Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Second Home for the Holidays

It is an embarrassment of riches, choosing which home in which to spend the holidays.  It is also a bit of a difficult decision, because both Tucson and the Colorado Rocky Mountain cabin have much to recommend them.
This is how Christmas in Tucson looks
In Tucson we have lots of friends, La Posada, the Pastorella, our giant dried agave flower stalk to decorate, the fun of our volunteer work at the Desert Museum with folks visiting from elsewhere, and the distinct possibility of a sunny and warm Christmas day.  Our traditional New Year's Eve is spent sitting on the west side of Gates Pass, perched on a boulder, watching the last sunset of the year.

This is how Christmas at the cabin looks
This year the cabin is winning out.  We have good friends we are looking forward to spending time with as well as family we hoping to see in Colorado.  We need a cabin fix to see us through until next summer, and its cosy space and wood-burning stove would be most welcome.  We're hoping for a slightly white Christmas and bracing weather (please not the minus 13 we had last year), and enough good days to get out and do some hiking.  Our plans include a Yule Log with our hopes and dreams for the future, as well as some things we'd like to let go, written on notes and attached to be burned New Year's Eve (though midnight is an unrealistic expectation for us).  We're even looking forward to the four days on the road -- we do road trips together well -- and one of our resolutions on that Yule Log will be to do better at the transitioning from one place to another, and to FULLY be wherever we are.

Here are some images of Christmas last year, our first at the cabin:

First dinner guests at the cabin, our dear neighbors from across the lake
The ubiquitous Stellar's Jay, waiting it out near the feeder
A walk in the snow near the cabin
The view from the hilltop behind the cabin
We hope that your holidays are spent where you most want to be with those whose company you most desire.  May the New Year bring you health, happiness, and fulfillment.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

From One World to Another

We've been back in Tucson for six weeks now.  I'll admit to having a bit of whiplash with this changing of locations, changing of lives.  Don't get me wrong -- having two wonderful homes in two incredible, and incredibly disparate, environments is fabulously decadent.  It is also a bit over-stimulating, this switching between worlds.  I hope I get better at it.

Blazing aspens in the Colorado Rockies

One moment we were high in the Rockies surrounded by ponderosa pines, firs, spruce, and flame colored aspen.  The next we were streaking across the Navajo reservation at dawn, the subtle golds and sage greens of the high desert working their magic, reassuring me that I did indeed still love arid lands.  Tucson was welcoming, if a little warm, and we were happy to get back to our other "forest", this one of towering saguaros.

Bob dwarfed in our  Tucson saguaro "forest"
During our last couple of weeks at the cabin in late September it was rutting season for the elk.  The nights were filled with the eerie calls of the bulls, exhausting themselves with the work of challenging other males, managing their harems, and mating.  In all the times we'd gone to the trailer, pre-cabin, for a week in late September hoping for aspen and elk, there had never been anything like this, both in fall color and elk activity.  We felt so very lucky.

Elk at dusk in Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument
Culling clothes in Tucson
Returning to Tucson meant reunions with friends, getting back to "work" with our volunteer jobs at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and Saguaro National Park, enjoying (except when it came to cleaning and maintaining) our much roomier Tucson home, and reveling in the convenience of the nearby proximity of groceries, restaurants, theaters, and libraries.  We had a flurry of appointments with everyone from our financial advisor to our dentist.  We've recognized that to be happy actually living in two places, both have to be simple and streamlined, and we're determined to downsize our possessions in Tucson since we can't come to grips with downsizing our home, despite missing our much smaller cabin and the easy life it afforded.  We've also taken time to hike the foothills and washes near our Tucson home, reacquainting ourselves with the fascinating, but more frugal, fauna and flora of the Sonoran desert.

One of six mule deer we spooked out of an arroyo near our Tucson home
The best part of all of this is that we don't have to give up either of the two places we love best on Earth.  We just need to learn to move between them with a little more grace and a little less whiplash.

One last reading session in the hammock at the cabin
We'll get a chance again soon when we leave in four weeks for Christmas once again at the cabin.

Stellar's jay rides out last winter's pre-New Year's snow storm at the cabin
In the meantime, check back soon for some posts of other end of summer activities at the cabin.

Monday, September 5, 2011

One. More. Month.

