Category Archives: Shadow Mountain

Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Again. More Snow.

April 27, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring(?) Wedding Moon

As Weather5280 keeps reminding those of us who live near the Denver metro, but in higher elevations, April is our snowiest month. Well, geez. Another big storm rumbles toward us for the end of this week. This stuff is heavy, wet. Not good for snowblowers, my chief tool in snow clearing.

I just put out a note to a local snowplower who also does high altitude gardening. We’ll need help. Ironically, our neighbors who cleared our driveway for us when we got 46 inches or so last week, left last Friday for Tijuana, driving. We’re watching their property. We may get a chance to return the favor.

Well over 170 inches this year. That’s a lot of white coming from the sky. It’s a good thing for the snow pack and at least for the early fire season. Another way of saying the transition here goes from winter to summer is to say we go from ice to fire. Makes for interesting living. And I mean that.

Life here, like life in Minnesota, finds mother earth a constant presence, one that cannot be sidelined by furnaces, air conditioners and trips to the beach.

Asia, Shadow Mountain, Travel, Weather +Climate

Home Again

April 21, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Wedding Moon

We left under the Maiden moon and returned under the Wedding moon. Appropriate. Like the turning of the Great Wheel, our family now has a new couple entering the Horned God and Maiden phase of their lives. Their love will make the fields fertile and sow a new generation, as happens each year at Mother Earth’s temperate latitudes and as happens in each generation of the human family. As my Wiccan friends say, blessed be.

We transited US customs in San Francisco, bleary eyed and weary from the night time flight across the Pacific from Incheon. Instead of an immigration person saying, Welcome home, we got a lesson in automated passport control, using computers that read your passport and ask the basic re-entry questions related to customs matters. I missed that personal touch.

Travel exacts a price from the economy flyer. I’m not my best person when tired, nor is Kate hers. The Korean Land of the Morning Calm attitude toward life impressed me and I’m trying to incorporate it, but yesterday morning some of the usual backup self slipped through.

We returned home to a driveway cleared by our neighbors, Holly and Eduardo. This was a big deal because of the nearly 4 feet of snow that fell while we were in Asia. Without it we would not have been able to get in our house. This is heavy, wet snow that clogs snow blowers and makes the back go ouch while shoveling it.

Seoah’s mentor gave us a tea set made of clear glass and a small bamboo water table on which to make tea. It made it home intact.

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).

Friends, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Translating Metamorphoses, Woolly Mammoths, Writing

Anchored

March 25, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Maiden Moon

Spoke by Skype with Bill Schmidt and Scott Simpson today. No reason, just catch up. It was good.

Friends. I don’t make friends easily and the almost 30 years of Woolly relationships and the 12 years for my docent friends will not be repeatable here. I’m making my peace with that, too. As long as my docent and Woolly friends will connect with me, I plan to maintain the relationships. There is an easiness, a knowingness, an intimacy that has taken years to develop with these folks.

Also, my work occupies my time, not in an escapist way, but in a fulfilling way. That’s why I don’t feel lonely here. Kate, the work, the dogs, family, casual relationships are plenty for now. And may be enough for the long haul. Even so, I imagine I will find new friends here at some point, but if I don’t, that’s ok, too.

In other words, I am flourishing as an intellectual and creative worker, lodged in a beautiful place, with family and canine companionship. I’m happy as well. A hard combination to beat.

Colorado, GeekWorld, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Making Our Peace With Wildfires

March 24, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Maiden Moon

Figured out yesterday how to use Amazon’s Unlimited Photo cloud service. It comes free with Prime. Because I put so many images in my blog, I have an unusually large number filed away for future use. I began the uploading of the photos yesterday and the service is about 2/3’rds done this morning. It will finish sometime today.

Then, I sat down and learned how to use Dropbox. It’s free storage, about 2GB, is plenty for my novels, short stories, essays. I started copying files there yesterday, too. It will take a little time, but once I’m done, I’ll just have to update whatever current work I’m doing.

These two are in anticipation of a possible wildfire. No need to lose your work these days.

Today I’m going to work on putting together our emergency kit which will include the memory card which has the photographs of all our stuff. In there will also go insurance policies, titles, deed and manuals for various things since they will testify to exactly what we own. Our estate documents and our living wills. That sort of thing.

After a year of trying to put together an external sprinkler system, I’ve decided to not pursue it. Why? Well, for one thing nobody here builds the kind of simple system I want. I’ve investigated all the possible vendors in the state. That would mean I’d have to work with somebody who didn’t know what they were doing. Which would make two of us.

Perhaps even more to the point, I read an article by a wildfire expert who said that if you follow the firewise zone recommendations, which I am, that most houses will survive a fire. The deputy chief of the Elk Creek Fire district said that our house was well situated to survive a fire, in large part because we have a short, level driveway on a primary road, Black Mountain Drive. The perception of the fire department is important because during a fire they drive through the area and in essence do triage. These homes will be ok on their own. These can survive if we protect them. These homes will burn. You want to be in the first two categories. And we are no matter the sort of fire.

Also, I decided to make my peace with losing our house and garage. After I finish the fire mitigation work, taking down trees and making sure we have a our zone free of combustibles around the house, I’m going to rely on luck and the Elk Creek Fire Protection District. Should that not prove enough and we lose everything except our lives and the lives of our dogs, we’ll build again. What could be safer than an area that’s already burned out?

It felt freeing to come to this decision. Both Kate and I agreed that losing our stuff would be very, very far from a cataclysm. We could rebuild an energy efficient house suited to our needs.

