• Category Archives Park County

  • Country Roads. Pruning.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Michaelmas Moon

    Saturday gratefuls: Zeus, Boo, Thor. Rigel, Kep. Running the fence. Happy. Susan, who will care for Rigel and Kep during my time at the Woolly retreat in November. Social Security. Orgovyx. The rolled over IRA. My pension. This house. This life. More pruning.

    Sparks of Joy and Awe: Alan in Fiddler. Taking Jon, Ruth, Gabe.

    Tarot: Ten of Wands, Druid. Queen of Stones, Wildwood. Question-what can I do today to move my new life forward?

     

    Happy Camper. On the way I pass King’s Valley where Marilyn and Irv live. The intersection of King’s Valley road and 285 is deadly. Each year people die. No light. No overpass. Left turns into heavy cross traffic.

    Fire mitigation, May 2016

    When I finished up my first round of fire mitigation, I hired a teenager from down the block. A good worker. On the last day of our work together he got a phone call. His Uncle John, a Harley rider, died in a wreck at the King’s Valley crossing.

    Further on 285 winds down into a Mountain Valley. A right turn takes you to Staunton State Park. I see the eastern Slope of Black Mountain out my loft window; its western Slope is the eastern boundary for the park. 45 mph down the Mountain to the Valley.

    Later, after a steep climb, up yet another Mountain, 285 snakes past Pine. It has a short shopping mall with coffee and gift stores at the intersection with Pine Valley road. Down the Pine Valley road winds the North Fork of the South Platte River, opening out into wide swaths of Pasture, boiling over Rocks. Tom and I drove Pine Valley road to Manitou Springs and the Pikes Peak Railroad.

    Up. Down. Colorado Mountain roads. At Pine the Continental Divide shows up in the distance, well beyond Bailey.

    Happy Camper has a narrow, bumpy, dirt road that winds up a Hillside. At the top is a metal industrial building where Happy Camper grows Maryjane and creates their own branded products. The retail shop is on the right as you drive in.

    When I went in yesterday, there were 8 men of my age, some with masks, some not. They’re all together, so I can help you, said one of the budtenders. Yes, that’s a thing.

    Eight of the Indica Cheeba Chews, please. The black ones? Yes.

    Back home for a full workout. A few tasks. Called Jackie and changed my October 2nd hair appointment. My Tarot and the Tree of Life spread class interfered. Lunch and a later nap.

    It’s been what qualifies as a busy week for me. Glad the weekend is here. It always amuses me that I feel different on the weekends, looser, less driven. I mean, I’ve been retired from a regular work week since 1992. But the weekend, even though I often worked on Sundays, still feels freeing. Yay. Friday’s over! Reminds me I want to experiment with keeping the Sabbath.

    Still working on cooking for one. Sometimes good. Sometimes not. Last night. Not. I had cheese and crackers.

     

    Ten of Wands, Druid.  Queen of Stones, Wildwood

    Until today I have not asked a question of the cards I turn over in the morning. It is usual to ask a question, but the daily “oracle” card can also be read in light of the general trends in your life.

    what can I do today to move my new life forward?

    The ten of wands has shown up a lot for me. It’s about carrying a burden, keeping on keeping on. Staying the course. The Queen of Stones in the Wildwood deck evokes a different, but complementary sensibility.

    The Queen is a Cave Bear, guarding the entrance to her home as dawn paints the near sky. The Wildwood book suggests she raises these questions: How can you best promote well-being at home? Where can you make space to care for yourself and others? What needs to be preserved?

    The ancient Cave Bear is now long extinct. I saw a Cave Bear skeleton, it might have at the Science Museum in St. Paul. They stood fifteen feet with their upper limbs extended. Big. Strong. Master and Mistress of their domain. An apex Predator.

    This Bear Queen has a home, one she uses to raise her cubs, for hibernation in the winter, for shelter in other seasons. So do I. And, as I went to bed last night I had thoughts about what I needed to do next. Pruning?