Changes...
One more month this year.  That’s what I keep telling myself.  That, and that just about any time we feel the urge, we can get in the car and be here the next day.  It’s impossible to believe we’ve been here, and away from Tucson, over three months.  Four weeks from tomorrow we’ll have closed up the cabin and be heading south.  I’m hoping I’m more ready (much, much more ready) when the time comes.  Meanwhile my plan is to make the most of this last month of our inaugural summer in the cabin...the first of many.
Golden mantle ground squirrel harvesting buds on a flannel mullein
Migrating Canada geese stop for some
R&R on Bear Lake before continuing south
No question about it, fall is on the way.  It’s early afternoon and just now barely out of the 50’s, but clear and sunny with the perfect amount of crispness.  The aspen are beginning to turn, usually the leaves changing to a clear yellow, but sometimes a rich orange.  The grasses are ripening and heavy with seed.  The tree squirrels, chipmunks, and golden mantle ground squirrels are frantically harvesting everything from pine and fir seeds to raspberries and buds off the flannel mullein.  Migration has seriously reduced the number of hummingbirds at the feeder (though for those who are still tanking up for their long flights we’ve increased the ratio of sugar to water a bit to help them out) and we are seeing a big increase in raptor action, including a stunning near pass by a ferruginous hawk a few days ago and a close visit by a great horned owl last night, it’s ear tufts silhouetted by the last remnants of the sunset before flying silently to another nearby snag where it tolerated being nagged by a defensive robin before swooping back into the forest.    The first hard freeze is probably no more than two weeks away and a fire in the mornings is suddenly no longer an indulgence, but a necessity, and snow before the end of September is not out of the question.  I’m taking advantage of the chilly day with a pot of homemade baked beans cooking slowly in a low oven for most of the day, and the cabin is filled with the smell of brown sugar, molasses, onions, and smoked ham shanks.
Many local friends have come and gone over the summer, and this Labor Day weekend will mark the end of the season up here at the ranch, and at the retreat that adjoins us.  Over 100 folks are expected at Sunday night’s end of the summer season barbeque and party, complete with entertainment (someone mentioned polka!).  It’s the first time we’ve been up here for this annual event and we’re looking forward to it.  It’s hard to say goodbye to our mountain friends as they, and before too long we, depart...we see more of them in these four months than we do of many of our friends that live a block or two away in our Tucson neighborhood, probably a function of the simple pleasures we indulge in here and a lack of extraneous entertainments that so distract us back in the city.  Shared meals, weekly game nights, group hikes, the outdoor Sunday services, and pitching in to help each other have formed close ties, some of them unexpected, some several years long now and very dear to us.
Teacher Bob, his five charges, and one mom
As summer nears its end, it also means back-to-school time.  The two families who manage the retreat have five elementary school-aged kids between them, all boys (one lone girl, still a toddler, will have a challenging future with this group).  They are all home schooled by their able and devoted parents, but this year my husband (with his three degrees in science) is teaching them a section of science each week.  Last week they gathered for their first lesson with Bob, and the subject was bugs, a favorite with just about all kids, and these boys were no exception.  They all headed off to the spring at the back of our five acres and were rewarded with finding long thin white horse-hair worms living in the muck.  They headed to the lake down the hill and found loads of bugs and aquatic insects, including a dragonfly nymph.  All the while they were learning bug basics, and another neighbor who was a life-long educator and is working with the parents on skills for teaching reading, provided vocabulary lists for follow-up work.  When they returned from the lake with their jar of mud-clouded water, complete with a plethora of tiny critters all doing the backstroke, freshly made cookies awaited those with freshly washed hands.  Homework was assigned -- a drawing of a bug and a collection of five different bugs to be delivered this coming week, when the topic will shift to birds.  All involved enjoyed it, but no one more than Bob.  Four more weeks, four more topics.
Four more weeks, a dozen or more hikes.  Four more weeks, a temperature drop of 20 degrees or more.  Four more weeks, four more game nights.  Four more weeks, one more full moon,   

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Sliding Towards Fall


Pre-departure swim on Bear Lake
It is past peak summer here at near nine thousand feet in the Rockies.  The quaking aspen leaves have lost their glossiness and yellow is encroaching on the green in trees at the higher elevations.  Earlier season blooms like loco-weed and columbines have disappeared, while later season flowers such as mountain gentian and strawberry blight are in their prime.  The pair of Canadian geese, so recently putting their grown goslings through their paces, doing touch-and-goes on Bear Lake, all seem to have departed.  The hummingbirds are less frantic now that the nesting period is over and have reduced their intake of sugar water by half.  Squirrels are feasting on the ripe seeds in pine and fir cones, leaving the detritus on their dining tables of stumps and rocks.  The days are shortening, over two minutes less daylight with each rotation, and while days are still warm we find ourselves reaching for flannel or fleece a little more often and a fire in the morning or evening is a cosy indulgence.  Our neighbors remind us that they’ve spent Labor Day weekends here with over a foot of snow on the ground.

