Drove down Shadow Mountain on Brook Forest Drive. We wondered what it will look like with the snow melted, gone. The mountain scenes change much more often than I would have thought with snow, ice, hoar frost, melting, fog, early morning mists and evening. We have three quarters of a year yet, the Great Wheel yet to turn through spring, summer and fall. There will be green, flowers, dry dusty days with fear of fire and times of aspened yellow.
On to the Wildflower Cafe where we learned that Christa, the tall blond who now recognizes us and brings us coffee right away (we’re their first Saturday morning customers), worked as a bartender at Lord Fletchers for a couple of years while her sister lived in Waconia. The sister moved to Colorado and so did Christa. Minnesota connections abound here: the park ranger for the Pike National Forest from Hastings, a neighbor here from the ‘burbs of Minneapolis. Others whose particulars I don’t recall.
Back up Brook Forest Drive in the oncoming morning, a fierce sun appearing every so often through a notch in a mountain or a small valley, then back into the shade, driving through the Arapaho National Forest.
Selling the house in Andover. We’ve put our best effort into this sale and so far? No offers. Lots of lookers, but no buyers. It’s been four months since we closed on Black Mountain Drive which means for those four months and now a fifth, March, we’ve been paying two mortgage payments. Warren and Sheryl did it for several years and we can sustain it, but we don’t want to.
The longer it lingers, since it has a certain amount of our assets tied up, the leaner and tighter our budget becomes. Not unexpected, but not pleasant either.
There was risk in buying here before we sold the Minnesota house, but it was one we took with our eyes open. I’m glad we made the choice. This house fits us so well. Kate did a great job in finding it. Moving first simplified, by a lot, the whole process of exiting 153rd Ave. NW. And, we got to start our new life here in Colorado.
An interstate move is expensive under any circumstances, especially when you have 20 years of belongings to move. Though we reduced by about a third, we still had a lot to move. The final tally, of course, is not in yet, but even when we add it all up, it will have been worth it.
Why? This was the time to move in terms of our health. We’re still healthy enough to establish a new life. And, moving to Colorado allowed us to accomplish two goals with one move. The first, being closer to the grandkids, was both about seeing them more often and their ages, Ruth, 8, and Gabe, 6. As with our health, this was the time to move to be part of their lives while they still tune into grandparents.
The second goal we accomplished was to move into a place of great natural beauty with space for our four dogs and our mutual creative work. Living in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains means we have a home where the eco-systems vary by altitude and the altitude varies a lot. It also means spectacular vistas, interesting weather and wildlife.
So, we chose and now we live with the choice. Happily.
First Latin session since November 14. Greg and I used Skype and, as a result, for the first time in over 4 plus years, actually saw each other. I’ve moved back into Ovid, Caesar just didn’t keep my interest.
Right now I’m in book VII, translating the story of Medea and Aeson. Aeson is the father of Jason, he of the Golden Fleece, and Medea’s husband. Jason asks Medea to make his father younger, “Subtract years from me and add them to the years of my father.”
The Metamorphoses is like a prism for Greek mythology. Greek myths and epic poetry shined out of the classical and heroic eras into the mind of Ovid. He collected their light, gave it his own cynical twist, then shined the light on to developing Western culture, especially during and after the Renaissance. To read the great poem in his own language and to grapple with making his Latin meaningful in contemporary English plants each one of these stories deeply into my own memory.
Where does it take me? I don’t really know, but I do know that the world of Augustan Rome and the world of Greek mythology has fascinated me since I was little and has not ceased to fascinate me even as I push well into my third phase.
This night, a heavy wet snow. Woke up to three inches of thick white covering the deck. As I do each time it snows, I clear the deck first thing, even before getting the dogs. This is important because the snow compacts in front of the door and the dogs track in the snow from the deck. The stone floor can become slippery beyond our long entrance rug. Clearing the deck fixes most of that.
