Colorado, Health, Mountains

Custom Boots?

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Imbolc                                                     Black Mountain Moon

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.

So. Back to that small trial.

Colorado, GeekWorld, Mountains, Science, The West, US History

Becoming Native to This Place. More.

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Imbolc                                         Black Mountain Drive

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.

 

Colorado, Family, Holidays, The West

So We Live With the Stars

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Imbolc                                          Black Mountain Moon

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.

A memorable evening, a fitting 25th.

General

Standard Time Guy

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Imbolc                                           Black Mountain Moon

 

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.

Call me STG. Standard Time Guy.

 

Beyond the Boundaries, Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Mountains

A View From Shadow Mountain

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Imbolc                                        Black Mountain Moon

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.

Colorado, Original Relation

Them Bones

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Imbolc                                        Black Mountain Moon

These bones, these bones, these weary bones. Took Ruth (granddaughter Ruth) to the Colorado Museum of Geology today. We drove in to Denver and picked up after Sunday School, in the Jewish instance this is school on Sunday. She’s on the long road to the Bat Mitzvah, learning Hebrew, Torah, tradition. Over the last few weeks she’s been learning the 4 questions for the Pesach meal, the first of which is the famous, Why is this night different from all other nights? She recited it in Hebrew.

When Kate told Ruth she’d studied Hebrew long ago, Ruth replied, “Well, if you learn the alphabet and the vowel marks that’s all you really need.” And, of course, in a sense she’s right.

We ate lunch in downtown Golden at the Blue Canyon Grill, then went to the museum. We were late getting in because (only at an academic institution situation) a sign there said, “Between March 7th and March 15th we might be open. Call to confirm.” Several people gathered with us in the lobby and one efficient looking mom whipped out her cell phone and called. “Answering machine,” she said.

Just when we’d decided on the Science Museum a slightly padded guy in a black t-shirt, ear plugs and a stubbly beard wandered up. Yes, he said, I’m here to open up.

The museum has display case after display case of beautiful rocks and minerals from all over the world (and out of this world, too, since it has the largest moon rock brought back with one exception, plus several meteorites), but with an emphasis of course on Colorado minerals, notably gold and silver, but copper, molybdenum, pyrite, too.

There was, too, a significant collection of fossils and petrified plants. Dinosaur bones, too. When I asked the guy who opened the museum to explain petrification, he did so, and afterward added, “The same process works with organic matter like bones, too. In the instance of dinosaur bones found in Colorado a major element that precipitated out of the water solution and into the bone was uranium. Colorado’s dinosaur bones are hot. Really hot.”

The Colorado School of Mines is an interesting place, full of people who know a lot about rocks and geological history. Much more to learn from there.

To get back to these weary bones. Didn’t seem like much of a day activity-wise, but when we left the museum grandpop felt completely tuckered out.

Beyond the Boundaries, Myth and Story, Original Relation

From the Slumber of the Everyday

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Imbolc                                             Black Mountain Moon

From the dog to the human. Seeing the dogs yesterday, 100% clicked in to their genetic heritage and feeling great about it, made me wonder what circumstances create the same integration of body, mind and spirit in humans? Two ideas occur to me right away: sex and flow, yet those don’t seem quite right. Sex is instinctive and common among mammals, for the purpose of reproduction. Lions and tigers and bears and humans, dogs, too, all engage in sex, so it’s not distinctive, it’s instinctive. Flow is closer, but in its case it’s too distinctive, too idiosyncratic, too much a marker of an individual’s uniqueness and only rarely achieved.

Perhaps the trigger is hunting. After all, we share with lions, tigers, bears and dogs a predatory nature. We are not rabbits, squirrels, mice, voles. In this case I wouldn’t know since I’ve never hunted. But I can imagine. A true hunt, one where finding food is a necessity, would concentrate the mind, require attention to even the smallest physical movement, both on the part of hunter and hunted.

Or, perhaps, defending loved ones. This could explain the attraction of the warrior ethos. Though these are both traditionally male roles. What would be the female equivalent? Or, is there one trigger that unites men and women? Women hunt and fight, too.

Of course, there can be more than one trigger, I’m sure. Or, maybe we’ve evolved ourselves past a distinct trigger, become too socialized, too far distant from our veldt past. Still, watching Rigel yesterday afternoon come up to her purpose from the slumber of the everyday, I wonder.

Dogs, Mountains, Original Relation, Our Land and Home

Oh, Yeah. Fox!

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Imbolc                              Black Mountain Moon

We have fox here and some use Black Mountain Drive as a route from here to there. Late this afternoon Rigel was at the window, looking out toward the road when a fox ran by. Rigel, who is feral herself, gave a prey bark and the others responded. Soon the house filled with barking and yipping, running for the front door, the back door, anyway to get at the fox.

Rigel and Vega have coyote hound and wolf hound blood. This animal was in the prey category. Smack in it. And they felt the need. You could see it activating their attention, their ruffs, their dogness. This was the moment they were made for.

Much as I would have liked to let them run the fox down, or give it a try, the danger to them would have been too great. (cars, angry neighbors, getting lost) So they had to forgo the hunt.

Even a half an hour later though they were still smiling, prancing, looking 100% dog qua dog. Not pet. Not domesticated, just animals cued for what their life purpose is.

 

Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Great Work, Mountains, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The West, Third Phase, Writing

Learning Colorado

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Imbolc                                         Black Mountain Moon

Signed up for 4 Colorado Native Plant Master programs: one in the foothills, one in the montane eco-system (ours) and one in the high plains. 3 of these are 3 session 8:30-12:30 classes. The fourth is a two session, 9-3, course on plant sketching. Don’t really want to qualify for the Native Plant Master program since it has requirements for volunteering that I don’t want to fulfill, but I want the content and the chance to meet some people involved in botany here.

All part of becoming native to this place. Starting this week I plan to keep a nature journal, hand-written, a record of our yard, hikes, these courses, geology lectures and field trips, meteorology notes. I’m not much of an artist, but I think with some practice I can draw plants and animals, maybe sketch geological features, at least well enough to call them to mind when I review the entries.

We drove into Evergreen for our business meeting at the Wildflower Cafe. It was good to see those folks again. Afterward we drove around Evergreen a bit, going out to the I-70 entrances and seeing in the distance snow covered peaks. Our mountains around here have snow, but are not snow covered.

 

 

Faith and Spirituality, Family, Great Wheel, Holidays, Mountains

Happy Purim!

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Imbolc                                         Black Mountain Moon

A sunny, 55 degree Friday here on Shadow Mountain. It has knocked on that door behind which hides spring longing. One thing I look forward to is a mountain spring, but I know it will come when it comes. Still, these day make me imagine what our neighborhood, our drive, our mountain will look like without snow cover, with the aspens leafed out.

Today I went back into Ovid for the time in several months, delighted to see that my skill level has picked up considerably. I’m still far from facile, but I can see the plateau before it from where I stand now.

Then this afternoon I wrote another 1,500 words on Superior Wolf. This version, this is my fourth or fifth restart, going back to 2002, seems to have the push necessary to get to the end.

Kate’s gone into Denver to celebrate Purim* at Temple Micah. She made hamentashen, the triangular goodies associated with this holiday.

 

*The festival of Purim is celebrated every year on the 14th of the Hebrew month of Adar (late winter/early spring). It commemorates the salvation of the Jewish people in ancient Persia from Haman’s plot “to destroy, kill and annihilate all the Jews, young and old, infants and women, in a single day.”