    Yes, some of that. The bookcases in the bedroom, the still cluttered living room area. The recipe book I have to create out of recipes printed from the internet. I also got the file folders I needed to organize my financial papers.

    Another thought last night focused on reading books about the Tarot, reentering the world of astrology. That research and scholar mode.

    Today the Bear suggests I focus on space. Making it a caring space for myself, for Jon and the grandkids, for guests. So. I will.

    The Ten of Wands reminds me though that I need to put down the pruner and the book, take a break. I no longer need to have my head down, pushing forward. That time died with Kate. I can relax, do something fun.

    Deciding to go to the Woolly Retreat is an aspect of this. Road trip. I’m going to drive. First long trip on the road since 2016. Excited.

     

     

     


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  • My Christmas Wish

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Thanksgiving Moon

    Thursday gratefuls: Last night Kate said as we were going to sleep, I know one of your gratefuls. OK. Your electric blanket. Oh, yeah. She right. And that down comforter on top of it. Plus, the cold bedroom that makes them both necessary and a joy. In the single digits here. Windows open. Our way. The small Animal which created the narrow tracks that look like a tiny wagon had crossed our snowy driveway. The Mule Deer that came by later. My own, for that matter. The wheel tracks of the garbage taken out yesterday morning. Temporary memories. Our mailbox. Bought one that has a door in the back as well as the front. I can get the mail without standing on Black Mountain Drive as folks drive home from work.

     

    Prepping for a Hanukkah post. Advent, too. Yule and the Winter Solstice. Why is our New Year’s in the middle of winter? Kwanza. This is a big holiday month. We need it this year. We also need it to be safe. Hope you have an uncomplicated but joyous holimonth.

    My Christmas wish. Please make DJT disappear from the television, social media, and print. I don’t care if he stays in the Whitehouse until US Marshals come to serve him an eviction notice. I’ve coined a phrase, and I don’t want it to offend those who got PTSD in horrendous circumstances, or to demean them in any way, but Post Trump Stress Disorder is real. His voice, his image, news articles about him trigger me. His careful enunciation of outright lies, his presentation as conman in chief shames our country and has been repudiated. Couldn’t we muzzle him for the next 48 days? I have a wire muzzle for Kepler that out to fit him. Or maybe noise cancelling electronic devices when he opens his mouth?

    Still feeling glum. I don’t have the holimonth spirit. And, I want it. Gonna find that box of Christmas decorations in the garage and lug it up here. String up some lights. Position my small collection of Christmas snowglobes around. Put out ornaments. I’ve got a spruce on our property to cut for a tree. Not a very big one. While I’m decorating, I’ll hit Pandora’s Christmas music stations.

    Oddly, what I miss about Christmas is not the church services, except for the music. I don’t miss the creche. Nor the story of a baby God. I miss the parts of Christmas that make it a family holiday. The tree. The music. The food. That Night Before Christmas feeling. I want to put out a five dollar bill, ok, maybe a twenty, so Santa can go eat at the Rustic Station in Bailey. Get some of those buttermilk pancakes. I’ll put out hay for Rudolph and Dancer and Vixen and all the team. Some milk or whatever elves prefer. This is the Christmas that absorbed so much of the pagan Yule.

    Today’s a Happy Camper day. I’ll see the white tops of the Continental Divide as I drive on 285. Snow sprinkled Ponderosa, Lodgepole, Spruce line the highway. At points along the way, tucked away in the tree are the stone chimneys and fireplaces left over from earlier settlers cabins. Not to far from Conifer High School, on the way to 285, are two cabins from that time, too. They’re dotted all over. Plenty on Shadow Mountain Drive. The road goes up steeply and down dramatically. Mountain roads. Each time I drive here I look at the mountains, scan for wildlife, enjoy the odd mix of businesses and homes, some mansions often high up. Five full years this Winter Solstice and it’s all still beautiful and amazing to me.

