Monthly Archives: May 2016

Bees, Great Wheel, Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

Summer Begins

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Beltane                                                                                Running Creek Moon

house400So. A rookie takes the Indy 500. The Warriors outlast the Thunder to make the NBA finals a second year in a row. School has begun to wind down. The rhythm of our national life slips into summer, a season forever shaped by the farm, the growing season, even though the number of family farms has continued to sink since the middle of the last century. The kids get out of school to work on the farm, at least they used to. Now most school kids have probably never been on a farm, perhaps find them as foreign as they find the North Woods or the Rocky Mountains.

Here, so far, we’ve had a wet May and forecasters think that may extend into mid-to-late summer. The deeper into the fire season the moisture remains the better off we are. With one exception. All that rain encourages the grasses, shrubs and smaller plants. They in turn can become the fuel that advances a fire.

Bee-guyThe fire mitigation process has the flavor of seasonal work in that it needs to finish before the mountains dry out. Hard physical labor in the early summer fits the mood. Here in the mountains the mornings remain cool, pleasant for working outside.

A couple of days ago I noticed an odd newcomer in the mountain meadow the cattle company uses to grass feed some of its stock. A beehive. A single beehive surrounded by metal posts with both barbed wire (I think. From the road it’s hard to tell.) and electric fencing. It intrigued me, looked like a simple set up. Sort of rejiggered the beekeeper in me. Hey, maybe I can do that. I’m going into the meadow someday this week and check out the setup.

 

Commentary on Religion, Faith and Spirituality, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Writing

Reimagining Gods and other matters

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Beltane                                                                          Running Creeks Moon

Two odd ideas passing through, perhaps they’ll stay:

  1. thinking about the notion of the after-life and what a miracle it would be if one exists. that led me to the thought that the real miracle is after-inanimancy. That is, life itself emerging from an inanimate stew. Which, for some reason, further lead, with the idea of emergence in play, to the meta-animate, that which exists beyond life, but in dialectical tension with it. This idea could explain gods, the particularity of them, perhaps even their existence. They would be limited, defined by the process that made them possible, life and further consciousness, yet analogous to life in the way that life is analogous to inanimancy.
  2. thinking more about the idea of becoming native to a place in light of a post I wrote about Minnesota. I had, I said, become native there. This got mixed in with the idea of homecoming and from homecoming, reunion. So the final step of becoming native to a place is a homecoming. And when we visit other places to which we have become native, it’s a reunion.

Just my process at work and I wanted to hold onto these. Put them up on the whiteboard and look at them later.

 

 

Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

Still Felling

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Beltane                                                                        Running Creeks Moon

strong lodgepole shedYesterday I felled trees and slept. Wearing myself out. I’ll have all the blue ribbon trees down by tomorrow and limbed completed by Wednesday I hope. Tyler, a Conifer High School junior looking for work, comes by on Wednesday to start moving slash to the front. While he’s doing that, I’ll finish my limbing and cutting off tree tops.

When that job is done, the next work is cutting the limbed tree trunks into either Seth and Hannah sized logs or into fireplace size logs. I’ll probably finish that by the weekend. Tyler will return and help me stack logs. More chipping of the slash is also part of this work.

This morning I felled a few trees and limbed four. This afternoon Jon and Jen and the grandkids are coming out for Memorial Day steak. If the weather co-operates, I may take Ruth on the cliff trail, a part of the Upper Maxwell trail we’ve not seen yet.

When this work finishes up, the next big task will be sorting out and rearranging the garage. Finally. Moving in takes time.

Part of the point of fireplace mitigation is to create defensible and strengthen the health of the remaining trees. There are several strong lodgepoles that will now have better sun, more nourishment, enough of them that I want to name them. Two after the grandkids, then I don’t know what. The sinuous lodgepole in front of the shed is one of the strong ones.

