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...