    I’m not a small government guy. Not at all. I believe government has the responsibility to keep all of its citizens healthy, educated, housed, and with adequate nutrition. Even so. I want government to recede, go back to its normal presence in our lives. Post Trump Stress Disorder has made me eager to have him gone and to have words and whole sentences, complete thoughts in the mouths of our government officials. Calm. Quiet. At least until January 20th. Please.


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  • The New West

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Moon of Thanksgiving

    Wednesday gratefuls: Mountain Waste. Doctors. The one here and the ones out there. Roads. The builders of Colorado Mountain roads. His Dark Materials. Phillip Pullman. Friends. Caregiving. Tsundoku. Collecting books you have not read. William Schmidt. Bill. As he goes through the next 14 days. Tom on December 1st. Carne asada unthawing. Carnitas and beans for supper.

    Red Sky in the morning through the Lodgepoles. A western greeting. When it’s red like this, I always think of Louis L’Amour. I’ve only read one of his. It surprised me. The prose was more like Dashiel Hammet. I think it was Riders of the Purple Sage.

    When we moved out here, I expected cowboy hats, western shirts, cowboy boots, maybe guns on the hip. Bars with half-doors on spring pivots. Lotta chaw. I have been disappointed. There is the occasional Stetson. Cowboy boots are the most common of the things I mentioned. Very few western shirts, though attending the Great Western National Stockshow saw many of them. It’s the rodeo guys, the paid cowboy entertainers, who dress western.

    Although. Yesterday when we got our hair done, Jackie showed me pictures of her son’s wedding. The minister, her son and his bride stood on a large boulder. Her proud father, all dressed in black with a black Stetson and belt with silver stood off to the side below as did the small number of wedding guests. The chairs were hay bales with Diné blankets. This western culture lives on among ranchers. It’s more of a rural thing.

    Denver and its metro area, including the Front Range where Kate and I live, is the New West. Skiers, hikers, back country campers, and many millennials have added themselves to the state. In spite of the many bumper stickers like Native, Colorado: We’re full. This change irritates the hell out of “native” Coloradans. Who are, in my opinion, feeling a slight taste of the angst their ancestors gave the Utes, the Apaches, and the Comanches who lived here first. They’re not native here. No one is, in the longview. It took those wandering tribes from Asia a while to populate North America, but even the earliest of them weren’t here 50,000 years ago. But, as we used to say in the first grade, those early nations did have dibs on the land.

    This change in the human population has changed both the physical and political landscapes. The number of hard rock mines here, hard rock mines with toxic runoff and piles of toxic tailings literally dot the mountainous part of the state. After the Indian wars, the settlement of Colorado got a big push from Eastern mining and railroad interests, plus one pulse of gold diggers. Pikes Peak or bust. Most, almost all, busted. There was gold here. And silver. And magnesium. So many minerals that a college, The Colorado School of Mines, has taken a storied place in both the states recent past and mining around the world. The mines, the railroads, even the stockyards that grew up around the ranches and the confluence of north/south rail lines, were not locally owned, nor locally controlled. Colorado was, back then, a vassal state of financiers, industrialists, and railroad owners like James J. Hill.

    That’s the second big lie behind the nativist bumper stickers. These faux natives of Colorado did not “own” it. Those who saw the West, the Rockies in particular, as a source of resources for their own plans, did. They controlled the politics and the wealth. Those so-called natives descended from peasants who worked the land and mountains for Wall Street feudal lords. The New West, the new Colorado, has its own Fortune 500 companies. The space, technology and military presence here makes Colorado a unique blend of highly educated workers and outdoors enthusiasts. It also means that the state has gone from red to purple to blue over the last few decades. Again, a process highly irritating to those who want to close our borders to new residents.

