Summer Park County Fair Moon
A dog does not know (s)he is a dog.
(S)He only knows (s)he is.
If only man could be so fortunate.
~ Wu Hsin ~
Looking Back
Summer Park County Fair Moon
Two days until the anniversary of my prostate cancer surgery. Last year the whole summer was in cancer season and the 8th of July was the denouement, matters then slowly relaxing until the September PSA (prostate specific antigen) test which showed no identifiable antigens in my blood stream. At that point I declared cancer season finished.
Which does not mean the matter has been settled. I’m still getting quarterly PSA’s and will for another year, I believe, then six months until five years of negative findings. Then back to annual.
These days, almost a year beyond the most critical moments of cancer season, I rarely think about prostate cancer. The whole process was then and is now, surreal. No symptoms. Found on a prostate exam. Biopsy confirmed. Cancer. Yikes. Really? How can I have a life threatening condition that has no effect on me? Then, with the surgery, the cancer was gone. The threat that never presented itself to me removed by a robot. The most damaging and problematic aspects of the whole matter were sequelae from the surgery: the catheter, changed erections, incontinence. The latter is now a nuisance and usually not that. Point is that the disease itself caused me no trouble, but the treatment did. Odd.
I do not feel like a cancer survivor, though I am. Instead, I feel like the same guy as usual, sans prostate. I consider myself and feel myself to be in excellent health. Yes, aging has its insults, no doubt about that, but they come and recede. Of course, there will be a time when one doesn’t fade away. But that is not yet. At least not for me.
Summer Park County Fair Moon
A Buddhist monk approaches a burger food-truck and says “make me one with everything.”
The Buddhist monk pays with a $20 bill, which the vendor takes, puts in his cash box, and closes the lid.
“Where’s my change?” the monk asks.
The vendor replies, “change comes from within.”
Slowly and Over Time
Summer New (Park County Fair) Moon
Kate and I went to a fourth of July party at a friend of hers. The view from their deck (above) includes Pikes Peak in the very far distance. The general rule of urbanists is that the poor live in the place of least convenience. Here in the mountains that rule reverses and the wealthiest live on the peaks, or near them. Getting to their homes entails driving up and up and up, often the latter part of the way on gravel roads, then having a long driveway that also goes up and up and up.
This house has 6,000 square feet, cathedral ceilings, a wrap around deck, tables custom made from beetle kill pine. Its driveway is a one-car wide ribbon of asphalt that winds up from Pine Country Lane to a turn-around with a three-car garage and a vaulted doorway with a cast iron handle. The three floors all face this view. The main floor is at this level, bedrooms above and a floor with a music room on the level below, a walkout onto the grounds seen here.
Steve, husband to Kate’s friend Jamie, calls this, “Our little slice of heaven. Especially for a boy from the Bronx.” He amplified that last by talking about walking through the tunnel into Yankee Stadium and seeing green on the playing field. “Where I lived, it was all concrete. The green was remarkable. And now this.”
Parties are not my natural habitat. This one was no exception. I met a couple of people, Steve (not Jamie’s husband and one of three Steves at this party, two of them, including Jamie’s husband, named Steve Bernstein), an actuary, and Lou, a software engineer, in addition to Jamie and Steve. That’s an effective outing for me. Many of the people at the party were members of Congregation Beth Evergreen, so we’ll see them again and again. That’s the way I make friends, slowly and over time.
This loft is my natural habitat, books and maps, a computer, a place and time to write and read, to work on my Latin. This loft and these mountains. Becoming native to this place is, it occurs to me, identical in process to the way I make friends, slowly and over time: hiking the trails, driving the roads, being present as the seasons change, seeing the wildlife. I’m in no hurry for either one.
A Holiday Sunday
Summer Moon of the Summer Solstice
Caught the dawn on Black Mountain while getting the Sunday paper. A red cast to the usually green mountainscape. Multiple shades of green brighten yards, trees, creek sides, valleys and mountain slopes.
It’s cool here, 48 degrees. The third day of cooler, wet weather. National Forest Service fire signs post the key information about all this, Fire Hazard: low.
Kate has declared the pine pollen season over, saying there was no yellow rime on the driveway after this latest rain. May it be so. This fine lodgepole reproductive matter puts a light yellow cast on everything it touches. And, in a time when the windows are open, it touches almost everything.
Pinecam.com has been abuzz with holiday traffic postings. The interesting word, citiot, gets flung around. It’s true that the city folks, who make up the majority of tourists on Hwy. 285, don’t understand mountain driving, going alternately too fast, then too slow. Their frustration once 285 goes two lane (just beyond Conifer) finds many passing on yellow lines, following too close or exhibiting the finer elements of road rage.
Bailey and Conifer residents recount the amount of time it took them to get home on Friday, July 1st. One person told of leaving Denver at 4 pm and getting home around 7:15 pm, a journey of less than an hour without holiday travelers. Part of the congestion follows wrecks: too fast, too slow, passing in the wrong place, bumper riding and over use of the middle digit.
Otherwise up here on Shadow Mountain it’s a quiet holiday Sunday with the 4th tomorrow.
Garage Logic
Summer Moon of the Summer Solstice
That garage looks better now. Over to Mountain Waste System’s transfer station outside Pine Junction. Backed up to a big trench, a mega trash compactor. Boards, pieces of old kitchen counter, some plastic bins, a too damaged drafting table, and a printer stand with a slot for the paper feed from a dot matrix printer went in. Would have been a perfect place to dispose of a body. Paid the guy $10 and left.
