass spinning immersion in Beth Evergreen, the two year plus loft finishing as well as our still evolving life as Coloradans, and the various medical challenges we’ve both encountered since moving here. Why the physical signals right now if that’s the right analysis? Don’t know.

images (3) When we had our couple’s escape at Tall Grass Spa, I first noticed these physical manifestations. It was during the relaxing, 80-minute massage. As certain parts of my body felt calmer, others, like my legs and my gut, began to call out to me.

As I’ve said here before, I’m an anxious guy with the diagnosis to prove it. Zoloft and the patience encouraging benefits of aging have seen an end to the gross physical manifestations of anxiety until now. That’s not to say I have had none, but this combination of multiple instances has me feeling like I did in college and much of my life thereafter. Not something I want back. I peg the bulk of the anxiety I’ve experienced over the years to my reaction to my mom’s sudden death and the follow-on impact of a soured, then estranged relationship with my father. And, again, I have 18 years of on and off Jungian analysis that says I know what I’m talking about here.

images (2) A follower of gestalt therapy in my younger days, I learned to pay attention to and interrogate a jumpy stomach, a twitchy foot. These are not disconnected from my psyche, to the contrary they reveal things occurring in that inner world hidden from view to my Self.

Maybe I’ll finally get back to meditating. That helps, I know.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Judaism, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain

Learning How To Live

March 3, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Anniversary Moon

Teeth cleaning a.m. Kate and I now schedule teeth cleaning and annual physicals together. I call it medical entertainment. Just like going to the Tallgrass Spa together. Almost.

mussar

Mussar afternoon. Soul cleaning together, too. I’m learning a lot about Judaism with her. And, I’m impressed with what I’m learning. Here’s the key new insight: Judaism has, from a long time ago, insisted that abstract ideas like mercy, compassion, judgment, faith have embodied reality. That’s what all those laws are about, how to make the faith work in daily life.

This is very different from the Christianity in which I was trained. Christianity unhitched this very earthy, practical religion from the notion of embodied abstractions, letting the abstractions become dominant. This led to a growing gap between dogma and actual practice. Of course, many Christians work at making their faith inform their lives, but the tools are not as good the ones in Judaism. It’s not the laws themselves, but the spirit of actively grappling, every day, every moment with what it means to show mercy, to judge, to practice loving kindness, to exhibit patience that gives Judaism its lived flavor.

Still don’t want to be a Jew, no interest in converting, but I have a lot of interest in learning how to live from the community of Beth Evergreen. Probably the best religious experience of my life.

Mountains, Shadow Mountain

With and Without Hair

February 26, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Anniversary Moon

From my growing up and adult years in the Midwest mountains had a rocky, bare faced majesty, perhaps covered in swirling fog or partially covered in new snow, but always jagged and austere. Yes, I’d been to the Smoky’s and driven the Blue Ridge Highway, even seen the Appalachians in Pennsylvania and New York, not to mention the ancient Sawtooths along the North Shore in Minnesota, but somehow they didn’t change my archetypal image of what it meant to be a mountain.

Now, though, having lived in the Rockies for over two years, I know that mountains are diverse, even in the same range. Some are bare and austere like the Tetons, but most of the mountains I encounter on a daily basis have hair, above 8,000 feet lodgepole pine and aspen, below that ponderosa, blue spruce, some oak. Of course, above the tree line, there are no trees, but at the treeline, krummholz trees predominate. They are, as the German word makes clear, stunted and windblown, crooked, bent and twisted.

20170208_070956

Even after some reading and a lot of observation I’ve still not figured out how to tell where one mountain begins and another ends. Of course, this is not a mountain’s problem; it’s a problem of the human need to analyze and dissect. A peak of Black Mountain, for example, is visible through my loft window as I write. I photograph its beautiful changes as the sun rises and posted some of those below. But Conifer Mountain begins somewhere to the south of Black Mountain. They’re connected, joined at the granitic hip, so they’re not really distinct entities, but inventions of the mind.

This move has had many implications for our lives, none more constant and enthralling than this chance to know the mountains.

Mountains, Photography, Shadow Mountain

Black Mountain Changes

February 25, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc New (Anniversary) Moon

The last three are all from this morning, sequenced by time taken with the earliest first. The first one is from 7 am on February 8th.

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Jefferson County, Judaism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel

In, but not of

February 24, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

In, but not of. Yesterday at mussar, a spiritual/ethical system within the Jewish tradition, I had a complex moment. We were discussing truth and mercy, the relationship between them. To compare mercy and truth I defined mercy as suspension of judgment. Truth though is a sword and a judgment. If that’s correct, then not all truth is merciful. Rabbi Jamie started to dispute that, but had to leave for his daughter’s wisdom teeth extraction.