    Kate and I are part of the New West, the new Colorado. So are many of our neighbors. We have moved West as Horace Greeley once urged young men to do. Sort of. Many of us came from the humid east, but many come from Texas and California. Colorado, by a slim majority, became the first state to mandate by popular vote, the reintroduction of wolves. The natives were the chief opposition. The rancher crowd and the hunting oriented outdoors folks. This will not be their first defeat along environmental lines. We also elected a gay Governor, Jared Polis, two years ago, after having been called the Hate State not twenty years ago.

    When I consider all this, I’m not surprised any more at the low relevance of old west motifs. My fleece and plaid shirt, denim and hiking shoes, are the dress of the New West. At least for me.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     


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  • Bloody Sun

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Labor Day Moon

    Tuesday and Wednesday gratefuls: Kate’s DEXA scan for bone density. Ruby’s a.c. for the drive. Euphoria on HBO. Ruth’s new favorite show. Rigel’s improving appetite. Amber. Mountain Waste. The blood red morning Sun. Teenagers. The complexity of their lives, made even more complex by Covid. The orange excrescence and what he’s showing us about our country.

    The dawn Sun here bleeds for the Fires burning through the West. The clouds show their concern with reflected color. Northern California and the Western Slope of Colorado are aflame. Their smoke and ash foul the Air we breath even up here on Shadow Mountain.

    We live in the Arapaho National Forest, filled with Lodgepole Pine and Aspen stressed by drought, valley meadows with a summer’s growth of Grasses, also dry. The National Forest Service warning signs have pegged their highest mark, Extreme, for weeks now.

    Western life. Punctuated by drought. Rejuvenated by Fire. Relieved by heavy Mountain Snows. For thousands of years. “Go, West, young man.” We did. But we white folk are not nomadic. We do not know where a village can be safe. We just build. Glass and steel. Hardie board and shingles. Permanent. As if there were no fire. No drought. These are strategies of the humid East, dangerous in the arid West.

    As Greeley’s famous invitation flooded the West with people from the East, pushing out, slaughtering the people who knew how to move with the seasons, we made the same mistakes over and over. I’m living in one right now. It’s beautiful here on Shadow Mountain, but this house will burn. And that’s what Lodgepole Pine Forests do. They burn. All the Trees. Leaving fertile ground for a new Ecosystem.

    Humans make mistakes. Often. And the consequences are sometimes horrific. Sometimes wonderful. Human life is one long unintentional adventure in empiricism. Oh, if we do that, this happens. Some of our mistakes lead us to lives otherwise impossible. Like our life here on Shadow Mountain.

    Kate and I understand that we might be living here when the Forests catch Fire. That our home may be temporary. We choose to stay for the same reasons populations of us Eastern folk spotted all over the Mountains and Intramontane regions out here do. It’s beautiful and close to the Wild Life, a reminder of a world not controlled by humans.

    Oh, yes, there’s a paradox. Live where it’s not safe. Why would we do that? We’re mistake makers, non-linear decision makers. We’re human.


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  • #244

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Summer and the Moon of Justice

    Saturday gratefuls: This country. These purple mountain majesties. The lakes of Minnesota. Lake Superior. Evergreen. Conifer. Shadow Mountain. The great plains, rippling wheat. Corn fields of Iowa. Lady Liberty. New York City. San Francisco. Puget Sound. The Colorado River. The Mississippi. The South. New England. The first lighters up there in Maine. Jambalaya. Gumbo. Devil’s Tower. El Capitan. Crater Lake. The Mackinac Bridge. Protests. Alexandria. Muncie. The Big Medicine Wheel. The sacred Black Hills. Cahokia. Carlsbad Caverns. Marfa. West Texas. From sea to shining sea. Haleakala. Waipio Valley. Waimea Canyon. Da Fish House. Denali. Kodiak. Salmon. Grizzly. Wolves. Lynx. Wolverines. An amazing country still.

