Bittersweet Departure

Last morning before departing

It was a summer we will always remember, most of it fondly, the summer of building the second cabin.  The first cabin gone eight years, and enough time and consideration and healing to allow a commitment of time and energy and money to reestablish a dwelling on the land that holds such a link to the past.

Half shingled!

All told, I spent two months there; my husband a little less.  There were times we wanted to do more and times we wanted to do less, but it was clearly time well spent.  When we first arrived in May it was little more than a hole in the ground.  Now the cabin itself is up, the exterior stained and painted, the decks framed and the roof almost completed.  Before we departeded we were able to see what the cabin will look like from the outside, and were able to imagine with some clarity what it will look like inside when finished off.  We were on hand for decisions like the exact placement of windows and doors, cabinets, countertops, flooring, and paint colors.  Our contractor, Brian Shelton, has a terrific esthetic (as well as being a master builder) and helped guide us to some excellent choices.  I feel like I've done what I set out to do and am confident that our mark will be evident in the way the cabin looks and feels.

View from the road below

It was tough to leave, bittersweet at best.  I've been living this project for over a year and to leave it midstream in its realization took more will than I'd anticipated.  I knew I was leaving it in expert hands, but it was a little like a surrogate pregnancy -- I wanted to be around for any little thing that came up, any bit of help I could give.  But Tucson beckoned, with my husband waiting and Desert Museum docent training starting, I packed up and headed south, with my pooch companion in the backseat and a few lingering last looks at the cabin, both sad and excited that the next time I saw it, it would be finished, or nearly so.

It's not just the cabin; it's the place.  Driving out the sixteen miles, the forest is still close by with the towering ponderosa's, dense firs, and the quaking aspens' shimmering leaves.  Even in mid-August there are already signs that the summer has passed its zenith; wildflowers are on the wane and the foliage of a few plants are already turning red or yellow.  While there were lots of plump raspberries left for me to graze on as I wandered the property that last morning, trying to say goodbye, there were no more flowers and no more fruit to come.

Past peak

Driving down through the Ute Pass in the shadow of Pike's Peak, you leave the forest quickly.  The pines fall away, replaced by a cleared urban foothills after hitting I-25 and heading south.  There's a good hour of high flat meadows, green from the monsoons, with fat happy cattle and the occasional pronghorn antelope interloper.  Climbing over the Raton Pass, the view from the crest is of mesas and plateaus and a near treeless landscape.  Pinon pines are the best you do, and they're fine looking small trees or big shrubs, take your pick.  After overnighting in Albuquerque, the next day's drive is mostly desert shades of brown and ivory and soft reds except for river bottoms and irrigated farm land.  The common thread along the highway was the millions of sunflowers nodding from the bushes lining the roads.

I'd been thinking of getting off I-25 and the shortcut through Hatch, New Mexico, since heading south.  It was chili harvest season, and roasted fresh chilies occupied my thoughts until I swore I could smell them from hundreds of miles away.  I stopped at the first place I could that was advertising roasted chilies, a frame with a blue tarp over it surrounded by cardboard boxes.  I ordered up 10 pounds of hot Hatch chilies and watched as they were tumbled in a perforated metal cylinder and blasted with a blow torch.  The skin seared and blackened in just a couple of minutes and the hot chilies where put in a large plastic bag, tied with an overhand knot, and placed in a burlap bag.  By the time I got home four hours later I'd be able to slip the skins off, squeeze out most of the seeds, and enjoy them with some sharp cheddar while dreaming of all the green chili chicken stew and other spicy Mexican dishes I'd make with them.  It didn't take five minutes for me to realize the error of my ways.  Plastic bag or not, the car, windows up and A/C on, had filled with the throat constricting, eye burning vapors of the hot chilies.  Windows down didn't help much.  Finally, after realizing that three more hours of this was way too much of a good thing, I stopped at a Dollar Store in the almost middle of nowhere and bought a small pack of garbage bags.  Three bags later I figured we were good to go.  The chilies are incredible and the experience was certainly worth it, but the car still smells faintly of roasted Hatch chilies.  I'll be better prepared next year.  Indulging in the regional cuisine is part of a helpful transition from the cool mountains back to the desert heat, and I was ready to spice things up.