Dogs, Family, Memories, Weather +Climate

Shadow Mountain Happenings

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Beltane                                                                          Running Creeks Moon

Gertie after her wound repair
Gertie after her wound repair

A sleety snow this morning, 36 degrees. Will turn back into rain as the day heats up.

Gertie goes in today to get her e-collar off and her drain removed. She’s already back to her energetic self and is eager to run free. Hopefully, not into more slash. We moved all the slash that was close to the house yesterday and the day before, so hopefully she’ll remain unpunctured until we get done.

joe and seoah saying thanksHave spent no time catching up on the Indy 500 this year. I think it was Kurt Vonnegut, born in Indianapolis, who said Indiana living involved basketball season and waiting for the Indy 500. Not far off.

Heard from Joe. He and Seoah are legally married now, having filed their papers with the Korean court system. That means they can now go to the US embassy and begin the visa process. It’s different for a married couple and they had to wait until the legal completion of their marriage. They go June 8.

Jefferson County, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

New Tricks

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Beltane                                                                   Running Creek Moon

two topper limbed
Two topper limbed. Today I cut this one into fireplace size logs.

Kate got outside today and moved slash, stacked wood. After completing the cutting up of all the trees felled by Always Chipper, I moved back into tree felling. Since this was the first I’d done since last fall, I started further away from the house. Still know how to do it.

Always Chipper’s Kevin and Tom taught me a new trick. When they felled the trees that were too tricky for me, they let them fall on top of each other like pick-up sticks. At first, I thought, what? That seems lazy. But, when I started limbing and cutting them up, I discovered that the jumble of logs lifted most of them off the ground. Easier to limb and easier to cut up. No Peavey necessary.

Guess what I did? Yep, dropped three trees one top of the other. Much simpler and faster. It’s always good to learn from people who know more than you do.

Rained later in the morning so the work will have to wait until tomorrow, but I’m making progress.

Jefferson County, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West

Fire

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Beltane                                                                                Running Creeks Moon

two topper cutBoth stamina and strength improving. Worked most of the morning yesterday, then an hour plus in the afternoon. This is work that needs to get done and has a meteorological timetable. When the forest dries out, it might be too late. The risk of fire here is real. According to the Elk Creek Fire Department Deputy Chief who came out last fall, there’s not been a big burn in this area for a hundred years.  That’s a lot of fuel.

Confession. I always wondered how people could choose to live on a floodplain, in an earthquake prone area, on or near a volcano. I was scornful of their choices. What were they thinking? As I cut down trees on our property so a probable forest fire might not burn down our home, I know. They wanted to live there. For some reason. Whether motivated by poverty, beauty, family or something else.

In our case we wanted to live in the mountains and enjoy the cooling effect produced by 8,800 feet in altitude. Find such a place close enough to the Denver metro-to make seeing the grandkids feasible-meant buying in the front range. Most of the front range near Denver is in the red zone for fire risk. As the climate changes, forest fire danger increases. “…fires up to this point have been five times worse than last year, and last year’s season as a whole set a fire record.” Agriculture department 2016 fire season forecast.

It has taken me years, decades really, to learn that the best antidote to anxiety is action. house400And, of course, a good dose of Zoloft. So we’re following the firewise policies of defensible space, fuel free zones. This means we will have done what we can, what makes sense. After that, we drive away with the dogs, taking our emergency kit with us, find a hotel or motel and wait.

If a fire comes and destroys the house and garage, we’ll rebuild. The fire risk will be much lower, at least for a while. In the interim we keep the fire mitigation up to date. That same Deputy Chief told me our house was well-positioned for survival. We live off the main road which makes access by the fire department easy. We have a flat, short driveway with the same virtue. Our roof is class a. Soon we will have completed a fire mitigation plan. After that? Taking our chances.

Anoka County, Bees, Faith and Spirituality, Family, Health, Jefferson County, Latin, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate, Writing

Write It Out

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Beltane                                                                             Running Creek Moon

freshman year
Freshman Year, Alexandria H.S.