There's a change in the air
Wild rose rose hip
Since I love it here more with each passing day, the march of time through the seasons (late spring through early fall) is as poignant to me as it is fascinating.  Never mind that when we do leave in just over five weeks we will be returning to another place we love where our lives are also full with activities and friends we cherish -- I am afraid I won’t have had enough of this mountain life this year (always the glutton), and I’m anticipating a wrenching departure.  Of course, the antidote, should I find I miss the cabin too much, is to simply get in the car and make the two day drive back, so there is no tragedy in this amazingly wonderful bimodal life (like Maria in The Sound of Music...I must have done something good).
Hammock time is mandatory for all cabin guests
New trail with an old friend
My husband recently had to return to Tucson for some follow-up work related tasks, and the week he was gone corresponded with a five day visit from a dear friend of mine.  Marion and I had been two single mom’s, following each other from clinical trials related job to job in the Chapel Hill/Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina for many of the 11 years I lived there.  We’ve managed to keep in touch over the decade since I’ve moved to Tucson, seeing each other get our girls through elementary and high schools and college, supporting each other as best we could with our busy lives.  Marion’s visited a couple times in Tucson and I’ve returned a few times to Chapel Hill; the best time included the long 4th of July weekend near Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks with long floats in the rolling swells and 16-layer cake (no kidding!).  It was a real joy to have her experience our mountain cabin and the life we live up here.  There was lots of catching up and reminiscing, most all of it in the sublime out-of-doors.  Despite the 8,000+ foot elevation change for Marion, we managed some lovely hikes,  one on a section of the new loop trail that starts almost outside my front door, and one on a trail a few miles from home that I’ve had my eye on for several years.  We made no fancy excursions -- I wanted her to simply experience life as we know it up here.  She met most of our neighbors and shared in the casual and generous hospitality that is common up here...and played some wicked games of dominoes!  It was hard to see her go, but I am lobbying for her to consider Colorado as a retirement destination as she is a natural at wildlife sightings (a banded kingfisher and several hawks) and has a soft spot in her heart for the Colorado mountains.  In the meantime, I’m hoping her visit here will be an annual treat.
Mountain Gentian, new to me and so beautiful
Blue Penstemon in late summer glory
The day I picked Bob up from the airport, a grateful guy to be gone from the 110 degree heat of Tucson, we were driving back to the cabin in the cool mountain twilight, about 10 miles into our 16 miles of twisting dirt roads.  It was the time of the day that our wildlife-tuned eyes were most likely to be gratified...that half-dark time of the day when the bigger critters come out to graze.  We’d already seen lots of deer, including a very Bambi-like spotted fawn, when we rounded a corner and an abandoned barn came into view.  In the decreasing light I spotted several dark forms, then several more.  There was a huge herd of elk -- Bob counted 44 -- grazing and frolicking (no other word for it) in the old overgrown meadow.  About a third were true youngsters, calves, with lots of moms (cows as they’re called), and several juvenile bulls who were mock-protecting and challenging each other.  Alas, I was without my camera, but here’s a picture of the barn, so use your imagination.  The image of them will be forever fixed in my mind.

Just add 44 elk of assorted sizes...
Bob is busy inoculating fresh aspen logs with the mycelium for Shiitaki and Pearl Oyster mushrooms, something he’s been planning all summer and now needs to get done so that they have a few weeks to “take” before our first hard freeze.  The logs will winter in the moist shade near the spring, and when we arrive next spring Bob will soak them in the spring’s water, hoping to start the fruiting process.  If that is successful and we can beat the deer to them, we should have some amazing meals of fresh mushrooms next year. 

Wild oyster mushrooms found along the new trail
It is helpful to plan and prepare for next year’s long stay here.  We’ll probably come earlier, partly for my Bare Aware training and partly because we’ll want to.  With most of the “must do’s” of settling into a new cabin completed this inaugural year and many of the questions regarding “what will it be like?” answered next year will be much more a case of showing up with groceries and books and our hiking boots and just getting about the pure pleasure of mountain life.  Bob’s report of the family of cactus wrens busy in the barrio garden in our Tucson home, the pleasure of seeing some of our good friends, however briefly, and his time spend working at and visiting our beloved Desert Museum reminded me that our lives are beyond good wherever we go, wherever we are together, and that no matter the direction we travel on the dirt road near our mountain cabin, we are always headed home. 
The road home, no matter the direction...