The Adventure Continues

Sunday, August 15th

Today was my last “off” day before heading home.  Tomorrow I’ll dash to the nearby -- well, a little over an hour’s drive -- mountain town of Woodland Park.  I’ll throw in a load of clothes at the laundromat, pick up my husband’s chainsaw that’s been in for a tune-up, return some paint supplies we didn’t use since we didn’t do the staining ourselves, and visit the library to check emails, post to this blog, and find a couple of DVD’s to borrow for bear visitor distraction in the dark hours.  I’ll also stop by the Forest Service and ask advice about my bear issue.  Someone told me they’ll give you a couple of M-80 fireworks to discourage, but not hurt, a bear that has become a regular visitor.  But doesn’t that mean opening the door?  

During the rest of my remaining time here, just three days, I’ll hold my breath while Contractor Brian shingles our steep 45 degree roof, inventory and organize the lights, door knobs, faucets, and other items I’ve bought for the cabin that will be installed in my absence, get the trailer ready to leave, and hopefully see some neighboring friends that are due here any day now.

I spent much of today on the covered part of the deck my contractor rushed so that I could experience what will be one of the most frequented and best loved parts of the cabin before leaving.  My morning included a travel mug of mocha and an afghan draped over my shoulders.  Later I loaded up one of my Mexican shopping bags with water, binoculars, bird books, wildlife and wildflower guides, a couple of novels, and a sliced apple with peanut butter for lunch and returned to the porch.  I didn’t get much fiction read, but spent a great deal of time reviewing Rocky Mountain flora and fauna, and ID’d a new bird, the diminutive blue-gray gnatcatcher.  It’s amazing what you see if you sit quietly and patiently with a pair of binoculars.  

Strictly decorative puff ball clouds turned more serious late this afternoon, and a few fat drops fell on me in the hammock where I’d retreated when the strong 4 PM sun had claimed the porch.  Thunder rumbled a bit and then quit, but by sunset the clouds were building in the west and heading my way.  The velvet antlered buck and his doe that frequent our site crossed the saddle and disappeared into the densest part of the forest behind me.  The sky turned orange both where the sun was setting and reflecting off the cumulus to the east.  I pushed my luck watching the show from the high rocks a hundred yards from the trailer as twilight fell fast and I wondered what my strategy would be if a bear beat me home.  

I’m now secure inside my “bread box”.  The clouds that made sunset so stunning are now illuminating the sky with explosive flashes of lightning, and the thunder is rolling around the valley like a tympani drum concert.  Nothing is striking too close, and that’s good as I’m quite aware I’m sitting on a ridge in an oversized steel can.  It’s raining off and on, big drops, but nothing too hard, hopefully just enough to keep bears and racoons snug in their lairs, just as Bump and I are snug in ours.  

Now if I only had an indoor loo...

The Last Weekend

First touch of the sun

Saturday, August 14th

I’m sitting in my trailer after a full day of “assisting” with the cabin build.  It’s dark outside -- I make sure to be inside the trailer by Bear O’clock, before the latest stage of twilight.  Something fairly light just ran across the roof of the trailer, and I can hear soft snuffling and a bit of low grunting or growling outside (or is that my dog snooring?).  This has been the pattern for the past several days, ever since we got “beared”.  Today when I got in the C-RV to go down to the ranch house for a shower I noticed some crumbly humus-rich forest dirt on the door handle, not what would splash up from a mud puddle on our dirt roads.  I think something tall enough to reach the handle gave it a try; I’m glad I’ve been locking the car.  Bob’s truck has bear paw and drippy nose marks on it too.  The noises outside right now could be a racoon -- they make a sound like a someone trying, and failing, to start a chainsaw at some distance away.  I’m trying to be relaxed about this stuff, especially now that I’m alone up here and don’t have my husband to alert with big eyes and nervous giggles.  I know I have no place on a bear’s food pyramid, but I also know I don’t want to cross paths with one.  I’ll stay in here (with the rare foray out for a pit stop after making some human noise and sweeping the area with my flashlight), and they can stay out there. 

The cabin was stained yesterday, a gorgeous transparent taupe that lets the golden tones of the wood shine through just a bit.  Advised against dark paint colors for the doors (they’re steel sheathed and get hot in the sun), I chose a soft, almost silvery sage green that looks wonderful with the siding and the driftwood colored shingles.  The gray green door will look great opening onto the Granny Smith apple green flooring that will run through the entry, kitchen, bedroom and bath.  The cabin promises to be a pallet of calming colors that don’t match, but blend well with the forest around us. 

Yes, SIR!