    244 years old. Lot of candles for that red white and blue cake. Hard times. Like the Civil War. The First World War. The Spanish Flu. The Depression. WWII. Yes, it’s been hard before. Will be again. We navigated the churning, stormy waters of all those. We can get through this one, too.

    A canard? Maybe. Yet, I believe it’s so. Rising out of this fire may come a nation truer to its ideals. No more Trumps. Ever. No more easy white privilege. No more easy oppression of people of color, women, lbgt. A more just economic and medical system. If we do, the pain will have been worth it.

    I love this country. From Route 66 to the hot dog shaped hot dog stand in Bailey. From Coney Island to Puget Sound. From the Minnesota angle to the bayous. It’s my home, my place, the spot on this earth to which I am native. It can be tarnished by the political class, but not erased.

    Here are my friends, some of my family, the graves of my ancestors. Here are the roads I traveled as a young man, the streets and fields I played in as a child, houses in which I’ve lived, the cities I’ve loved and fought for. This is the land of memory.

    Let’s celebrate #245 with a 46th President. And with 45 in jail or disgraced. Make it so.


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  • Deep Guidance

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc and the Leap Year Moon

    Sunday gratefuls: An extra day in my birthday month. DogsonDeployment and the three folks who responded right away. Seoah’s careful scrutiny of the profiles. Kate’s help with Corrine, who called from DoD. Blue skies and warm temps. Atlas Obscura. The Rocky Mountain Land Library. Jon’s offer to stay with Kate while I take the kids on a road trip.

    Just signed up for a Food and Land Bookclub. My real interest in it is its association with the Rocky Mountain Land Library in next county over Park County. When I bought the books for the book club, four in all, I found my powers returning. Oh, this is what I’ve got energy for my body said. Book titles: Mayordomo: chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico, Braiding Sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants, One Size Fits None: a farm girls search for the promise of regenerative agriculture, and, The Seed Underground: a growing revolution to save food.

    When we first moved here, over five years ago now, I wanted to garden, to learn the native plants, to hike the mountains, learn the land and streams and wildlife. Prostate cancer, bum knee then knee replacement, COPD. Kate’s various medical dilemmas later. Distracted. Accomplished little of these. Some hiking, not much thanks to the COPD and the bad knee. Gardening here required more physical energy than I have available. My first native plants class got interrupted by my prostatectomy. Life. Stuff.

    I first discovered the Rocky Mountain Land Library in 2015, our first year here. It was only a dream then, an idea concocted by the former owners of Denver’s most loved book store, Tattered Covers. It now has a ranch in Park County, south of Fairplay, a bit over an hour from here. Buildings and projects have begun to come together. It wasn’t ready when I found it and, as it turned out, neither was I.

    During Gertie’s last days I reflected again on my instinctual opposition to euthanasia for dogs. It’s no longer absolute because I saw its necessity as Gertie suffered, but it’s still strong. Were there any other instances in my life where I made choices from an instinctual level?

    Instinct? Intuition? Deep inner guidance? Link to a source of knowledge I can’t access consciously? Instinct in any formal sense is probably wrong, but the feeling involved, a strong compulsion, a certainty that this path was mine, had that flavor anyhow.

    Turns out there were other such choices. When I turned 32, I knew I had to be a parent. Got a vasectomy reversal. Didn’t work. OK. Adopt. First child, a girl, died in a salmonella outbreak at the orphanage. Raeone didn’t want to go forward. She’d just gotten a new job. My deep push made me agree to take care of the new baby myself, no matter what it took. I took him to work with me until he was 18 months old.

    After an Ira Progoff workshop in Tuscon, an intentional stirring of my inner life, I stopped by Denver to see Ruth and Gabe. By the time I left I knew Kate and I needed to move to Colorado. She agreed and so we did. We wanted to live in the mountains and to be in our kids and grandkids lives.