Friday, August 5, 2011

Mid-Summer

This juvenile Great Blue Heron posed for me at Deer Lake, below the cabin

Life at the cabin just keeps rolling along in the most pleasant of ways.  With the major essential projects behind us we are settling into what I’m thinking passes for normal up here -- days filled with reading, nature watching, hiking, cooking and eating, cabin and forest maintenance, gardening, visiting with neighbors, and stargazing.  We know the world will keep spinning on its axis without our following the debt-ceiling crisis and the early throes of the next election cycle, and we’re happier for shrugging that off for now.

Deer's breakfast just off the front deck


Instead we wake up to deer munching baby aspens in our front yard, and are often still sipping coffee at 10 AM while reading the novel of the moment until our tummies insist on breakfast.  The next order of business is often a hike before it gets too warm (low 80’s) or the afternoon thunderstorms start up.  We had over three inches of much needed rain in July (on top of about an inch in June), one inch of it in about 20 minutes, complete with BB-sized hail!  Usually it falls much slower, soaking into the forest floor instead of washing out our driveway.

Our hikes are filled with change and new discoveries each and every time.  As the seasons roll on some wildflowers finish while others are just reaching maturity.  It seems to be the start of the harvest season for the critters -- the raspberries are ripening (and make a refreshing snack along the trail), some flowers going to seed while others are brim full with nectar.  Most of our hikes are along creeks and our dog Bump does her best to take advantage of them to keep cool and hydrated.

HUGE bumblebee having its way with a thistle
We put in a border garden on the entry side of the cabin.  I bought a few perennials grown here in Colorado, blue penstemons, cone flowers, and hyssop.  But mostly I’ve collected wildflowers from the forest (careful to harvest them only where they exist in great numbers) -- scarlet gillia, wild rose, mountain laurel, wild geranium, black-eyed Susans, pussy toes, harebells, and lavender asters to name a few.  


Installing a perennial border garden 
We'll keep collecting specimens of wildflowers
Tonya Sharp, Colorado Division of Wildlife Officer,
educating us on how to re-educate the bears
We keep fine-tuning the way we live up here, from wildlife management to where to get our hair cut.  We haven’t seen evidence of any more bear visits, but we have made some changes in our behavior that probably has helped.  We invited Tonya Sharp, our local wildlife officer (Bob stopped referring to her as the Bear Lady after seeing the huge gun strapped to her hip), to come by and give us some advice.  We no longer seed feed, though we do continue to feed the hummingbirds.  Seed feeding is messy with the birds sorting through the mixed seeds, tossing the ones they don’t like over the side -- not this, not this, not this...THIS! -- so even if you bring in the feeder at night there’s still a mess on the ground, despite the best intentions of the ground squirrels.  And I’d seen enough of the regulars at the seed feeder -- Cassin’s finches, brown-headed cow birds, and pine siskins -- to last me a while.  If you sit for a few minutes and pay attention there are lots of interesting birds in the trees -- nuthatches, Stellar’s jays, juncos, woodpeckers, flickers, and sapsuckers, and even the occasional red-tailed hawk stops by a snag out front to scream at us before flying off.  We have the hummingbird feeder about twelve feet up a tree hooked to a pulley system and we fill it once in the morning and bring it in empty by mid to late-afternoon.  Sometimes I take a “rest” on the front steps with the full feeder and I’m never alone for long.  Good trick for a warm day as those little hummers’ wings whip up quite the breeze, and it’s wonderful to see them so close you can see the varying colors of their individual feathers.  And it’s too precious when they perch on your fingers.

