Beltane New (Running Creeks) Moon
Shadow Brook, Forest Brook, Maxwell Creek, Deer Creek, the mountains streams I see regularly, are full. The snow melt obeys the law of gravity, following the twists in spacetime toward lower points. They boil at rock beds and turns, often muddy water capped with white foam.
With all the recent snow fields have begun to green and our aspens have leaf buds. The lodgepoles look healthy. That 10 inch snow last weekend has already melted and the snow drifts even in our north facing back yard have begun to diminish. Time to get back to I’m a lumberjack, yes I am.
Wildlife is more in evidence, too. On the day of Vega’s death Kate saw a red fox on the roadside, as if Vega’s spirit were saying the good-bye we didn’t get in person. We’ve several small herds of mule deer and Kate saw four elk does yesterday. Pinecam.com, source for all things local, has had mountain lion photos and reports of hungry bears causing mischief. The Denver Post reported a bear rummaging through a man’s refrigerator in his second floor apartment.
The bicyclists also return with the clearing roads, joggers, too. Crankshafts of motorcyclists also begin to appear. And that seasonal bird, the tourist, begins to clog highway 285, racing around curves and down the 7% inclines. There are grumbles on Pinecam.com. Here in Conifer 285 is still four lane, but south (really west) of us about seven or eight miles it goes down to two lanes. That’s the direction the tourists head and it makes for dangerous driving in the summer months.
So a seasonal change is upon us, though a very different one from the flowering, leafing, sprouting spring of Andover.