    Other less dramatic instances. Saw a movie while in college that featured Manhattan. Put my thumb out and spent the summer of 1968, the summer of love, not in San Francisco, but in Manhattan. Curator of Asian art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Bob Jacobson, gave a lecture on Angkor. Specifically he showed the amazing stone bas relief sculpture that runs for a quarter mile around Angkor Wat’s great Hindu temple. And in particular the churning of the sea of milk where gods and demons struggle for a magical elixir. Had to see it. When my dad died and left me enough money to do some travel, I went.

    A related but less pressured decision came when I realized I was no longer Christian, that I had to leave the ministry. Had I not met Kate, this feeling would have been tested, but I met her and she allowed me a graceful exit.

    Right now I’m feeling a similar push, perhaps not only to the Rocky Mountain Land Library, but to reawaken the me who woke up for twenty springs, twenty summers, and twenty falls glad for the chance to plant lilies, weed onions, harvest garlic, trim the raspberry canes. The me who woke up for several years and knew tending the bees was in the day’s labor. The me who came here excited about the West, about the mountains, about being in a brand new place. We’ll see where this goes.


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  • Mountain Strong

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Winter and the Future Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: For Paul’s idea of the 60 second hug and zero negativity. For Bill’s call yesterday. For Rabbi Jamie and Art Green, the class at Kabbalah Experience by Zoom. For Sandy, who cleans with energy and whose tumor has begun to shrink. For all the good dogs everywhere. All dogs are good dogs. For Mountain Waste who takes away the stuff we can’t use, don’t need.

    Mountain strong. See that a lot up here. Bailey’s town motto is Mountain Strong. Has a sort of defiant, libertarian meaning to most. Clues: lots of comments about guns as a primary home defense system. About citiots. (city idiots) Griping about service up here when we know the difficulties involved.

    Also, though. We can handle it our own. We’re neighbors, let’s help each other. Respect the wildlife. Keep the night dark.

    I like it. Mountain strong. That’s how Kate and I feel. We’re mountain strong. Can it be difficult up here? Oh, yes. The thin air has caused both of us problems most of the time we’ve been here. On certain days the snow is so good we can’t go anywhere. IREA, the local electrical company, has miles of lines in difficult to reach, yet sensitive to weather places. Like up and down whole mountains. Outages are not uncommon and Kate needs O2 24/7. Generator. Delivery is episodic rather than consistent though we have an exceptional (for the mountains) mail carrier. Not to mention that it’s far away to all the services we need.

    All true. What I call the Mountain Way. Just more molasses to crawl through for certain aspects of daily life.

    However. The bare rock, the lodgepole pines, the aspen groves, the cold rushing creeks, the deep valleys and tall mountain peaks, the moose, the elk, the muledeer, the fox, the lynx, the bobcat, the mountains lions, the bears, the magpies and the Canada Jays, the crows and the ravens, the curvy roads, the changing seasons. And the clear, dark nights with the Milky Way and Orion and Ursa Major, Gemini and the whole zodiac. The clouds, the lenticular clouds and the clouds with a long straight front coming over Mt. Evans. When they’re lit by the rising or setting sun.

    And for me, the two visits from the mountain spirits. The three mule deer bucks who greeted me when I came to close on the house on Samain of 2014. The two Elk bucks who stayed in our yard for a day eating dandelions. The day before I started radiation treatment.

    Mountain strong. They promised that, welcomed me on the close of the Celtic year. They promised that, assured me on the day before the Cyber Knife visits. We are neighbors, mountain spirits and humans. We need mutuality to survive. The mountains themselves have greeted me and come to me as companions. Our mountain journey is now five years old and only just begun.

    Mountain strong.


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  • Platte Canyon Drive

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Samain and the Gratitude Moon

    Wednesday gratefuls: Seeing Kate cheered by her fellow Bailey Patchworkers at their holiday luncheon yesterday. A drive yesterday along the Platte River Canyon from Bailey to the Shaggy Sheep. The partly running, partly frozen North Fork of the South Platte River. The black squirrel that played along its banks. Finding my heart so exposed.