Up close and personal with hungry lady hummers
Along with missing our Tucson friends, we’re missing our volunteer work and are thinking of what would work for us up here.  Bob is volunteering some chainsaw time to help folks clean-up their lots and will help with the semi-annual ranch clean-up when they bring in a HUGE chipper and feed in what’s been cleared, blowing the chips back into the forest.  He’s also volunteered to teach a little science to some neighboring kids who are home schooled...leeches will be the first segment.  I’ve filled out my application with the Colorado Division of Wildlife’s Bear Aware program and will come up next spring for training so that I can go out and coach folks on how to live in bear country.
Make a big wish on this tennis ball-sized salsify seed head...and BLOW
We’ve reached the halfway mark in our first summer at the cabin, and loving it more all the time.  It’ll be odd to start counting down to our departure in early October, though we have much to go back to in Tucson.  I wouldn’t be surprised to be back up here during the holiday season for a couple of weeks.  May will just be too far away.  Pack up the car, Honey -- I’m needing a cabin fix!  So very nice to have options, and the time to exercise them.  

Squirrel psych-out -- it fooled our dog the first time she saw it!

The Unexpected...Great Eateries

Every time we go to town our biggest problem is deciding which one of our favorite restaurants to visit.  It was the last “problem” we expected up along this fairly remote stretch of communities in the southern Rockies.  Collectively my husband and I have lived in Tucson for over 20 years and we still don’t have “our place”.  We favor kind of funky, often ethnic, and always reasonable restaurants where the service is good enough and we feel comfortable.  In Tucson we like them close to home, which is the main problem for us on the west side.  Here in the mountains we’d never make the 40 minute trip in to the nearest restaurant, but we always make sure to include it on our provisioning trips.  Here are two of our favorites.
The Hungry Bear, Woodland Park, CO

Three signs are better than one
The Hungry Bear in Woodland Park has been a favorite of ours since we started coming up here together six years ago.  It’s a one-off, family owned, quirky down-home place which specializes in breakfast and lunch, but is also opened some nights for dinner.  For us it’s our breakfast spot.
I’ve often speculated that its origins were someone’s teddy bear collection -- high shelves hold hundreds of plush toy bears and the walls are covered with bear photos and plaques with kitschy sayings.  The waitresses are country-friendly and efficient.  The tables are all different, and you can sit at one of two counters if you like, one with a view into the kitchen.  
I suppose you could eat healthy at The Hungry Bear, but I’ve never seen anyone do so.  Even the trophy wives just passing through on their way to the ski resorts are tucking into huge plates of fruit and sour cream filled crepes with a massive side of bacon.
After all these years we’ve settled, for better or worse, into our favorites.  My husband orders The Dream -- a split, toasted and buttered biscuit smothered in sausage gravy served along two over easy eggs and an order of bacon.  I get what’s referred to as 2x2x2 -- two eggs over easy, two strips of bacon, and two huge, plate-sized blueberry buckwheat pancakes.  Oh, and lots of hot coffee.  I hope our doctor is reading this.

Plateful of Buckin' Blues
It’s a ridiculous amount of food.  In fact their menu has a tongue-in-cheek disclaimer...Warning: Our food may become habit forming.  Mass consumption may cause weight gain.  Since we only hit The Hungry Bear about once a month, we’re holding our own.  If you want to eat some great comfort food, do some interesting people watching, and feel like you’re among friends it would be hard to do better than The Hungry Bear.  It’s on the south side of the main drag, Hwy. 24, in Woodland Park, Colorado.  Check out their website:  www.hungybearcolorado.com
Go hungry!
McGinty’s Wood Oven Pub

Best (only) pizza in Divide, Colorado
McGinty’s, and Irish themed restaurant, is in Divide, a two light town along Hwy. 24 eight miles west of Woodland Park.  It is the last thing I’d have expected to find at the main Divide crossroads.  In fact, we probably wouldn’t have given it a try except for a strong recommendation from our neighbors who have a cabin across the lake from our cabin; they often stop for dinner on their way to their cabin from their home in Colorado Springs.  Margaret said the bleu cheese pizza was to die for...blue cheese pizza???
We stopped in starving for a very late lunch and were surprised by the attractive and comfortable interior.  Shown to a deep booth with a view of the wood oven we perused the menu for the raved about bleu cheese pizza.  Even after reading the description of the Frenchy McGillicuddy Patty Cake (pizza pie) -- charred bits of prime rib and chunks of bleu cheese, garlic and olive oil, sweet onions, arugula and roasted tomatoes -- I was a bit skeptical.  Still, it was what we’d been planning on ordering, and since the price was just under $11 I was sure, with those ingredients, we were talking about an individual size pizza and we’d need a second one or a substantial salad to suffice.  I asked the waitress if she’d recommend ordering a second pizza and she said probably not since the pizzas were 16 inchers.  What?!  A pizza like that in Tucson would be over $20!  
It was fun to watch the chef and his helpers move around the work station in front of the wood stove.  No fancy flipping of pizza dough, but careful overhead stretching.  About ten minutes after ordering, while we were enjoying some lovely draft Guinness, the waitress brought over a thick section of tree trunk, peeled and sanded and sealed.  A few minutes later our pizza arrived, still bubbling, on a dark green stone slab.  Any reservations I had about the odd ingredients disappeared when I saw the gorgeous glutenous crust, a perfect brown with sheer crispy bubbles, the bright green of the chopped arugula, the crisped bits of prime rib, caramalized onions, large chunks of tomato, all melded together in a thin pool of melted bleu cheese.  The crust was on the thin side, crisp without being brittle, with plenty of corn meal still adhering to the bottom.  It was utterly fantastic, and as hungry as we were, we still had two large pieces to carry home and they warmed up to almost the same perfection the next day for lunch.  Eleven bucks.  Unbelievable!
One of the best pizzas I have ever eaten!