It’s my last weekend at the cabin project for the summer.  Today was a busy day with our contractor Brian putting up much of the support framing for the wrap around deck.  I made myself useful by cleaning up all the scrap piles of wood and policing the site, doing a little shovel and rake work leveling out the odd high or low spots around the foundation, moving cut deck joists to where they were needed, and occassionally holding the “dumb end” of the tape measure while Brian “racked” the deck supports, making sure they were perfectly square.  

Brian’s goal for today was to make sure I had a deck to sit on under the porch on the front of the cabin, and he accomplished that.  Before he left we were able to sit on the deck, temporarily a plywood surface, along with my neighbor Nancy, and raise our glasses of wine and bottles of beer to the best builder west of the Mississippi.  When Brian lived in the New England area he was the best builder east of the Mississippi, but I’m glad he’s on this side now.  

After dinner I mosied on down to the cabin again with a glass of wine and watched the first sunset from the deck, and was so sorry my husband is no longer here to share it with -- he’d have been so thrilled.  I did my best to enjoy it for the both of us (it wasn’t hard), trying a little mental telepathy, sending the blissful vibes to him in Tucson.  The sun set at 7:40, off to my right a bit.  Drifts of innocent clouds moved straight towards me, glowing first golden and then coral while the forest air quickly cooled.  The porch roof caught and amplified the burble of Deer Lake spilling into Turkey Creek below.  A quarter moon, brightening by the minute, hung low over Hackett Mountain.  The last of the daylight birds glided past into the pines and firs below, their final calls fading into quiet.  I thought of the countless sunsets we’d enjoy from that deck, the smell of dinner still lingering in the cabin behind us, the conversations we’d have, the laughter, the tender moments.  So many precious times lay ahead in this place.

I can hardly believe I’ve been here for two months this summer, or that it’s almost over.  I’ll be back in Tucson in less than a week, and that includes two days of driving.  Tomorrow is my last “free” day during this summer of building, and I’m planning on making the most of it by having coffee on the new front porch of the cabin, taking a nice walk with my pooch Bump, returning back to that porch for a good long sit with a book and my binoculars nearby for bird watching.  Then three more days of watching the construction -- shingling is probably next -- and pitching in when I can be useful, and then it’ll be time to pack up and head south.  As hard as leaving this place and this project will be, I’m looking forward to a happy reunion with my husband back in Tucson, where together we can dream of all the Rocky Mountain summers to come.  

Doors, Chimneys, Shingles, and Night Visitors

We have two exterior doors now that lock and a chimney that is hooked to pretty much nothing.  The shingles have arrived and some sit atop the loft roof, awaiting installation.  It's been a week of subs -- John and his son Alex from Mad Dog Plumbing, Guido for electrical, and the Western Fireplace team to fit the chimney, a necessity prior to shingling.  Richard the painter will come do the exterior staining on Friday, a job that constant rain prevented us from doing while my husband was still here.  

Bob's back at work in Tucson now and leaving almost brought him to tears.  I'm here for another week or so to answer questions and be able to help make decisions about the placement of lighting fixtures, switches, and outlets, and at least one more trip to big box stores in Colorado Springs.  Sadly, the old lights I sought out and purchased cannot be installed, at least not before final inspection, so my list of lighting fixtures to purchase will be a little longer than I'd anticipated.  I'm surprised Home Depot doesn't roll out the red carpet when I pull into the parking lot, but then again..

After spending the night with Bob's sister in Denver before she oh-so-kindly dropped him at the airport shuttle at 5 AM (!!!), she and I spent the morning catching up and harvesting from her fabulous garden we capped the visit off with lunch at a fabulous Indian buffet.  Filled with terrific food, I headed back to the wilderness, running the gauntlet of heavy rains near Colorado Springs, a rock slide near Manitou Springs, and a black as night storm that felt like I was driving through the Gates of Hell in Divide.  The dirt roads were slick with mud, so it was very slow going once leaving the pavement.  Over a dozen squishy slippery miles later I pulled up behind our trailer, relieved to have finally gotten home safe and sound.

My protector.  Right.