There was, this time, less snow on the driveway than on the deck. It doesn’t matter out there much at all since today will be 47, Saturday 57 and Sunday 65. The snow will be gone, probably by later today, certainly by Saturday.
I went for my first mountain hike yesterday, following the Upper Maxwell Falls trail into the Arapaho National Forest. Even though intuition told me I would need my Kahtoola spikes, the day was sunny, almost 50 so I put on my Keens, grabbed my backpack with water, compass, map and journal and drove the mile or so to the trailhead.
Where I promptly fell, slipping onto my butt. Sigh. Pay attention to yourself, I said. To myself. Hiking poles, which I had also considered, but left hanging in the garage right next to the truck, would have helped, too.
This is a popular trail and the love it had seen over the last few weeks had created stretches of the trail that were solid ice almost the width of the trail. Fortunately there was crunchy snow just off the trail so that walking on it I could make it some ways back into the woods. About 3/8’s of a mile in, though, the trail turned steeply up and narrowed. This section was not ice, but solidly packed snow that had melted then refrozen. May as well have been ice. In the gear I had for the day that was not passable, so I turned back.
Maxwell Creek burbled under its lacy ice and snow covering. There was an off trail path across the creek and up to a mostly snowless outcropping of rock, a small cliff and several lodge lodgepole pines (above). I wandered over there and began my nature journal sitting back against the large pine.
This is, I think, still on Shadow Mountain though my USGS topographical maps have not yet come in the mail.
Also near the Upper Maxwell Falls trail
This was an exploratory hike, one to assess what I would need when I begin making this a regular habit and for that purpose it worked just fine. Lessons: snowshoes would have worked. To hike in these conditions spikes on the boots plus hiking poles make sense. I’ll need a good pair of winter hiking boots. Learn more about the compass and its use with maps. I need a better back pack and a small camera to take along would be good, too. The nature journal will be another pathway into becoming native to this place.
As I wrote the other day, the combination of spring weather, settling in to the house and acclimatization have made me eager to get out in the woods. And so I have started. This coming winter I’ll be out there with snowshoes and spikes, poles and pack. Now that spring and summer press against the remnants of winter it will be hiking boots, poles and pack. Couldn’t be happier. Like a long running vacation in the Rocky Mountains.
An early March Snow. Looking over our roof toward Black MountainA warning at the Colorado School of Mines Museum parking lotOff the Upper Maxwell Falls trail in the Arapaho National Forest a mile plus from our houseAlso near the Upper Maxwell Falls trail
OK. There are certain things, call them small trials, that come into everyone’s life. Today we’ll discuss getting hiking boots for the men’s size 7, wide foot. REI had “nothing in that size.” Just called Custom Foot in Englewood, an outfit that specializes in, well, custom fits and they said, “Well, we’d like to help you, but we can’t stock that size just waiting for you to call.” This was said in a sympathetic manner with a deprecating, sorry about that chuckle. End result. No boot.
So I’ve started looking at the world of custom made hiking boots. The advantage with these boots is they fit. And if there’s some problem, they’re fixed. Couple of disadvantages. Time to get them. Couple of months, maybe more. Price. They vary but they’re about twice to three times the regular boot. Of course, these will likely be my last hiking boots. Unless, of course, Vega eats them as she did my Timberland boots, but at these prices I’d be much more careful with them.
What’s happening is this. The cardboard has diminished. The moving in has slowed, acceptable for now, with another spurt to come once warmer weather sets in. The garage, for example. The acclimatization process seems to have peaked, not totally comfortable all the time, but close enough. Sunshine and warming temperatures have given me the itch to get out and start exploring the two National Forests that abut Conifer: Arapaho and Pike. But I need decent boots. Of course, I don’t need them to just get out and wander around a bit, but if I want to do any extended day hikes, I’ll want good quality boots.