Our second trip in we ordered the Bernadette Devline pizza, created in honor of Ireland’s first female politician, sauced with half red, half green pesto topped with fire-roasted peppers, onion, baby spinach, mushrooms, roasted tomatoes, fried leeks, artichokes and mozarella cheese.  It was just as good as the first one, a buck cheaper, and we must have hit happy hour as our pizza and two draft pints totalled under $17.  

They have a very extensive menu with imaginative salads and sandwiches and dinner entrees that all sound amazing.  I’m not sure we’ll ever get past the pizzas!  The wait staff is attentive and enthusiastic, and when I had a question about one of the beers that stumped the waitress, she quickly went to get the answer.  There are several good beers on tap, including Guinness.
If you’re hankering for some REALLY good food at prices that make me worry this wonderful eatery won’t be sustainable, and appreciate a bit o’ the Irish, do go out of your way to visit McGinty’s in Divide.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Learning

We’re a third of the way through our first summer sojourn in our new cabin in the Rockies.  Semi-permanent residence is a whole new ball game, and we have already begun thinking of this as the ‘shake-down’ summer.  There’s a lot that’s worked just as we expected, but there have been some surprises, and we have some learning to do.

Just about perfection...
Red-tail Hawk seen on a 'round-the-block hike
With most of the cabin furnishing and provisioning done (we’re heading into Colorado Springs again tomorrow to get a couple of bookcases and a small coffee table at an unfinished furniture place) we’re settling into more of what we feel will be the normal rhythm of life in this remote cabin in the Rocky Mountains.  As Harry, our neighbor across the lake and maker of carved bears, once said to me, “This is still your life up here, just in a different place,” and he’s right.  There are still chores, things to take care of and keep track of, and now two sets of household bills to pay.  We still have a social life to enjoy and friends and family to keep up with (and miss), no matter where we are.  There’s a LOT of togetherness, so far a good thing, and still forays into civilization for shopping, libraries, and eating out.  

