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

May 25, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

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

May 24, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creek Moon

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

May 24, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

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.

Great Work, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, The West

Weeding

May 23, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

Topped all the felled trees, finished the limbing on them, too. Began the hauling to the front. Wore myself out. Tomorrow I’ll start cutting them up.

Rain today. Cloudy. Our solar production is far behind what was predicted, due in large part to the heavy snowfall, but also to cloud cover. Payout may take more time than we have here, but the intimate connection between the sun and our electrical use is worth it anyhow; as is severing, to the maximum extent we can, the link between our electrical use and coal generated power.

Chain saws whir all over the neighborhood here on Shadow Mountain. Fire mitigation is the mountain spring equivalent of planting a garden. Weeding, really, on a large scale. A weed is a plant out of place. Of course, you could argue that those of us who live up here are the weeds. Perhaps the trees should be plucking us out. Which is, of course, exactly what a wildfire does. Complex, man.

Anoka County, Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Jefferson County, Memories, Minnesota, Mountains, Original Relation, Our Land and Home, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Shadow Mountain, The West, Weather +Climate

Becoming Native

May 23, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

“…I am at home in the West. The hills of the coastal ranges look “right” to me, the particular flat expanse of the Central Valley comforts my eye. The place names have the ring of real places to me. I can pronounce the names of the rivers, and recognize the common trees and snakes. I am easy here in a way that I am not easy in other places.” Joan Didion, California Notes, NYRB, 5/26/2016

Becoming native to a place implies the opposite of what Joan Didion recalls in this fine article taken from notes she made in 1976 while attending the Patty Hearst trial for Rolling Stone. The becoming process implies not being easy where you are, not knowing the place names as real, not knowing the common trees and snakes.

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is not a real place to me. Neither is Four Corners nor Durango nor the summit of Mt. Evans, only 14 miles away. The owls that hoot at night, the small mammals that live here on Shadow Mountain. No. The oak savannah and the Great Anoka Sand Plain. Familiar. Easy. The Big Woods. Yes. Lake Superior. Yes. The sycamores of the Wabash. Yes. Fields defined by mile square gravel roads. Pork tenderloin sandwiches. Long, flat stretches of land. Lots of small towns and the memories of speed traps. Yes.

A local photographed yesterday near here. from pinecam.com by serendipity888

With the fire mitigation this property here on Shadow Mountain is becoming known. It has three, maybe four very fine lodgepole pines, tall and thick. A slight downward slope toward the north. Snow, lots of snow.* Rocky ground, ground cover and scrubby grass.

Denver. Slowly coming into focus. The front range, at least its portion pierced by Highway 285, too. The west is still blurry, its aridity, mountains, deep scars in the earth, sparse population. The midwest clear, will always be clear.

Becoming native to a place is the ur spiritual work of a reimagined faith. First, we must be here. Where we are.

*”Snowfall for the season on Conifer Mountain now stands at 224 inches (132% of average).” weathergeek, pinecam.com

General

May 22, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

As the precipitation has backed off over the last week, the creeks are less vigorous, though still full. Properties with a driveway running over a creek have to build strong bridges and use solid culverts, a considerable expense I imagine. And sometimes, like last year, the creek washes them out.

The Gransfors limbing ax got a workout this morning, finishing the limbing in the back. Tomorrow the chainsaw. First task, cut the felled trunks into either fireplace size logs or larger logs that Seth can come pick up. Second, move the limbs and tree tops to the front so they can be chipped or hauled away. Third, cut down the remaining trees marked by Splintered Forest last fall, limb them and cut them up, moving the limbs and tree tops to the front. Last, cut down a few more trees I’ve identified, dead ones or small ones blocking the growth of larger trees. Limb, cut up, move.

The blue ribbons are a little faint, but they’re about a fifth of the way up the trunk. This is how Splintered Forest marked the trees to cut. A two topper is a lodgepole with a branched trunk at the top. These are prone to splitting under stress and are almost always marked to come down. This one was near the house so I had Always Chipper cut it down. The limbing goes up to the narrower tip of the branch which I’ll cut off with a chainsaw. It will be chipped or hauled away. The rest will get cut up.

The felling ax may come out for some of the smaller trees just because it’s fun to act fully like a lumber jack. Gotta keep the Minnesota forest cred somehow.

General

Mountain Morning

May 22, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

The beauty of a mountain morning. The rising sun catches the peaks of Conifer and Black Mountains, the lodgepole and aspen still punctuated by a web of snowy lanes.

Someone has cut five long ski runs down the face of Black Mountain. The land is private, employees of the Arapaho National Forest confirmed this in an e-mail. These ski runs, all beginning at around 10,000 feet, still have snow cover.

