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).   

...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.