Monthly Archives: February 2015

Colorado, Family, Holidays

Eventful

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Imbolc                                                                                 Settling Moon II

Screeching up to 68, flames coming out of the brakes. It’s been a long, strange trip so far and I’ll be happy with whatever else comes along. Forgot, too, that Ancientrails turned 10 last week. Thank you, Bangkok. The achilles rupture there in 2004 gave me two months off my feet. On March 10th Kate and I hit 25 years. 25 is the new 50 as far as wedding anniversaries go.

So it’s a season that celebrates persistence, good luck, love, typing, unexpected consequences. Just right for me.

At two years from the Jewish three score and 10 life has given me a chance to begin much anew. Now a mountain man and a westerner and a Coloradan living in an arid climate the next period will have (has had) many opportunities for adventure.

Last Sunday Ruth was up here while Jon did some handyman work for us. I mentioned the Colorado Geology Museum to her. She said, “That can be our next museum.” Seeing the adventure through the eyes of a child makes it several notches more special.

Colorado

Becoming Native to This Place

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Imbolc                                                                      Settling Moon II

Realized yesterday that a missing part of January was seed catalogs. They all got turned back at the post office. Not forwardable. After about a half an hour on the web I’ve ordered at least 10 catalogs, focusing on ones that have high altitude, arid climate gardening in mind. Not all of them do, of course, but there are a few right here in Colorado.

Putting those together with the Eliot Coleman work on plastic hoop enclosed cold greenhouses should give us a reasonable shot at growing some of our own vegetables in a less than favorable environment.

Becoming native to a place involves far more than getting your material possessions placed in a convenient and useful manner. And, oddly, it involves other humans much less than it does plants, animals, geology, meteorology and geography.

The snow fall here, for example, comes in bursts, sometimes intensive. Today we got 7inches or so overnight. Predicted 3. Over the next few days the temperatures will climb to 55. The snow will melt away. This snow, melt cycle is new to me, a decided difference from Minnesota.

The gardening zone and the frost dates, for Conifer, are similar to Andover. Other places we looked were more severe. Even with this similarity though there are two major differences. We are much closer to the sun and the sun shines through thinner air so plant burn is a problem. We are no longer in the humid east, but the arid west. Picking plants that are drought tolerant and how to water them becomes more critical here.

Then there is this. A truism here: where you have deer, you have mountain lions. Mountain lions will kill and eat dogs. There’s a dialectic between our pets and the predators on whose land we live.

And much more. Altitude acclimatization. Mountain driving. A new ecosystem. Mining culture. Cowboy culture. Ranchers versus farmers.

 

Health, Our Land and Home

Winter Harvest

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Imbolc                                                                          Settling Moon II

New workout regimen. High intensity and resistance work MWF. Slow cardio and core work TThS. Slow cardio and core went fine today. Yesterday’s HI and resistance, harder. But it will come back. Slowly, slowly.

Just ordered Eliot Coleman’s book, Winter Harvest. It’s about the only way we can grow vegetables here, use covered beds. Gotta learn some stuff before we try to implement it. Gonna let the bees rest this year. Montane gardening will be enough of a new challenge for one year.

Becoming native to this place will happen like my workouts: slowly, slowly.

Colorado, Dogs, Our Land and Home

Beautiful

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Imbolc                                                                            Settling Moon II

Kate did such a great job finding our Black Mountain Drive home. Not only does it provide plenty of room for both of us and our various creative activities, it’s also located about half an hour from this view: Kenosha Pass, 10,000 feet.

 

On an ordinary errand, taking Kepler to Paws and Claws for grooming in Pine Junction, we just stayed on 285. It winds through a long valley following, of all things, the north fork of the South Platte River. Pine Junction is the first stoplight on Hwy. 285 headed out of Denver. This view is about another 20 minutes beyond Pine Junction. The small town of Jefferson is just off to the left, out of view here, on the valley floor.

Colorado, GeekWorld, Health, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Third Phase, Weather +Climate

Mr. Atom and Back to the Treadmill

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Imbolc                                                                             Settling Moon II

62 here yesterday. A record warm spell for Denver, not sure about up here on Shadow Mountain. Kate and I went out in shirtsleeves, looking at plants in the front, trying to decide what they were. Bearberry, I think, or kinnikinnick, which it turns out is used as a tobacco by Native Americans. A small, evergreen shrub that lies low to the ground, kinnikinnick is a ground cover I tried to grow in Minnesota but could never make last. It grows on the edge of Montane forests where it’s sunny. Just where this is.

Had the Geowater folks here yesterday testing our water from various spots in the house.Looking mostly at corrosivity and radionuclides. We have a radon mitigation system in place so the latter is not out of the realm of possibility. Corrosivity will test the ph of the water, specifically to see if our well is the source of the acidic water in the boiler.

Started my exercise regime yesterday evening. Painful. I have detrained aerobically and in terms of resistance, plus there’s the effect (complicated) of altitude. I started over after a 7-week layoff during our cruise and this is about the same length of time away, so the difficulty getting back to it is familiar, if not welcome.

 

Colorado, Latin, Translating De Bello Gallico, World History, Writing

Emerging

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Imbolc                                                                        Settling Moon II

The loft is slowly coming together. One section, the workout space, is close to its eventual configuration. It still needs the pull-up bar. After that it will be as I envisioned it. Doesn’t mean it won’t change after I use it for a while.

The books, as I’ve said before, are clustered and now await built-in bookshelves. As the bookshelves go up Ruth and I will organize them. All my art is, for now, still in boxes or rolled up in tubes. Until the wallspace is more defined, I’ll not be hanging or placing anything.

