Category Archives: Shadow Mountain

Family, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Writing

Let The World Be New

Leave a comment

Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Mountain Waste. Garbage truck drivers. Mail folk. Snow plow drivers. All risk their lives on curvy mountain roads with limited sight lines. Summer and winter. Everyday bravery. Kate’s better day. Lisa, seeing Lisa today. Get some next steps with Kate’s shortness of breath and nausea.

I named the Lughnasa Moon as a reminder that the Great Wheel underlies most of what I believe these days, as a way to get back to the Celtic, the mythic, as a way to remind myself of the wonders floating in my imagination. Easy to lose sight of in Covid days and feeding tube nights.

George Will. An honest man. Writes superbly. His column today in the Washington Post, Biden’s election will end national nightmare 2.0, references Gerald Ford’s comment at his inauguration that “our long, national nightmare is at an end.” In conclusion Will writes: “Forty-six years later, an exhausted nation is again eager for manifestations of presidential normality.” I hadn’t considered this, but it would take one huge source of angst off the domestic table.

I’m looking for brightness, for the upbeat, for the comforting. Will provided some. Grateful for it.

I’m also looking for fairies, for Gods and Goddesses. Ready to get back to Jennie’s Dead. A place of refuge. A place where the world can become new with my fingers on the keyboard.

Aging, Coronavirus, Family, Health, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Dealing With A Rough Patch

Leave a comment

Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Tuesday gratefuls: Almost reorganized living room. Kate’s hands. Dreams. Rains. Cool. The life we live. Nyquil. Pollen. Tramadol. THC. End of the staycation tomorrow. Perry Mason on HBO. Wet earth. Petichor. The tragedies and joys of our days.

Dreams. Trying to find third gear in a GTO going up a snowy hill. A new phone, different design, metal plate beside the screen. Meeting folks in a coffee shop. Choppy memories.

Kate’s going through a rough (rougher) patch. Breathing more difficult. Feeling weak. Not eating much. Scares me. Good thing we see the doc tomorrow. Hard to know how to be. Honest? This scares me. Me, too, she says. Or, should I try to remain upbeat, better tomorrow, some new drug?

Not wanting to send her down, but not wanting to be dishonest either. I find it hard since my default is to go with the clearest, most real. Not sure what helps her. Me.

It’s been a cool week plus here, nice sleeping. That’s helped both of us. On the other hand the cooler, cloudier weather also dampens the inner weather.

Derek works hard, moving logs first on a dolly, then with his jeep over to his house and his wood pile.

Good seeing Mary and Mark this morning. Things are still in between for them both. He’s awaiting the late August, early September startup of his school in Riyadh. She’s waiting for Malaysia’s borders to open so she can go there into 14 days of quarantine. After she’ll be with Guru until the next academic year in Kobe, Japan. Retired. Sorta.

Family, Garden, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Mop floors, Clean bathrooms

Leave a comment

Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Monday gratefuls: Clean floors, bathrooms. Good wonton soup. A Kate good day. Rigel’s eating well. Kep’s eagerness in the morning. Brother Mark in his old haunt, Hail, Saudi Arabia. Ragweed misery. Rain, more rain. Keep it coming. Bacon. Eggs. Covid. The revelations about us it is revealing. The USA, humbled. The vasty deeps and the airy heights.

Ruth sent us a video of the garden at her Dad’s. It’s growing. Lots of rain recently has helped. Jon’s got so many skills to share with Ruth and Gabe. He’s an artist, first. And, a good one. He has remodeling skills which he’s using to renovate his house. Ruth and Gabe are learning along the way. He’s a good cook. A maker of skis. A skier. A teacher. A gardener. A man filled with love, too. They both need it.

Kate had a better day yesterday. Her stoma site looks good, healing. She sees Lisa this week for a cortisone injection-bursitis-and a DEXA scan for osteoporosis. They’ll also discuss a focus on nausea. If we can get the nausea under control, then she can gain more weight. She’s hanging on to what she has, but to gain weight she needs to be able to eat at least some during the day. Tough for her with this recurrent nausea.

She’s moving through my fiction library. Her goal, she says, is to read it all. She just might at the rate she’s going. Yesterday, she read Recursion, a sci fi novel. Yesterday! Science nerd turns liberal arts major.