Using Jefferson County property maps the name of the owner of much of the land seems to be Jeffery Lysol, a vice-president for Armstrong Oil and Gas, based in Littleton. He is a skier, biker and runner according to his facebook page. Private ski-runs, Jon says, are not unusual in Colorado.

Business meeting this morning, then back to limbing. This will be a chainsaw week since I want to finish our fire mitigation before Memorial Day.

Art and Culture, Cooking, Family

Burgers and art

May 21, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

Into Denver last night for a burger with Jon at Park Burger on Holly. Park Burger is fancy, in a high modernist way. Lots of angles, metal, television screens. It sits in the middle of an upscale Jewish community near Cherry Creek, one of the tonier neighborhoods in the Denver metro.

Its menu reflects its setting. Not just cheeseburgers and cheeseburgers with bacon. You can get a third pound lamb burger, an ahi tuna burger, and, among many others, a Scarpone burger. This has pancetta, giardiniera, olives and a wonderful flavored mayonnaise. A stick to your veins sort of meal.

Even with its polyurethane covered pine table tops, hip waiters and list of interesting milkshakes, Park Burger does not match Matt’s on Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis. The Juicy Lucy, often imitated but never well, may be Matt’s sole claim to burger fame, but it’s a solid one. Matt’s also has the distinctive patina only neighborhood bars and cafes get, the Velveteen Rabbit affect. It’s a real place, a place to have a beer and a burger with friends. Park Burger is too shiny and bright and new. It’s a place just recently brought home from the toy store, button eyes, cloth covering and all limbs still intact. It’s not real. Not yet.

Jon showed me photographs of his students’ art work. Some of it is sophisticated. An example was a print of two spoons, what Jon calls object printing. He’s developing this technique right now in his art and has some of his students doing it, too. He uses found objects, like crushed soda cans, parts fallen off cars, a guitar, a crushed metal folding chair. These get cleaned off, then covered with ink and run through his press. The result is a monoprint with unusual depth, contours, shapes.

His student took two spoons, covered one lightly with brown ink and another with a light blue. As he printed them, the light brown ink created a ghostly impression of its spoon, while the other slipped a bit in the press and created a tail, a swoosh of light blue ink behind the even fainter impression of the spoon. The result is dynamic. Maybe beautiful. A fifth grader if I recall right.

He loves his job, loves the kids and art.

Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain

Out on the Limbs

May 20, 2016 Charles 2 Comments

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

Got out this morning early to begin limbing. Still cool. Finished the front and went on to the back. Using my Gransfors’ limbing ax. Conifer Mountain and Black Mountain were in the distance, a breeze blew up Black Mountain Drive and through the Lodgepole pines. On it the scent of cut pine floated up as first dead limbs then limbs with green needles fell to the side. The thunk of an ax cutting wood, the vibration of the oak handle, the release as the ax head sails on beyond the cut. Primal. Direct. No internal combustion engines. Just wood and steel and muscle.

Dogs, Health, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Shadow Mountain, Weather +Climate

Go-go girls

May 20, 2016 Charles Leave a comment

Beltane Running Creeks Moon

Rigel and Gertie are the go-go girls. Whenever we leave the house, together or singly, they get big grins, bump us, start moving toward the back door, then back to us, repeat. Into the truck they go, bounding up and into the back. Only to lie down and often go to sleep. They don’t seem to care how long the trip. On the way home Rigel always gets up, starts looking around. They’re having fun, so we enjoy taking them with us.

Dr. Repine sweeps into the room with her white-gold hair. Her examinations are thorough, practiced. She sweeps the various magnifiers over my eyes, the ones that allow her to see the inner parts of my eye directly, dons a headlamp that would not look like out of place on a miner and picks up a thick magnifier. Look up. Look down. Look to the right. To the left. Good. Everything’s looking fine.

Eyeball pressures are 14. Which is in the normal range. Glaucoma held at bay by Latanoprost. Cataracts, however, are advancing, changing my reading prescriptions. She says if they get much worse we’ll just take them out. Oh. Just? The good news is that cataract surgery often helps glaucoma by lowering the pressure in the eye. Something to look forward to?

Kate went with me. We went over to Whistling Duck, a furniture maker, to discuss beetle kill pine dining room tables. Kate had her measurements. She talked tables while I wandered around looking at the displays. We’re still in the early stages, getting quotes.

And, the sun. The sun. Blue skies. Winter to summer. Down the hill, that is. It was 78 in Littleton yesterday, but as we drove back up into the mountains the temperatures dropped, 54 when we got home. Ah.