    While Kate had lunch with the Bailey Patchworkers at the Riverbend Restaurant in Bailey, I drove out to the Shaggy Sheep, headed toward Kenosha Pass, Fairplay, and the Pacific Ocean. The Platte Canyon runs from Bailey to the Kenosha Pass which, at 10,000 feet marks the transition to the high plains of South Park, a broad expanse of relatively flat land all above 9,000 feet. The Platte Canyon is around 7,700 feet above sea level, carved out by the South Platte River’s north fork. That makes it a gorge, as well as a canyon, since Highway 285 follows the fairly straight run of the river. A gorge always has a river like most, but not all, canyons.

    Sometimes the mountains on either side of the canyon floor come close to the road, gray and rocky, closing the canyon off from the sun. At other points the South Platte runs through long, but narrow fields and pastures. Glen Isle, a beloved and historic resort with a round main building, is on the canyons western side. North Fork Ranch, an Orvis approved dude ranch, features fly fishing, kicking back, horse rides. It’s just beyond the small National Historic site of Shawnee.

    Not much further along 285 is the national YMCA camp, Santa Maria, with its not so obviously needed statue of Jesus on a cliff face high above the camp. I passed it looking up at the statue, wondering why it was there.

    My destination was the Shaggy Sheep, a restaurant opened by New York City chef fleeing the city. It’s a quirky, but good menu. It has, however, also quirky hours since it sits 14 miles west of Bailey and nowhere near any other towns. Georgetown can be reached between, oh, say, May and November, by the Guanella Pass not far from the Shaggy Sheep, and Jefferson, a very small town in South Park, is a few miles on beyond the Kenosha Pass. Billing itself as a casual mountain cook house, the Shaggy Sheep depends on tourist traffic which slows down in the winter months. Closed Monday-Wednesday during the winter, I learned.

    The drive out there was the point though so I wasn’t disappointed. I turned around, drove back to the Riverbend and had a hamburger with truffle fries followed by an excellent canoli. Since I was waiting on Kate and forgot to bring a book (a rare occurrence), I read the articles of impeachment plus commentary and other stories on the NYT.

    The wonder of living here is the chance to take a trip through the Platte Canyon just because. Or, up the Guanella Pass to Georgetown. Or, over the Kenosha Pass into South Park and onto Fairplay. And still be home for supper.


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  • See As Seen

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Harvest Moon

    42 degrees this morning on Shadow Mountain. Orion standing guard over the Southern gate, the sky black. Walked out to the white Denver Post tube nailed next to our mailbox, picked up the paper, took it back inside. Put it at Kate’s place so she’ll have it when she gets up around 7.

    Spent most of yesterday with buddy Tom Crane in from the Twin Cities. We went to the Cutthroat Cafe in Bailey for breakfast. Have to remember that the room there is very live, lots of ambient noise.

    front left, Mark, front right, Warren. Back left Jim, Bill, Paul, Tom, Me June, 2012

    Catching up. The Woollies, our men’s group, the place we met as sort of initiates well over thirty years ago, continues to age, but with no deaths. Two Woollies turn 75 around now: Warren and Mark. Frank and Bill are 82. Or is Frank a bit older? Can’t recall. Haislet’s over 75 as is Jim Johnson. Paul and I are 72. Tom’s 71 and Scott must be about that. Stefan is the youngster, still in his mid-sixties.

    Tom made an interesting comment about friendship, recalling something I’d said about foreign travel. I travel, I said, to see how other cultures eat, love, do the ordinary things of life, and to then, in turn, reflect on the options my own culture has chosen. Long term friendships are the same, he suggested. A way we can see how others live their lives.

    Yes. We’re all anthropologists to one degree or another, trying to draw understanding from other cultures and from the lives of others we know well, about ourselves, the paths we’ve chosen.