The weather has turned monsoonal. Although Weather 5280, my best source for weather in the mountains, says we’ve not made into the monsoons. The monsoons, typically July and August, feature a flow of moisture north from the Baja that gives Colorado afternoon rains. That flow is not set up. The monsoons used to mark an end to the high stress part of the wildfire season. Not so much now, though they help when they come.

Considering what to do with my mini-sabbatical, as Paul called it. I may extend it another week. I’ve gotten a lot of different sorts of things done. Finished the final touches on the loft, cleaned out the living room, coordinated several trades people for electrical work, tree felling, mowing, window washing, got rid of the pallets, supported Derek.

Chop wood, carry water. The Zen adage. Realized that first comes the fireplace, the pots for the water. The house is my fireplace, my pots for water. Mop floors, clean bathrooms. Daily life, as the Zen masters knew, is daily life. We are in it and of it. If we treat it as a burden, then it burdens us. If we treat it as a spiritual exercise, then we receive nurture.

Choosing nurture.

Coronavirus, Family, Health, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Save Baron

Leave a comment

Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Sunday gratefuls: The Wolf’s Trail. A gift from a close friend. Thanks, Tom. Amazon. (I know. But, still.) Pick-up. Yet more rain. 49 degrees this morning. Sushi Win. Spring rolls. Wonton soup. Sushi Win special role. Rigel, head out the window, ears back, facial fur streaming back. Ivory. Old reliable. 120,000 miles. Still fine except for air con and a couple of dings. Black Mountain Drive. Brook Forest. Evergreen.

When I last saw granddaughter Ruth, she told me about a movement among her peers, 14 years old or so, called Save Baron. I love this. His age peers taking either an ironic or a genuine interest in his welfare. Not exclusive notions. What would it be like, they think, to be Baron? With Melania the naked first lady and the orange topped donald as a father? Who better to underline his predicament than those entering high school this year? I hope they succeed. The world does not need another person with the donald’s politics or, even worse, his aesthetics.

Doom scrolling is impossible to dodge unless you never look at the news, online or on the tube or at your breakfast table. Headlines. Numbers with arrows. Graphs. Maps with red states, orange states, brownish states. A vaccine comment here. A why did they wait so long to lock down article there? An article on the economy here.

And it’s not like we don’t care. We do. But everyday. All the time. The slow drip, the fast drip. Hard.

Kate’s had more bad days than good ones recently. Shortness of breath, nausea, general ickiness. Episodic. A bad stretch right now. A lot of it down to Sjogren’s. The rest? Don’t know. Makes things darker here on Shadow Mountain.

I’ve had another round of allergies. New this year. Not sure what’s up with that, but it’s unpleasant. Stuffy. Runny. Headache. Colors the days here, too.

Wanted this to be more upbeat, but…

Aging, Family, Feelings, Health, Memories, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Here We Go

Leave a comment

Summer and the Lughnasa Moon

Wednesday gratefuls: Trash pickup. Significant rain yesterday and last night. Coolness. Kate’s reading. Right now, All the King’s Men. Her honesty. The deepening of our time together. Mutuality. More of that. Turbination. Money. CBE. Zoom. Lights. Electricity. Solar panels. My keyboard. The third phase.

Week I, vacation. Missing my workouts but staying true to my vacation. Putting up ten-year smoke detectors. Cleaning the oven. Going to the bank. Putting together a new laundry hamper with Kate. Cleaning the living room, the garage. Focused on domestic tasks.

But. There’s a flaw in the ointment. Kate reports feeling erased as I reorganize the kitchen, pick up more of the chores. That’s a strong word, I said. Well, we can’t do this if I’m not honest. I agree.

Mutuality is the key. She feels like she’s lost her partner role. I don’t. I see her pay the bills, fold the clothes, make masks, deal with her multiple medical issues. When I can’t figure out how to put up the smoke detector, she knows. When I need to know how to clean the oven, she knows. Her brilliant mind is intact and needed. By both of us.

Her grasp of medicine, which she wears lightly, makes our life so much less fraught. She can discern the serious from the don’t worry about it. Her honesty, which is a core quality for her, means no guessing.

Part of what’s happening is that the Lupron is gradually losing its grip on my hormones. That means I have more energy. Combine that with Kate’s big improvements: leakage fixed, stoma site healing, lung disease stable, stent in place. Relief and joy come more often.