All part of settling in.

Holidays, Shadow Mountain, Tea, Third Phase

Birthday Present. In the Finishing Stages

March 23, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Maiden Moon

Needed something on which to make tea. So, from beetle kill pine by Jerry at Whispering Pines Design:

Aging, GeekWorld, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

Knee, Snow, Travel

March 23, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Spring Maiden Moon

The knee, 20 hours later. Feeling pretty good. Almost normal. A bit creaky, a little twingey, but otherwise, pretty damned good. The cortisone effect can last from weeks to months. I’m hoping months. The big issue with the knee, beyond Asia, is my regular workout. High intensity workouts, which I’ve been doing for a while, require some speedier, more stressful moments on the treadmill. The cortisone will make them easier for now. Worth it.

In other news here on Shadow Mountain we’re getting what may well may be another foot of snow. And this stuff is wet. And therefore heavy. Of course it’s Wednesday, when the trash goes out. Gonna get the yellow Cub Cadet out, but if it plugs up all the time, I’ll wait for the solar snow shovel or find somebody to plow us out.

Up here the forecast can change quickly if a system moves a bit further north or south. Last night the forecasts were for 2-7 inches. But in reality.

Today, and maybe tomorrow, is going to be largely trip related. Finish photographing our stuff. Get necessary information onto a flash drive for portability. Open a dropbox account to put my writing in the cloud. Get our emergency box of important papers put together. Sign up for international cell phone plans. Figure out how folks can contact us when necessary. Fussy stuff.

Colorado, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Winter. Again.

February 23, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

Chinook winds brought us warm days, several in a row. Snow melted in the unshaded portions of our yard, though several inches remained over most of it. Today, though, all is white, curvy and gently rolling. We got 10 inches + overnight. Another powdery snow and it’s still falling. When the weather predictions for snow come out, we’re almost always in the area targeted for more snow. And this year, most of the time, we’ve exceeded the predictions.

Right now the snow falls in big, fat flakes, what I’ve come to think of as flour sifter snow. Somewhere above us an angel or an aeronautical giant has a huge bin of snow, a gigantic screen on the bottom. They’re working that bin back and forth, back and forth. The lodgepole’s branches, already bent toward the earth, bow down even more. The aspen outside this window (I’m in the house in our home office.), our only deciduous tree up here, looks on, placid and stripped down for the season. Waiting.

The solar panels wed us even more to the cycles of weather and the sun’s angle. When snow covers the panels, no production. When the sky is cloudy, production diminishes. As the days lengthen and the sun rises higher in the sky, production increases. The solar panels are our photosynthesis. We have become plants. Sunshine = energy.

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

Still Trying to Get This Done

February 21, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

As the chinook winds have eaten our snow cover and dried out the grasses and downed trees, the fire hazard went up to a red flag warning on Wednesday. That means that if a fire happens, it has a good chance, a very good chance, of getting out of control. Not that I needed more to concentrate my mind on fire mitigation.

The chainsaw has sat idle for some weeks now as arthritis and snow cover combined to keep it in the garage. Though I could get out now, I haven’t. On some days the winds have been too high, on others I just didn’t feel like it. I still have several trees to remove, almost all now in the back, a few trees to limb and several trunks to cut into fireplace size logs for curing.

That I can do. What I also want are external fire sprinklers. They exist. It’s possible to imagine a system for our home, but external sprinklers are not part of the fire mitigation culture here. Even the Colorado State Forest Service recommended against one in a letter to me: “…too many variables that could go wrong with the system, including losing power during a wildfire, or forgetting to drain the system during cold weather and the pipes freezing.” Well, we have a working generator. At last! And, draining a system…well, we can get that done.

Still, because of this hesitancy, the folks who do fire mitigation have not developed products or services for homeowners. So this week I’m going to start contacting irrigation companies. They understand the technology and might be able to construct our system.

When I had the assistant chief of the Elk Creek Fire Protection District come out and do a fire mitigation analysis for our property, he said that external sprinklers do work and they would work here. Just not many folks doing it. Well, we’re gonna be among them, one way or the other, and I need to get this work done before May.

Mountains, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

At 8,800 feet

February 18, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Imbolc Valentine Moon

These chinook winds are formidable. Here’s the weather advisory for today:

High Wind Warning remains in effect until noon MST Friday... 

* timing... southwest winds will increase in the Front Range
  foothills through the afternoon... peaking in the late afternoon
  and evening hours.

* Winds... west to southwest 30 to 45 mph with gusts to 80 mph
  mainly above 7500 feet. West to northwest winds 35 to 50 mph
  with possible gusts to around 90 mph tonight and Friday
  morning.

* Impacts... people planning travel should be prepared for very
  strong cross winds causing hazardous driving conditions. Hikers
  should be alert for falling trees. Power outages will also be
  possible.


And, just to add something extra to winter: a red flag warning.

Red flag warning remains in effect until 6 PM MST this evening
for wind and low relative humidity for areas south and southeast
of Denver... fire weather zones 216... 241... 245... 246... and 247... 

* affected area... fire weather zones 216... 241... 245... 246 and 
  247.

* Timing... gusty winds will continue through with humidities
  dropping. Winds will remain very strong this evening but
  humidities will increase.

A red flag warning means that critical fire weather conditions
are either occurring now or will occur shortly. A combination of
strong winds... low relative humidities... and dry fuels can
contribute to extreme fire behavior.  If a fire is started or
ongoing the potential for it to rapidly spread is high.