    It was a topic we discussed, our own paths now since we’ve laid aside some of the paths we loved. Tom the pilot is in the past. Tom the CEO, mostly in the past. Charlie the horticulturist, the beekeeper. The docent.

    Bill (foreground), Tom. On his boat on Lake Minnetonka, August 2018

    We drove up the Guanella Pass, repeating a journey Tom, Bill Schmidt and I took a few years ago. At 11,670 feet it’s almost exactly 3,000 feet higher than Shadow Mountain. And, chilly, with a stiff wind. While up there, I mentioned to Tom how much I love the mountains, their wildness. Later, over ice cream in Georgetown, he said much the same thing about the ocean. These are paths we’ve not given up.

    Tom keeps a boat on Lake Minnetonka, a cabin cruiser, that continues his passion for the water. He built a boat, an eight-footer, when he was young. Went to sea as an officer in NOAA’s uniformed service. Spends downtime often in Mendocino, California and on Maui.

    To see yourself as another sees you is to receive a gift, a gift of self-awareness stimulated by an honest, loving gaze from outside. A rare and precious thing.

    Friendship, family, marriage. And unique communities like Congregation Beth Evergreen, the Woollies. That’s where we go to find out things about ourselves that we’ve overlooked, underestimated, suppressed. In a real sense the examined life is not possible without others, an irony of a sort.

    Tom sent me this photograph, Guanella Pass Summit, with a caption, “You’ve found your path.” Not sure if he meant that literally, the path there beside me, or metaphorically, but it hit me in a profound way. Oh, yeah. The mountains. They’re my path. Altitude. Wildlife. Wild and stony places.

    A quote often seen here on t-shirts, back windows of cars and suv’s, attached to the ubiquitous Thule cargo carriers on tops of Subarus: “The mountains are calling and I must go.” John Muir. Kate and I chose for Muir, for the mountains.

    Gabe, ninth birthday, 2017

    While Tom and I ended his visit with a meal at Sushi Win in Evergreen last night, Kate called. Gabe was in the hospital again. This time with a bowel obstruction. He had surgery at 1 am this morning. Seems he had swallowed a couple of magnets that screwed up his small intestine as they danced around each other. WTF.

    We’ll see Gabe today after Kate’s pulmonology appointment. This one, we hope, will move us toward a diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment plan for her lung disease. National Jewish docs this time, not Colorado Pulmonology Intensivists.


    Aging Family Friends Memories Minnesota Mountains Park County Shadow Mountain Third Phase Woolly Mammoths

  • Other Nations

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Lughnasa and the Moon of the First Harvest

    If you look at the post below, you’ll see a line about a minor fall and osteopenia. Fell this morning going downstairs. Landed, fortunately, on my right side, right hip hitting the ground. It was the left hip that had the softened femoral ball. Could have been, well…bad.

    Lots of chatter on Pinecam.com and Next Door Shadow Mountain regarding the 8 year old attacked by a mountain lion Wednesday night. There’s a Greek chorus that sings every time a wildlife incident happens. Two different songs.

    The first. We moved up here into their home. We need to respect them, expect things like this, don’t taunt them. Know their habits, live accordingly. The second. When (bears, mountain lions, wolves) harm people, put them down. Sad, yes, but human life is more important.

    It’s government policy here to euthanize any animal that takes livestock or injures a human. It was a similar policy that eliminated wolves from most of the lower 48.

    planning.org

    We live in the wui (woo-ee), the wildland/urban interface. We have to accept and account for it in our daily lives. Wildfire mitigation. Care in driving mountain roads. Fox, deer, elk, bears, and, yes, mountain lions may cross in front of you. Rocks from mountain sides may tumble down. This is wild nature.

    This Henry Beston quote is on our Vet’s lobby wall. And, I agree with it:

    “…the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.” Henry Beston, The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod


    Health Mountains Park County Shadow Mountain Third Phase