As I feel better, I want to do more around the house. But that gives rise the being erased feelings in Kate. You can see the dilemma. Communication and thoughtfulness on both of our parts is necessary. Mutuality being the key.

Marriage. A pilgrimage. An ancientrail with ecstasy. And despair. Joy and fear. Anger and reconciliation. A pilgrimage toward the true holy grail, humanness. Still on the trail, backpack secure, walking stick in hand, cape wrapped round my shoulders. Here we go.

Coronavirus, Jefferson County, Mountains, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Science, Shadow Mountain, US History, Weather +Climate

The Mountains skipped like rams

Leave a comment

Summer and the (new moon), the Lughnasa Moon (moon of the first harvest)

Monday gratefuls: Clean floors and toilets. Chex Mix. Cinnamon rolls. Shrimp. Claussen’s picked up the pallets. Neowise. Samwise. Tolkien. Robert Penn Warren. The harem of Elk in the lower meadow. The confused Mule Deer Buck on Shadow Mountain Drive. All of our wild neighbors. And, our human ones, too.

When Kate and I went to see Amber last week, the meadow at the bottom of Shadow Mountain Drive had a harem of 20 Elk Cows, several Calves, and one proud Buck, strutting, head high. It’s a large meadow that lies between Conifer Mountain and Shadow Mountain, at the base of both. It has a Marsh that attracts Moose sometimes and an expanse filled with Grass that gets baled for hay later on in the year, this Meadow also attracts Mule Deer and Elk.

Seeing wild Animals living their lives is thrilling. Makes life in the Mountains awe-full. Delight, joy jumps right into your chest. The Mule Deer Buck that couldn’t figure out what to do with the metal barrier on a curve closer to home evoked concern. I flashed my lights for oncoming cars to warn them. The courteous dirt bike rider behind me was cautious. The Buck was unpredictable. In the five and a half years we’ve lived here I’ve seen only one dead Deer along the road, so these situations work themselves out.

As I reached in to pull out the Denver Post, I looked up at Black Mountain. A few small cumulus Clouds crowned its peak. The ski runs are dry, jagged brown scars down its face.

Unbidden, as happens often, we live in the Mountains wrote itself on my inner screen. A muted sense of wonder followed and I stood there, the latest doom-scrolling in my hand, captivated by the Mountain summer.

When Israel went out from Egypt…The mountains skipped like rams,
    the hills like lambs. Psalm 114, NRSV

The Mountains are calling and I must go. John Muir

These are not ancient Rocks caught in the stupor of inanimacy. These are not piles of Stone pushed up from the Earth’s Crust and left alone. These are Mountains. Tall, steady, confident. Like Vishnu they are stability, order, toughness made real. Shadow Mountain allows us to live on its peak and on its sides, but it could take away that permission. One massive burn through its forest of Aspens and Lodgepole Pines and our houses would be gone. Shadow Mountain would remain. The forests would grow back.

We are so Mayfly like to these sturdy beings. Our kind may not last as long Shadow Mountain. Surely won’t if we don’t change our behaviors. Yet it gives us a home, like it gives a home to our wild neighbors. A Mountain forgives those who tread its flanks. Except, perhaps, for those who shave off its peaks, ruin it with strip mines. Or, hard Metal mines that pollute Streams, kill Wildlife.

Time though. Time is the Mountain’s friend. It waits as its colleagues Rain, Snow, Ice, Lightning, running Water scour what human’s leave. Tumble it down through Creeks and Streams. Dilute it, spread it out. A million years on Shadow Mountain will look much the same, perhaps a bit shorter, perhaps a bit narrower, but still substantial. 9358 Black Mountain Drive will have long ago become a forgotten pimple.

We can learn from the Mountains. Even our Mayfly lives can gain from patience, from being slow to react, from purification in the waters of the heavens. We need these lessons now, in these Covid 19 times.

Politics, Shadow Mountain, US History

When is dawn?

Leave a comment

Summer and the Moon of Justice

Thursday gratefuls: The loft. Amber, a smart nurse. Anti-fungal powder. Curative foam. Ruby. Her air conditioning. Freeways: Hwy 285, 470, 70. Wadsworth Blvd. Wheatridge. Kate, her equanimity. Kep. Rigel. All my zoom connections. Books. The internet.