The IKEA standing desk still needs it work surface brought up from the garage. The twopieces are very heavy. Jon is going to build a round wooden table as a project space. He recommends Paxton Lumber as a source for the table top. This is a national chain owned by Bill Paxton’s family. (actor)

Storage space for office supplies is non-existent right now, so that’s a future project. Filing, which I thought I’d get started over the weekend, I’ll get to this week.

Aside from tweaks though, I’m ready to get back to a regular workout and translation schedule since the remaining work here will be some time in the realization.

 

Colorado, Our Land and Home, Third Phase

Sunday, Sunday

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Imbolc                                                 Settling Moon II

A workout. Bought two 4×8 rubber mats, 3/4 inch thick, for my weight lifting and other resistance work. They came Friday. Into the garage. I had to get them upstairs to the loft.

Problem. They weighed 92 pounds each. I used the dolly to get them to the stairs and then turned them end over end up the stairs. My shoulders still feel it at almost 9 this evening. This was about 9 in the morning.

Tomorrow they go down. The wi-fi works in the loft now thanks to a nifty Netgear extender I bought Thursday. The TV works. Jon and I will mount it on its stand, put it up on the shelving unit that will be its home, move the treadmill to line up with it and I’ll get back to my regular hi-intensity aerobics. Though, I admit, I still don’t know how all that will work with the altitude. But, I’ll find out soon enough.

Kate and I went to a Stickley Furniture store in Littleton, one that’s been in place since 1900. We found a table that will fit behind our couch and folds out as a table that seats six. It will be our game table and overflow guest seating for entertaining. This was a President’s Day sale, so we got 42% off.

When we left our house, our truck’s thermometer, the truckometer as we call it, read 55. When we reached the Stickley store, it read 75. At some point, I suppose, this temperature spread will become usual, but for now. Wow.

Kate works best under a deadline. I work best when I have no deadline. As the birthday/house celebration comes closer, 6 days away, Kate’s energy level goes up. Mine. Stays the same.

 

Colorado, Friends, Sport

Advancing to Mediocre from Next to Last

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Imbolc                                                         Settling Moon II

Left Shadow Mountain at 4:30 pm for Denver. It was 49 here. When I got to Denver a half hour later, the temperature was 73. There were guys in shorts and short-sleeved shirts playing golf at a course along Hwy. 285.

After an errand down Santa Fe Drive to the south, I headed back north to Colorado Blvd. S. Went past shawirma joints, sushi places, Mexican of course, into the 1500 block where a 24 hour IHOP sat in a busy parking lot. It was empty.

8 of us from the Sheepshead meetup gathered. I met a woman who grew up in Muncie, Ann. Another older, balder gray haired guy named Jim joined Jeff and me as as the mature male contingent.

My cards were mediocre, but I ended up in the middle of the pack for the evening. That’s up from next to the bottom where I stood last time. The trend is encouraging.

We played until 9:45 or so and the restaurant was empty most of the time, but as 9:00 came and went groups of teenagers came in, Latinos mostly, laughing and looking shyly at each other, the usual awkward courting rituals.

As I drove home, the almost full Settling Moon II moved across the southern sky toward the west, highlighting the mountains as I drove into them, going home.

Colorado, Great Work, Jefferson County, Minnesota

The Acid Test

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Imbolc                                                                                       Settling Moon II

The full settling moon has been beautiful these last couple of nights. We’re also in our shorts and t-shirts with non-alcoholic umbrella drinks. 66 degrees an hour ago, trending a bit down right now. Weird.

 

Boiler inspection yesterday. Not such great news, apparently. Low ph in the boiler water. Acidic water no good for its copper pipes and internal workings. Not clear how it got there, so I’m having the water tested for a corrosive ph. Should I have discovered this before? Maybe. But I didn’t. Caveat emptor.

GeoWater services will send a tech out to do a site visit and investigate the quality of our water. Could have been done before hand, but wasn’t. Sigh. You just can’t think of everything.

I focused on water availability in this arid region. Did the well have supply? Yes. Did the production of the well, measured by flow rate, meet the needs of the typical home? Yes. Is the water acidic? Didn’t occur to me.

The joys of home ownership. They never end, except after a sale. We’re ready right now to pass those joys over to some nice couple in Minnesota. Step up and lay your money on the table.

 

Colorado, Our Land and Home

Aurora

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Imbolc                                                                               Settling Moon II

Now my late nights have become just before dawns. It’s quiet here in the early morning. When I went out to pick up the Denver Post, the full Settling Moon II hung above Black Mountain to the west. When the full moon rises, the snow reflects its light, making deep shadows.

I’m feeling nearly ready to get back to work. With the TV now upstairs and Jon coming out on Sunday, I may have the workout area functional by Monday.

With the Andover house on the market, the last of the major tasks for this move is underway. I feel oddly detached from it, knowing that its sale is critical for our well-being here, yet almost not caring. I’m more interested in getting the treadmill reassembled and plugged in, finding my snowshoes, returning to Caesar’s Gaul and my sessions with Greg.

Caring for that land, dreaming about it, was a joy and a blessing, a time of quite literal giving back. We left that property better than we found it, especially from a fecundity point of view. In a strange sense that makes it easier to part with. I have no regrets about what we did there, only positive feelings.

Now that same energy has shifted, focused on a montane eco-system in an arid regime with a greatly shortened growing season. All I know now is that I want to xeriscape, create an optimally fire mitigated property and grow a few vegetables. Each of these tasks requires knowledge I don’t have, yet draw on skills I do have.

When the house sells, a balloon of care will lift in our thin air, rising quickly above Shadow Mountain, then Black Mountain, then Mt. Evans, a somewhat close 14’er. But it will see me already at work here, considering the land and loading Perseus, hunting for Latin words.

Carpe montem!