Category Archives: Shadow Mountain

Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

Still Felling

May 30, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

Yesterday I felled trees and slept. Wearing myself out. I’ll have all the blue ribbon trees down by tomorrow and limbed completed by Wednesday I hope. Tyler, a Conifer High School junior looking for work, comes by on Wednesday to start moving slash to the front. While he’s doing that, I’ll finish my limbing and cutting off tree tops.

When that job is done, the next work is cutting the limbed tree trunks into either Seth and Hannah sized logs or into fireplace size logs. I’ll probably finish that by the weekend. Tyler will return and help me stack logs. More chipping of the slash is also part of this work.

This morning I felled a few trees and limbed four. This afternoon Jon and Jen and the grandkids are coming out for Memorial Day steak. If the weather co-operates, I may take Ruth on the cliff trail, a part of the Upper Maxwell trail we’ve not seen yet.

When this work finishes up, the next big task will be sorting out and rearranging the garage. Finally. Moving in takes time.

Part of the point of fireplace mitigation is to create defensible and strengthen the health of the remaining trees. There are several strong lodgepoles that will now have better sun, more nourishment, enough of them that I want to name them. Two after the grandkids, then I don’t know what. The sinuous lodgepole in front of the shed is one of the strong ones.

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.

Great Work, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West

Weeding

May 23, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

Topped all the felled trees, finished the limbing on them, too. Began the hauling to the front. Wore myself out. Tomorrow I’ll start cutting them up.

Rain today. Cloudy. Our solar production is far behind what was predicted, due in large part to the heavy snowfall, but also to cloud cover. Payout may take more time than we have here, but the intimate connection between the sun and our electrical use is worth it anyhow; as is severing, to the maximum extent we can, the link between our electrical use and coal generated power.

Chain saws whir all over the neighborhood here on Shadow Mountain. Fire mitigation is the mountain spring equivalent of planting a garden. Weeding, really, on a large scale. A weed is a plant out of place. Of course, you could argue that those of us who live up here are the weeds. Perhaps the trees should be plucking us out. Which is, of course, exactly what a wildfire does. Complex, man.

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

Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

Out on the Limbs

May 20, 2016 Charles 2 Comments

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

Got out this morning early to begin limbing. Still cool. Finished the front and went on to the back. Using my Gransfors’ limbing ax. Conifer Mountain and Black Mountain were in the distance, a breeze blew up Black Mountain Drive and through the Lodgepole pines. On it the scent of cut pine floated up as first dead limbs then limbs with green needles fell to the side. The thunk of an ax cutting wood, the vibration of the oak handle, the release as the ax head sails on beyond the cut. Primal. Direct. No internal combustion engines. Just wood and steel and muscle.

Dogs, Health, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Go-go girls

May 20, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

Rigel and Gertie are the go-go girls. Whenever we leave the house, together or singly, they get big grins, bump us, start moving toward the back door, then back to us, repeat. Into the truck they go, bounding up and into the back. Only to lie down and often go to sleep. They don’t seem to care how long the trip. On the way home Rigel always gets up, starts looking around. They’re having fun, so we enjoy taking them with us.

Dr. Repine sweeps into the room with her white-gold hair. Her examinations are thorough, practiced. She sweeps the various magnifiers over my eyes, the ones that allow her to see the inner parts of my eye directly, dons a headlamp that would not look like out of place on a miner and picks up a thick magnifier. Look up. Look down. Look to the right. To the left. Good. Everything’s looking fine.

Eyeball pressures are 14. Which is in the normal range. Glaucoma held at bay by Latanoprost. Cataracts, however, are advancing, changing my reading prescriptions. She says if they get much worse we’ll just take them out. Oh. Just? The good news is that cataract surgery often helps glaucoma by lowering the pressure in the eye. Something to look forward to?

Kate went with me. We went over to Whistling Duck, a furniture maker, to discuss beetle kill pine dining room tables. Kate had her measurements. She talked tables while I wandered around looking at the displays. We’re still in the early stages, getting quotes.

And, the sun. The sun. Blue skies. Winter to summer. Down the hill, that is. It was 78 in Littleton yesterday, but as we drove back up into the mountains the temperatures dropped, 54 when we got home. Ah.

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.