Our life in Tucson is in many ways quite similar to here, despite it’s proximity to the conveniences of living near a city.  Our home is out in the Tucson Mountain foothills and we spend a lot of time outside hiking, tending our yard, or watching the abundant wildlife, just as we do here.  Mind you, in Tucson Costco is 10 minutes away and Sunflowers for rational quantities of fresh produce the same, so you can literally run out to do a biweekly shopping in less time than it takes me to drive to a store where I can buy a gallon of milk.  ‘Going to town’ here, something we do once a week, takes on the excitement you read about in Little House on the Prairie...it’s a big, carefully planned event.  If you forget to buy sugar, the hummers are going to be complaining all week (as they do the second they run low on sugar water, from about three inches off your nose).
Cabin Life Lesson #1 - Keep good lists of needs and wants for the weekly trip to town, and try not to make it resemble the Bataan Death March 
Best.  Ever.  Chocolate.  Cookies.
It’s interesting to go a week or more with what’s on hand, especially if you get a last minute call that you have incoming house guests.  I try to keep plenty of the staples -- milk, bread, and eggs around.  For those more perishable items such as fruit and veggies, I’ve come up with a few tricks.  Bags of romaine lettuce hearts keep well.  I have a jars of things like sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, olives, pickles, and pickled vegetable mixes around for when I can’t run out to get more fresh tomatoes.  Half and half, something I almost never have in Tucson, is a less perishable back-up for when the milk for coffee runs low, and as back-up to the back-up, I have a bag of powdered milk.  I make sure to have a few bags of frozen vegetables -- petite peas, corn, and French cut green beans in the freezer for when the fresh greens are gone.  I have stooped to dehydrated parsley, more for color than flavor in soups and stews.  I keep a good-sized jar of pesto (Costco’s is GREAT) in the fridge, not for pasta which we don’t eat much of, but for a wonderful herby base for making salad dressing (a big spoonful with a little olive oil, white wine vinegar or lemon juice, salt & pepper -- fab!), mixing with mayo for Italian sandwiches, tossed with rice or potatoes, as a pistou in soups, in scrambled eggs -- you get the idea --  is good for that fresh herb taste.  We eat the most perishable stuff, like strawberries, first...apples will keep.  I keep things on hand for bread baking, and corn bread is quick and delicious baked in a cast iron pan in the oven (which I can use all the time here, unlike Tucson).  I finally have my spice inventory up to make just about any kind of cookie we feel like (and with the hiking we’re doing, a couple of cookies a day seem to do no harm, just good.  Provisioning for a remote location is mostly common-sense, but we take it a bit more seriously here than we do in Tucson.
Cabin Life Lesson #2 - Provision wisely, be prepared to cook a LOT and well -- food matters
Cottontail taking shelter
It’s so obvious up here that we’ve moved into the habitat of the wildlife, not the other way around.  It’s almost like the physician’s motto, first do no harm.  While I was down at the ranch house making my bear post, the bear was at our cabin eating our niger thistle seeds, and probably getting ready to take on the regular seed and humming bird feeders while our dog cowered inside (as she should have).  When we saw the thistle seed feeder down, chewed up, and empty, we immediately scanned the area for the bear, realizing we may have interrupted it.  We didn’t see it, but we did hear it bellowing just over the rocks towards the lake.  The next day we got serious and suspended our feeders from pulleys high up in the trees around the cabin.  We can lower them for refilling, but a bear would (and could) have to climb for them, and this bear is looking for an easy meal.  If we have more trouble with the bear and bird feeders, we’ll consider taking them down all together, though we are very much enjoying the fantastic bird-watching from our cabin.
Cabin Life Lesson #3 - Do all you can to live in harmony with the wildlife
Sunset from the swing
After about six weeks we admitted to ourselves, and each other, that we were feeling a bit restless; maybe a little bit bored.  Personally, I feel doing without the easy diversions of streaming video and personalized radio stations, movie theaters and libraries a short drive away, constant access to the Internet, and shops loaded with things you don’t need is a good thing, especially on a part-time basis.  My husband, not so much.  We haven’t seen quite as much of friends and family as we’d expected, and do miss our Tucson life in several ways -- our fairly busy social life, our volunteer work (and those we work with) at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and Saguaro National Park, taking advantage of all the mod cons, and for my husband, recently retired, not work, but having more of a schedule.  This is definitely different, and mostly wonderful, but not without it’s challenges.  As with everything, no matter how great things are, they can become a little bit routine.  So we’ve decided to mix it up a bit, do more things, and make sure to do plenty of what’s so good here in the mountains.  First, remember how great it is to be here in the cool instead of in the 100+ degrees of a Tucson summer.  We’re reading more about the natural history of this area, to better understand and appreciate where we are (and how to be a good guest here).  We’re making sure we take a walk or hike every day, even if it’s just down the trail to the meadow, or more often our two mile ‘around the block’ hike, or to the overlook, or Cedar Mountain, or hiking the roads.  The hiking helps the cookies make sense.  Having overdosed on several books a week, we’re playing more games after dinner (I am getting walloped at Rummikub at the moment), doing the occasional jigsaw puzzles (I have a collection of some really good museum ones), and yes, listening to more NPR (but not too much) so we can bitch about congress and gird our loins for the campaign that is apparently (and appallingly) already underway.  We also have some non-provisioning day trips planned to experience more of this part of Colorado.  Oh, and more sunsets from the swing above our cabin.

Karen's Overlook, a favorite hiking destination with a view of Turkey Rock

Cabin Life Lesson #4 - Don’t get lazy, take anything for granted, or forget how wonderful your life is; be grateful and Be Where You Are Fully
More life lessons, cabin and otherwise, to come...no doubt.  In the meantime we’re off to play dominos with some friends at another cabin tonight and tomorrow we’ll head to town -- maybe I’ll get a piece of calico for a new apron or a shiny tin cup (reference may only be clear to lovers of Laura Ingalls Wilder).   