In the conversation that followed afterward my use of the sword metaphor was identified as a Christian trope, “I come to not bring peace, but a sword.” I’ve been working very hard over the last year to bracket my mode of theological thinking while absorbing a Jewish style of thinking. This requires effort because though I abandoned Christianity over 30 years ago, my seminary education and professional life as a clergyman reinforced my already strong Judaeo/Christian enculturation. Christianity does still define much of how I think and feel about matters religious and secular.

While that’s obvious, I still felt a flush of embarrassment at being identified with a New Testament informed concept. That flush, as mussar teaches, is an important signal about where growth is necessary.

On the way back up to Shadow Mountain I described my situation to Kate as similar to traveling. “I love to go where the culture is very different from mine, where I’m a stranger. It helps me know my self.” Kate’s journey is one of a Jew deepening her own understanding, her own identity as part of a religious world. My journey is closer to travel, “It feels like I’m traveling on the inside.” In this case no geographic change is necessary for me to be a stranger.

travel

This inner travel exhilarates me, but it also confuses and, in a mild sense, scares me. I’m trying to gain wisdom and personal growth from Beth Evergreen while maintaining my own identity as a pagan. But, not only that. My life as a pagan is not divorced from my enculturation as a Christian. I’m a cultural Christian in many ways. That means I encounter many shocks to my inner world, shocks that wake me up, like a Zen koan, but that also and in the same instance disorient me.

It’s like being on Yaowarat Road in Bangkok on a weekend night. On Friday and Saturday night the sidewalks of Bangkok’s Chinatown, of which Yaowarat is the main street, fill up with small restaurants, often two tables, some chairs and a street vendor style kitchen with a wok, propane tank, utensils and a stack of plates and soup bowls. What food are they serving? I don’t know. I speak neither Thai nor Mandarin. Many people are there who do understand the food offerings, how to eat them, but I’m not one of them. I’m in, but not of the street life. Observing, yes, eager to learn, yes, but even after sampling some food and gaining some insight, I will go back to my hotel, a stranger traveling through.

I’m grateful to the folks at Beth Evergreen and Kate for putting up with my being present as a stranger and an inner traveler. A long journey, barely begun.

Mountains, Shadow Mountain

Sounds. And Silence.

February 23, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

There are mountain sounds. The katabatic winds that flow from Mount Evans and its companions rush through the lodgepole pines, soughing and moaning as they head for the plains. In the fall during the elk rut the bugling of the elks, a strange and mournful cry echoes in the canyons. The swirling waters of snow fed mountain streams gurgle and gush their way over rocks and around corners. The cough of a mountain lion, the odd bark of the fox are not often heard, but they are distinctive.

Then, there is the antithesis. When snow falls, as it does right now, it muffles sound, brings silence in its wake. Quiet descends with the snowflakes. There are, too, those not infrequent moments in the forest when there is no wind, the streams flow by, no elks bugle, no birds are singing. The stolid presence of the lodgepoles and lower down the ponderosa, the aspen and the blue spruce highlight the steady, massive, soundless presence of upthrust rock.

All of these, and more, are the wonder of living among the Rockies.

Colorado, Great Work, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Red Flag

February 22, 2017 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Fiskar-Pole-Saw- Went out yesterday with the pole saw and began the task of trimming branches on our lodgepole pines. OMG. Working that saw, always over my head, wore me out pretty fast though I did get several trees limbed. Splintered Forest rents power pole saws and I might rent one for the rest of the work.

I did this work in honor of the red flag warning (highest fire danger) we had yesterday. Limbing up to ten feet prevents a grass fire’s spread into the trees. The branches below 10 feet act as ladder fuel, giving the fire a way to climb. Otherwise the trees are not nearly as combustible. It felt good to be outside, a sunny day, warmish but still cool.

Shadow Mountain is just below the R in warning.

There was a video clip of the recent Meyer’s Ranch grass fire on Pinecam.com. Meyer’s Ranch is near us. When I saw the fire licking up around the tree trunks, it prompted thinking about ladder fuel. The reality was very easy to see.

We chose to live here, so we have to take these matters into account. In a big fire, a crown fire or one whipped by the winds that often roar down mountain, we’ll probably lose the house anyway. This work means that in something less than that it might survive. Being close to the main road, Black Mountain Drive (aka Co. 78), and having a flat, short driveway means firefighters will work to save our house. That ups our odds, too.

And, on that cheery note, I’ll make all this a metaphor. Donald Trump is a red flag warning for our democracy. If we don’t do the important maintenance now and for the next four years, we might lose the White House and self-governance. Get out that pole saw and call your congressperson.