Ever since the great iconoclasm, my voice has been muted. Not sure why.  Topics don’t seem to occur to me. I’ve never had a theme, a particular ax, though felling and limbing the occasional political issue shows up once in awhile. Philosophical, quasi-theological pondering. That, too. Lots of did this, did that. The online continuation of a journal keeping way I’ve had for decades. Art. Yes, but not as much as I want.

Maybe there was a more intimate link between the images and the vitality of this blog than I realized. Apres le mitigation the whole copyright issue, the fate of images in an age of digital reproduction, will occupy some of my time.

Work on both Superior Wolf and Jennie’s Dead have been ongoing, though not yet much writing. Reimagining Faith occupies a lot of my free thinking time, wondering about mountains, about urbanization, about clouds that curve and mound above Mt. Evan’s, our weather maker. No Latin yet. Not until I can have regular time up here in the loft. Not yet.

Could be that underneath all this lies a reshuffling of priorities or a confirmation of old ones. It’s not yet a year since my prostate surgery and a friend of mine said it took her a year to feel right again. This year has felt in some ways like my first year here, a year when I can take in the mountain spring, the running creeks, the willows and their blaze of yellow green that lights up the creek beds, the mule deer and elk following the greening of the mountain meadows.

My 40 year fondness for Minnesota has also begun to reemerge, not in a nostalgic, wish I was still there way, but as a place I know well, a place to which I did become native, a place which shaped me with its lakes, the Mississippi, Lake Superior, wolves and moose and ravens and loons. Where Kate and I became as close as we could with the land we held temporarily as our own. Friends. Art. Theatre. Music. Family. Perhaps a bit like the old country, an emigre’s memories which help shape life in the new land. An anchor, a source of known stability amidst a whirl of difference. The West. Mountains. Family life.

So. There was something in there anyhow. Now, back to fire mitigation.

Dogs, Health, Our Land and Home

Wounded

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Beltane                                                                      Running Creek Moon

Gertie
Gertie

Dogs. Gertie chased a critter yesterday afternoon. Fast. Paying apparently quite close attention to the critter, but not to the downed tree in the way. She ripped open her right side, a good tear. She’s at the vets right now getting sewn up. Again. Wounds are her trademark. Since we’ve had her, she’s been into the vet many times for torn flesh. Part of it is her go for it mentality, part of it’s her bite first, bark later attitude. We’re good customers at Sano.

Spent some time this morning cutting up downed trunks into logs for Seth. Lugging the peavey and the chain saw around wears me out. I’m not as strong as I was last fall. Restarted my resistance work with modified P90X workouts on Monday. Between the logging and the P90X, my strength will improve. Better than what I was doing last summer this time, fussing about prostate cancer.

 

GeekWorld, Our Land and Home

Car Talk

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Beltane                                                                         Running Creeks Moon

driveway the day we got home
driveway the day we got home from Korea

Told Holly, our across the street neighbor, the snow tires were coming off today. “Oh, It’s an El Nino year,” she said, “we got two feet of snow on Memorial Day once.” Even so. Off they come. This is the second season on the Blizzaks so they’ll be evaluated, see if we can get a third out of them. Two aging drivers can use the extra traction in the winter. Better to get new ones if there’s any iffyness about them.

Brakes, too, probably. Not primarily because of the mountain driving, we use all the gears for braking, but 70,000 + miles. We bought this Rav4 in July of 2011 when our Tundra had complete organ failure, spewed vital fluids all over 153rd Ave NW and never moved again. The Rav4 was, in retrospect, a mistake. It’s not a bad vehicle, but it’s not a good one either. It was affordable, does what we need, but I’ve never developed any affection for it.

When I get back, more fire mitigation. Mostly cutting up trunks into pieces Seth can manage. He’ll get rid of most of them. That will leave the tops and branches to move to the front. And, of course, the other trees to cut down. When I finished yesterday morning, I realized Memorial Day was too ambitious a deadline. I’ll work at it until I get it done.