Friday, July 8, 2011

...and Bears, Oh My!!!

Just below the cabin, contemplating the lake

It was late afternoon.  After a full day outside -- hiking, forestry, hammock-and-a-book time -- we’d retreated indoors.  I was busy losing a game of MahJong on my ancient Gateway laptop and my husband was stretched out on the couch, winning a game of Sudoku (hard).  I heard a thump on the porch behind the house, vaguely assumed it was the dog after a ground squirrel, and kept clicking on matching tiles.  Suddenly my husband exclaimed “BEAR!”.  And indeed, there was, not ten feet from the mullioned glass door and large window looking out on the red rocks behind the cabin.  A shaggy cinnamon colored black bear was wandering by.

My second thought, after OMG, was “where’s the dog??!!”.  I shot out the front door, opposite the bear’s side, and called, firmly, for Bump.  She obviously knew the bear was quite nearby and slunk carefully out from underneath the deck, the whites of her eyes showing, up the stairs and inside more obediently than ever before.
I looked out the front windows, the direction the bear was headed.  He (guessing here) was standing about 20 feet off the deck on the edge of the building pad, looking down the hill towards the lake.  I grabbed the camera and ran out the door to get some photos.  My husband was urging the bear to move along, throwing some rocks his way but not hitting him, despite his intentions.  I can’t remember if we were yelling at the bear -- I was so rattled with nerves and excitement that I kept hitting the on/off button on my camera instead of the shutter and was baffled when it kept shutting down.
The bear headed over the edge towards the lake, hesitating near some rocks.  There were a lot of folks down at the lake fishing and making quite a bit of noise.  The bear turned around and headed back towards us, but adjusted his course down the western slope from the cabin.  He was in no rush at all -- aware of us but not concerned, and not acting at all aggressive.  The bear took his time traversing our hillside, eventually heading for the spring and its dense foliage at the back of the property.  We wandered down the drive a bit and could see him moving about there for a bit, and then we lost sight of him.

Heading towards the spring and PIke National Forest
Bear claw marks
This bear looked young -- not cub young, but maybe a year or two old.  He was losing his winter coat and looked scraggly, but there was no mistaking the power there.  This may well have been the bear that visited me 10 nights in a row in the trailer last year, right after I dropped my husband off at the airport for his return to Tucson.  The bear had marauded our site while we overnighted in Denver, knocking down bird feeders, slashing our seven gallon jerry jug, yanking the drip pan out of the gas grill.  That night, and every night for the rest of my stay, he’d show up shortly after dark, grunting and groaning and rocking the trailer.  My dog Bump would sense him coming before I did, and her slinking off in the most exquisite slow-motion to the farthest corner in the bedroom was a sure sign.  My trailer was a 33 foot Airstream Argosy, tightly constructed of steel, and I kept the windows closed on the side the bear could reach (the ground feel off on the other side).  Despite playing the radio, loud, leaving the outside lights on and shining a flashlight out the window, I never spotted the bear, even when I could hear it outside.  Every morning brought new paw-prints on the trailer, snotty-nosed dribbles down the windows, and more paw prints on all the door handles of both vehicles.  Looking back, I am amazed that I didn’t simply pack up the car -- in broad daylight -- and head south.  About 18 trailers and cabins had attempted bear break-ins; about half of those were successful.  No one was hurt, except in the pocketbook.  Still, there were calls for the bear to be “harvested”.  I would feel terribly guilty if this bear, encouraged by all our bird feeders, unsecured trash, and food left in trailers, cabins, and sheds, were killed.  We’ve moved into the bear’s habitat, not the other way around, and we’re being irresponsible neighbors.
The bear and I are in competition for these!
My Sierra Club Naturalist’s Guide to the Souther Rockies says that American Black Bears are very common in aspen and mixed aspen-coniferous communities (and this area is that), as they feed on the aspen buds, catkins, and new leaves in the spring and return in the fall for the berries grown in the understory shrubbery.  Our land has hundreds if not thousands of aspen and wild raspberries are everywhere around the cabin.  Normally crepuscular and nocturnal (someone should let this bear know as he’s been seen from 10 AM right through to the dinner hour and beyond), early summer is mating season, so perhaps this one’s out roaming, looking for love.
I hope he finds it soon and heads back into the deep forest...for his own good.  I’m here to enjoy nature, not contribute to its demise.