Four Native Plant Master classes educate new learners in Colorado’s fauna: one for the high plains, one for the foothills and one for the montane eco-system where we live. The fourth, plant sketching, will support the nature journal I’m starting this week. The Friends of the Colorado Geology Museum offers lectures and field trips that focus on Colorado’s physical features. Geology Underfoot, an excellent geology primer on the Front Range, suggests 20 self-guided field trips to see instances of particular developments over geological time. Wild Food Girl presents opportunities to hunt food in the Rockies.
How to saturate myself with the Old West, the mining and ranching histories here, that’s a challenge that lies ahead though History Colorado provides opportunities.
It’s an exciting time, full of information. Lots to do.
As we drive back from our 25th anniversary dinner at the Buckhorn Exchange, the stars increase in number as the Front Range enfolds us, shields us from the Denver light pollution. “I still can’t believe I prefer living out here,” I said, “but 20 years changed me.” That was 20 years in Andover, Minnesota.
(Our table was just under this mountain lion.)
“We’re both introverts,” Kate said,”we prefer the quiet, the alone.”
Yes. “But,” she said, “we can always drive in. If we were in the city, we would have trouble being alone.” Yes.
So we live with the stars, Black Mountain and the lodgepole pine.
The Buckhorn Exchange, at 1000 Osage Street, holds Denver’s liquor license #1. It was founded in 1893 and now bills itself as a museum of the Old West. The number of mounted trophy heads are enough to keep one man working full time dusting and vacuuming. (I asked.) There are old leather chaps on the walls, an antique pill roller, countless photographs and magazine covers mounted on the walls. It’s on the National Registry of Historic Places.
(this was the view from our table.)
We were, originally, going to have our 25th anniversary meal at Mama’s Fish House on Maui, but we bought this house in Colorado instead. The Buckhorn Exchange is to Denver as Mama’s is to Maui.
I had a bone in bison rib eye, Kate had elk and bison. As a starter, I had Rocky Mountain Oysters. They taste like alligator. Which I could have had, Alligator Tail, center cut.
Yes. It happened. DST. Daylight Saving Time. Kate found a great quote on Facebook: Only the white man would think cutting a foot from one end of a quilt and sewing it on the other end would result in a longer quilt.
Just as I’ve adapted back to Standard time, and done it well, with the aid of the move, chronos slip streams away, shifts underneath me. Proves fungible. Isn’t that a scary thought? Fungible time. If you can’t trust time, what can you trust? Space, you might say, but then it was Einstein wasn’t it, who described its curvature in concert with time?
Why can’t we let Fleming’s idea stand as proposed? He says.
No matter. Life’s absurdities don’t need more data to underwrite their chaotic ways. Today this hour is 10:00 a.m. Tomorrow 11:00 a.m. Today a foot is twelve inches, tomorrow 13. Because for now it suits our purposes better.
I’m thinking, as a retired guy, with no work obligations to keep and no longer a slave to corporate television, that I may just skip DST. Let it wash over me like an upslope wind.
The world has receded. The old battles have become less clear. Keystone seems far away. So even the fracking arguments common here in western Colorado and in Weld County. The civil rights focus at Selma, Ferguson, even in Denver, distant. Not sure whether this is an inevitable part of transitioning to a new place, a loss of focus on what used to be, or an age related pulling back, letting the young warriors have their time. It’s as if a fog, not dense, but real has crept up Shadow Mountain, or, maybe it’s just the Shadow itself, the mountain’s long shadow, but the events occurring far below on the plains are less visible, perhaps even less real.
Minnesota now lies at an impossible remove, once again that cold place holder in the central northern U.S. The house in Andover is an abstraction, an asset, a factor on our balance sheet. Like owning a mutual fund.
Here’s what is visible: Kate. Ruth, Gabe, Jon, Jen, Barb. Vega, Rigel, Gertie, Kepler. The mountains and their geology, the plants native to Colorado. The West. A new novel, Ovid, Caesar, a thread now, a strong thread of wondering how all the information available could be organized. The house. Continued settling in. The grounds and a small potential garden, the bees next year. Near things, you could say, matters of the heart and matters of the immediate physical environment.
This feeling is new. But, permanent? Hard to know.