Doom-scrolling. Just did a bit, trying to read the tea leaves. No flying cars. No neon-washed nightscapes. No replicants, no replicant bounty hunters. Blade-Runner days and nights. The reality of 2020, a year after the 1982 movie’s dystopian version of Los Angeles, is so much grimmer. So much darker. So much worse.

The President of this version of 2020 chose the midst of a pandemic to push a case to the Supreme Court that would take health care away from millions. He’s also chosen this time to unfreeze executions in the Federal Prison system. His administration has children in cages, supports white supremacy and white supremacists, thinks Black Lives Matter is a hate group. The chaotic White House response to the worst pandemic of this millennia has killed thousands of Americans and led us to the number one position in the world for new cases, now over 65,000 a day. With no Federal activity to slow it down, let alone stop it.

The election in November. He’s way behind, that orange festooned buffoon. Or, so say the polls. But we all have poll shock, having been gulled once. Gulled once, shame on us… Just read a Politico article that said one problem with polling potential Trump voters is that they don’t usually vote. They come out for him only, and hang up on pollsters.

Doom-scrolling is not necessary. The headlines of each day’s newspapers scream the dysfunction of this once confident, world-leading nation. George Will had a column yesterday in the Washington Post titled, The nation is in a downward spiral. Worse is still to come. WP. It’s last line is, “This is what national decline looks like.”

Let’s call it red hat irony. The man who campaigned on making America great has gutted us. Stripped away our credibility with foreign allies. Defended our Cold War enemy against election meddling charges and ignored its pay for slay reinsertion of itself in Afghanistan. He has let a pandemic run wild among our people while stiff arming the poor, the needy, the teeming masses yearning to be free. His pandemic policy might accomplish his goal of reducing immigration down to almost zero.

This country. My home. Probably your home. Its flag, my flag. Its military, my military. Its people, my people. Its beautiful, majestic land, my land. Why wouldn’t we all have tears streaming down our faces as we see it now, in retreat, many of us in self-imposed exile in the nation of our own home?

This is not the American Century, nor the American Millennia. Hell, we couldn’t achieve an American Week or Day. Let’s hope that the old cliche holds, that things are darkest before the dawn. We can’t see ahead right now and that’s pretty damned dark.

Cooking, Coronavirus, Dogs, Family, Health, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Travel

Needed

Leave a comment

Summer and the Moon of Justice

Wednesday gratefuls: Mary’s recovery. Nasal polyp removal. Anitha, her bestie caring for her at home. Meeting with our financial advisor, RJ. Zoom. The health of our corpus. The three Earth countries sending visitors to Red Mars. Tianwen, Perseverance, Hope. China, USA, UAE. The night sky. Our stumpless front yard. Needing a break.

Want to set this burden down. For a bit. Need a vacation. A staycation. Something. Always on. Dogs. Kate. Cooking. House maintenance. Cleaning. Mail. Groceries. (Kate pays the bills.) Cars. Insurance. You know, all that domestic stuff. Work outs. Organizing stuff. Laundry. (Kate folds. Thank god.) My own health. Doctor visits. Imaging, hospitals, emergency rooms.

A bit whiny, maybe, but I do need a break. Of some kind. Not gonna happen either. No place to go, for one. Thanks, Covid. So even if putting the dogs at Bergen Bark Inn and Kate in respite care weren’t expensive and a hassle in itself (something more to organize), the virus makes travel unfun.

Having Seoah here was wonderful, of course. And, she did relieve the cooking and house cleaning. But not the overburden of responsibility.

Trying to figure out what I can do here on Shadow Mountain. Just crossed off workouts for a week and a half. I always go back, so that’s no danger. Problem with them is I moved them to mornings so I wouldn’t miss them so often. I used to work out around 4 pm. Too hot now. Plus cooking the evening meal. Other things. The move to mornings has worked well. I’m very regular with the exception of morning appointments out of the house.

But. Not getting any writing done, painting. Reading has shrunk to news and serious material like Art Green’s Human Narrative. Some pleasure reading in the evenings.

I want to finally finish, I’m oh so close, the loft. Then get back to writing and painting. I’ll take early morning hikes. Read some more fiction. Watch movies. I’ll buy takeout for the next week and a half, too. That should help. Ah, hell. I could take two weeks off from exercise. I might. Jump start a renewed Covid, stay-at-home life.

