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.