Shelving is up in the garage and has my journals and other too much stuff stuff from the loft. Kate put up a tire rack which now holds the four Blizzaks, ready for the next winter. Jon and Max (his buddy from Minneapolis) have started work on benches for our tools and the top for my multi-purpose cart. The whole space has become more organized though there’s still a good bit to go.
Meanwhile rain has come down most of the day. Eduardo rented a machine to augur in foundation supports for the new carport he’s building. A wet day for that sorta work.
Rain
Summer Moon of the Summer Solstice
Flash flood warning last night. Heavy rains. Seemed silly the first time, flash flood watch for us, living on a mountain. But of course to get anywhere we have to drive down the mountain. All those creeks: Shadow, Brook Forest, Maxwell, Cub, Deer, Bear. We follow the water down the mountain and there are points where it can escape its banks. Back in 2012 there was significant flooding in Boulder and Manitou Springs and Golden.
Rain dots the screens as I look up toward Black Mountain. It’s shrouded in gray light, the lodgepoles massed and black. The peak of Black Mountain extends 1,200 feet above our altitude here at home, so it dominates the view to the west. Beyond it about 10 miles is Mt. Evans, our weathermaker. Still not sure the exact meteorology of its effects, but they are striking. We get much more precipitation than other areas, many of them physically close to us, but in different relationship to our local 14’er.
According to Weathergeek, who posts on pinecam.com, June saw 3.57 inches of rain making it the rainiest June ever up here. An atypically wet year so far, thanks to El Nino and now the monsoon rains. The bad news about all this rain is, of course, that it makes the grass grow, the shrubs grow, small trees, too. This is a problem as things dry out in mid-July and August. More fuel for the possible wildfires, making them likely to spread, to burn faster and hotter.
Like Northern Minnesota
Summer Moon of the Summer Solstice
A rainy week here on Shadow Mountain. The El Nino has given us an early summer reprieve from wildfires. Last night Jon said it felt like northern Minnesota. It did. The rain and the cool down at night brought back Burntside Lake, Magnetic Lake, Lutsen. No need for a.c. so far and we’re at July 1st already. Not a good environment for growing tomatoes though.
Nate Silver has given Hillary Clinton an 80% shot at winning the presidency. Not a lock, but pretty good odds. Even though Hillary’s politics are not mine, she’s a helluva lot closer than the Hairdo. And, in spite of her centrist politics, the thought of our sitting President, an African-American, campaigning in tandem with a female candidate for the office, excites me. Our little country might be growing up.
Colorado Republicans nominated a tea-bagger conservative to run against Democratic senator Mike Bennet. This should make it very difficult for the Republicans even though Cory Gardner (R) did oust Mark Udall (D) in the 2014 senate race. There are many lefties, Sanders won the Colorado Democratic primary, but there are also libertarians and far right wingers in large numbers. The contours of the state’s politics have not opened up for me yet. I hope by the end of this election cycle to have a much clearer understanding of Colorado’s political dynamics.
And, hey Minnesotans! How about that Iron Range guy that chopped his friend’s head off with a machete? Whoa.
La Violencia
Summer Moon of the Summer Solstice
Back in 1988 a friend offered me a chance to go to Bogota, Colombia. My first trip out of North America. Reading travel guides I soon learned that Colombia had a long period called La Violencia. It began during a political transition in 1946. Some say it ended in 1958, but others observe that it continues, with less intensity, to the current day. So much so that the Fodor’s said no to travel. Even in 1988. The State Department also warned against travel.
I’ve been thinking about La Violencia lately, wondering if the term might apply here in the U.S.A. The violence during Colombia’s most intense period, 1946-1958, killed 200,000 plus. Since the 1990’s Americans have killed each other at the rate of about 11,500 a year. Slightly less than twice that number die each year from suicide by gun. (CDC data) Rounding down to a very conservative 30,000 gun related deaths a year, that would mean 450,000 thousand Americans have died by the gun since the new millennium. This is a rate that is 25 times that of any developed country in the entire world.
So. I’m thinking, yes. La Violencia, USA version. Brought to you by the NRA and a perverted interpretation of the second amendment.
Maintenance
Summer Moon of the Summer Solstice
Out on the ladder this morning using the pressure washer on the solar panels. After checking our panel production by time, I noted that yesterday some of the panels operated at 110% of their capacity. Guess the removal of the pine pollen has had an effect even though the panels still look occluded.
The sun up here at 8,800 feet is fierce and requires sun protection winter and summer. The heat when standing in it can quickly become too much. Of course the solar panels are on the south side of the house, so when working on them the sun is an issue. I finished before the peak of the UV index which begins at 10 am and ends around 4 pm.
We’re gradually changing the house and grounds to suit our preferences. We have plans for some plantings in the far back, well outside the defensible zones 1 and 2. Probably lilacs and shrub roses on the edge of our leach field. On the leach field itself we’ll plant bulbs and some flowers suited for an arid climate and the kind of sun we get. That’s this fall.
The now thinned lodgepoles have also changed the look. To my eye they look healthier, more space for individual trees and more sun, too. I like the less crowded, congested feel. Kevin of Timberline Painting will make our garage, shed and interior look better. Bear Creek Designs are coming by today for an estimate on redoing our bathrooms. I had guessed two years for settling in and I think that’s going to be pretty accurate.