Yes. This sounds good. A respite. Needed.

Commentary on Religion, Commentary on the news, Coronavirus, Friends, Great Work, Health, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Plants, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Third Phase, Torah, US History, Woolly Mammoths

A New Covenant

Leave a comment

Summer and the Moon of Justice

Wednesday gratefuls: Mountain Waste. The Claussens, coming for my pallets. The much improved back. Mowed. Most of the detritus picked up and moved. Photographs from Scott of the Woollies at George Floyd’s death site. Sjogren’s, not Covid. Pork ribeye. Napa Cabbage. The heat. The coolness of the morning. Garbage bags.

And then the world came crashing back into my consciousness. Been following the coronavirus spikes, unable to shed the schadenfreude that accompanies the horror. All those people sick and dying because of Trump, Fox News, sychophancy. The Master Race putting its own head on the guillotine. Fixated on this, like looking at a fire in the fireplace or a gently moving fan.

Opened up the email from Woolly Scott. Pictures of my long time friends at the site of George Floyds’ death. Long arcs of dead and withering flowers freshened up by new bouquets. A line of soft toys, teddy bears and rabbits, looking both sad and sweet. Mark Odegard in an orange shirt, a mask, looking at the George Floyd mural. These are friends who lived through the sixties, who understand this holy site in the context of MLK, Malcolm X, the Civil Rights Act, The Voter Registration Act. All that.

Statues falling. Folks going after not only the Confederate memorials, but Founding Fathers like Washington and Jefferson. Or, later, Woodrow Wilson. The screeches of foul play coming from the dotard in chief. His allies revving up their motorcycles, donning their leathers, taking their automatic weapons off their racks and out of gun safes. Heading out to protect the constitution and their way of life. Their white privilege. A complicated time.

Here I am on the mountain top. Moved, but unmoved. A latter day Noah on his ark, Ararat below me. Can this earth flooded with hate and hope create a new world? Maybe I need a dove.

What might be the sign of a new covenant? A bonding among all humans agreeing to live sustainably on our only home, in peace with each other. I can still see the double helix as the trunk of a tree of life, its crown, its keter, in the heavens, its roots dug deep below the soil. This covenant I can feel.

Let’s all cut our fingers, slash our palms, swear a blood oath that we will live as if all of it, you and me, the Lodgepole, the Whale, the Mountain, the Ocean are holy. Worthy. Precious. Loved. That should do it.

Family, Feelings, Friends, Health, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Third Phase

Ordinary Time

Leave a comment

Summer and the full Moon of Justice peaking over Black Mountain

Monday gratefuls: Seeing Jon, Ruth, Gabe. Rain. Cooling a hot day. Beau Jo’s pizza. Folks in masks in Evergreen. Simple Green. A good mop. Lysol and Tough wipes. Clean toilets and floors. The whole yard looking neater. Seoah closer to finishing quarantine. Old friends. Bringing joy. Being joyful. The moon this morning, full and half set behind Black Mountain when I got the paper. Our mountain life.

“All that is gold does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither; deep roots are not reached by the frost.” J. R. R. TOLKIEN quoted in the INFP profile on 16personalities

On Sunday morning now I mop the floors and clean the toilets. Takes about an hour and a half. Feels good. More would not feel good. Kate dusts. Some stuff, like windows and the stainless appliances, get missed. We’re working on how to deal with that.

Seoah just did it. She’d mop, clean, hustle. I’m trying to continue the spirit in which she did these necessary chores. Working so far. I clean the kitchen each day. Load, unload the dishwasher, cook. With Seoah’s good energy as the backdrop.

Told the story yesterday to my old friends Bill, Tom, Mario, Paul about putting Kate’s feeding tube back in. First couple of times it popped out we went to the E.R. Once to the surgeon, Ed Smith. Now, I’ve done it twice. I care for her feeding tube site once a day or once every couple of days. Nurse Charlie.

Doing these things, plus getting all the pallets ready for collection and the lawn mowed have buoyed me. These are the chop wood, carry water equivalents for me right now. And doing them induces a meditative, here and now state.

Let’s hear it for ordinary time, not extraordinary time. These wild and precious days in which we spend the life gifted to us.