Or had I?  How'd our seven gallon blue water jug end up so far from the trailer?  And where were my bird feeders?  The propane tank from the gas grill was tossed aside and the drip pan lay in a nearby low-growing juniper.  Large paw prints covered the trailer and the windows had been smeared by a large and drippy nose.  We'd been beared.  Having had some success with seed from the feeders, a suet block (where the heck was the wire holder for that?!), and the grill I figured the bear might return for a second helping.  Bump and I were inside with the doors locked as darkness fell.  Around 2 AM I awoke to a shuffling sound on the deck, but the flashlight was useless for looking outside, and by the time I'd gotten up and turned on the porch light, whatever had been there had moved on.  The next morning, our contractor, Brian Shelton, came up to check it out.  He warned me to close the sturdy louvered windows at night (I hadn't), as all bears needed was to hook a nail, but that if I made sure to leave nothing outside a bear would be interested in that in a night or two it would stop coming around -- just like we'd quit going to a grocery store whose shelves were bare.  Last night I kept the porch light on, closed the windows and opened the ceiling vents (inconvenient with the sprinkle we had around midnight.  Before bed I heard something on the deck, but quickly switched on the radio and by the time I looked out I saw nothing.  This morning the bucket we keep outside for hauling water was turned over, but nothing more.

I'm considering turning on the radio loud some time after midnight tonight (oh for an M-80) and waiting for a few minutes before putting our pooch on a leash and going outside to see the Perseids meteor shower, which should be spectacular here -- the stars on a clear night with nothing special going on knock your socks off, so maybe a meteor shower would be worth the risk.  Or maybe I'll just have a bowl of freshly picked wild raspberries with whipped cream and call it a night.

Warm from the sun

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Home

Robert Redford, eat your heart out

The cabin is beginning to look, and feel, a lot like home.  The roof with its black paper coat awaiting shingles is weatherproof, so we have been able to experience the shelter the cabin will provide from sun and precip.  The closer it moves towards completion, the more we love it.

The view from the loft

It’s been a week of decisions.  We reverted to our long ago flooring picks when we were advised that the vinyl floors we fell in love with were not only quite pricey, but required mar-free subfloors and days to mop up the oozing glue after putting them down.  Actually, going back to some original thought will give us a cabin with more of the casual “good enough” flavor we wanted in the first place.  The kitchen, bath, and bedroom will have foot square Armstrong commercial vinyl tiles, quite rigid, in a speckled color they call Granny Smith, reminiscent of the apple with some sages tossed in the mix.  We found an engineered laminate “wood” floor with a hand-hewn look named Sand Hickory which is very pretty with the hickory cabinets.  I’ll be looking at tile or slate for under the wood burning stove.  

I simplified the kitchen a bit, making it a straight L shape without the little return on the far end, saving not only on the cabinets, but more importantly on the Formica countertops which are a pretty hazy soft yellow just touched in places with apple green.  The simpler cabinet configuration saved some money on the countertops which are frankly, to me, the most outrageously expensive part of the build so far.  But you’ve gotta have them.  

What the Rocky Mountains DOESN”T need is another brown cabin with a brown or green roof.  We’ve chosen a sandy gray/beige color for the semi-transparent stain and the shingles are a driftwood color of mixed brown, blue-gray, and light beige speckles.  I’m thinking of painting the front door a dull medium red color.  I picked up interior paint chips in a color that looked good with the flooring and cabinets and put them up on several of the cabin walls and a week later they still look right, a yummy color I have only just recognized as the color of dulce de leche ice cream, pale caramel with a hint of yellow.  I’m bound to be hungry all the time here.

The view from the bottom of the stairs

Fireweed, the slimmest of silver linings

We’re getting afternoon into evening rains now -- one day we had 2.6 inches in just a couple of hours! -- and it is hurt-your-eyes green here.  The wildflowers are doing well, making a recovery from the late season hailstorm that drove us out of here almost two months ago.  I have never been here this time of year before and our site is riddled with thousands of raspberry plants, burgeoning with ripe wild berries.  You can eat as many as you can stand to pick, fighting off the chipmunks and golden mantle ground squirrels.  Our contractor, Brian Shelton, cannot believe we have never seen a bear up here, a critter that would be serious competition for the fruit.  Maybe it’s just that since we’re never here this time of year -- that is, up to now -- we’ve just missed this pilferer.  We know black bears inhabit these mountains and hear about their escapades in the interfaces between humans and wilderness -- scattered trash, stolen 40 pound sacks of dog food, and a taste for the sweet syrup from hummingbird feeders and cooling cherry pies on kitchen counters.  This is a place that makes it clear to you that you are only borrowing this land for a brief time and are still obliged to share it with its original inhabitants.  It feels right.  

Wild (and delicious) raspberries on red rocks behind the cabin