JUNE -- Heaven and Hell (or damn close by)

Colorado Columbines appeared very early this year

After anticipating our second summer at the cabin since, well, since leaving last summer, it was heaven to finally hit the road and return to our “other” home.  It was a joyful second home-coming, returning to a finished, furnished, and equipped cabin (unlike the first year) where all we had to do was to move in our provisions and settle in for the next four months.  

Lemon glazed vegan gems

Batty for bat boxes (the first of eight)

We were quick to renew old routines and start this year’s special projects, hiking almost daily, fires in the wood-burning stove to take the morning chill off the cabin, catching up with our Colorado friends, tending to the forest, and for Bob, constructing the first of many bat boxes.  There were cookies to bake and the local libraries to visit, and gatherings with friends and family, impromptu or otherwise.  Mountain life is good.

Salads, not soups, as the temps rise

The hummingbirds, mostly Broad Tails, are drinking the quart feeder dry twice a day.  If they run out they fly up to us and hover less than a foot from our faces, essentially ORDERING us to provide a refill, FAST!  Since we no longer seed feed (too much of a bear attractant) we have to work at birding a bit more than we’re used to, but we are enjoying the local birds which are quite varied and interesting even though it is harder to pick them out in the forest than perched on a saguaro.  We enjoy the gyrations of the turkey vultures pivoting in the updrafts in the valley off our front porch.  Chickadees hang upside down on the aspen branches, checking for insects.  Nuthatches walk headfirst down tree trunks communicating to each other with their weird muted nasal calls.  A Townsend’s Solitare sits on a tall snag at the top of our hill every evening at sunset to serenade us with its lovely and varied song.  We’ve had two bears -- that we know of -- outside the cabin...one looks to be the same one from last year, only bigger and with an more beautiful cinnamon coat, and one a small yearling, about the size of an English sheepdog.  I’ve been working with the Bear Aware program here, helping to educate humans about living in bear country.  

Movie night, outside

Despite our elevation of 8,600 feet, we are not exempt from global warming trends.  We’ve had some very warm weather for here -- not as hot as the 109 degree day I spotted on the Tucson weather forecast, but we’ve now had a few afternoons in the low 90’s...nothing to complain about so long as you find a shady spot to share with a cool drink and a good book.  Even here I am at times reluctant to turn on the oven to roast some veggies or tofu or bake cookies.  Last night we decided to watch a DVD outside, instead of in the warmish cabin.  We put the laptop on our little bistro table and us in comfy camp chairs, and watched Sideways (again) with our towering red rocks adjacent to the cabin as a dramatic backdrop -- sort of like a drive-in movie in a dramatic location sans the big screen and the car.  

The heat has had other consequences, aside from lots of salads.  The forest is dry and getting drier by the day.  Wildflowers that were in such early profusion when we arrived a month ago are shriveling now, the scant tenth of an inch of rain we’ve recorded in the past month not enough to sustain their enthusiastic spring growth.  Dry warm air, wind, and a crunchy forest are not a good combination and Colorado is battling several wildfires, a few of them big ones.  We are particularly sensitive to forest fires as this new cabin stands where the original cabin stood for 40 years before burning in the Hayman fire ten years ago.  

The Waldo Fire, two hours old,
viewed from near the cabin

We’ve seen at least half a dozen smoke plumes from fires as near as ten miles away and have been enlisted by the local volunteer fire-fighting force, the Mountain Communities Fire Protection District, as we have an excellent long view from the southeast to the north.  We followed our tireless neighbor Todd -- site manager of the adjacent retreat, father of three (soon to be four), EMT and chief firefighter of our local station -- through locked gates in the back country to last week’s meeting at the firehouse where we filled out volunteer applications.  Before the meeting could start the volunteer firefighters were called out to battle a few of seven manmade fires set in two hours by an arsonist.  It’s one thing to have dry lightning start a fire in a tinder dry forest.  It’s harder to understand someone who’s either clueless or feels that the fire ban doesn’t apply to him.  But someone deliberately setting fires, multiple fires (over two dozen so far)!!!???  Utterly mind-boggling.  Cabins can be rebuilt, but forests could take a thousand years to return to their current maturity.  

The last few weeks have been tough.  Rumors of nearby fires have abounded, some true (and quickly extinguished), and some simply rumors.  We’ve had days choked with the smoke of fires near and far.  The Springer fire between Florissant and Lake George was scary enough, but was soon overshadowed in a huge way by the Waldo Fire on the western edge of Colorado Springs.  

The view from Divide, eight miles west
after being evacuated from Woodland Park,
five days into the Waldo Fire.  Grim.

 Finally I packed us an evacuation bag of a few changes of clothes, things for the dog, important papers and our laptop, binoculars, and cameras just in case we find ourselves in the line of a wildfire and are ordered to get out quickly.  I was glad I had when the Waldo fire blew up the day we were in Woodland Park trying to reprovision.  We could see a thin column of black smoke near the Ute Pass (Hwy 24) driving into town and by the time we’d gotten the bulk of the grocery shopping done it was churning.  We tried to stop at our favorite Asian restaurant only to be told it was under mandatory evacuation.  Suddenly I wasn’t so hungry.  We tried one more shop on the west end of Woodland Park but it was the same story.  Heading 8 miles further west to Divide, I popped into the the smallish grocery to get a few things missing from my shopping list, and in the ten minutes it took me to get out it now looked like Mount Vesuvius was erupting just down the road.  Lunch and the Florissant library evaporated from out to do list and all we wanted to do was get back to the cabin.  A neighbor called saying she’d gotten a reverse 911 call that she didn’t hear all of, but the word evacuation had been used.  I called the sheriff and was told that we were on pre-evacuation and to get ready to leave and wait for word.  This later turned out to be an error on the Sheriff’s department end, but it did tend to focus the mind.  Waldo now seems to be pretty well contained, but we are aware that until we get a good dose of soaking rain we are in a Red Zone fire area.  Forest fires have always been part of life in these mountains, but never has it been so pervasive.

Never too early to indoctrinate the youngest member of the tribe
into the Healthy Forest Initiative tools of the trade

Still, we are grateful to be able to be in our mountain cabin enjoying the relatively cooler weather, our local friends, and visits from Colorado family.  This montane environment is so very different from that other landscape we also love, the desert southwest.  Both places wait for the summer monsoon with its quenching rains, and it cannot come soon enough.

The Christmas Diaries, Part Last

The End of the Year, and of the Diary


[With our departure date for summer at the cabin fast approaching and before this becomes a Christmas in July story, here's the final chapter of our Christmas trip.]

Snowshoes!

There was a nice shift in our mood this morning.  Bob managed to get on the Internet last night at the Ranch House and a review of his email confirmed what we’d expected -- that there was nothing urgent that had been misguidedly sent via email while we were essentially off-the-grid.  We noted that watching the fire behind the glass front of the wood-burning stove is far more interesting that most of the things you see on TV.  And realizing that we’ll be gone from here in just a few days had a way of sorting us out too.

We had a really good visit from a neighboring family (mom and dad and three youngsters, two of whom were part of the home school Bob helped out with last summer) this morning.  It was fun to put the apple juice on the stove with the mulling spices and pull out the cranberry loaf.  While the boys played upstairs in the loft, alternating between working on the current jigsaw puzzle, playing a game of Sorry, and perusing The Dangerous Book for Boys (a great favorite of my husband’s grandsons), we sat downstairs and chatted, delighting in their tow-headed two-year-old daughter.  They had happy news of expecting another baby in August, and we were all glad that we’d be here for that addition to their family.  It was a good visit, and visits are so important up here where you can go days without an interchange with anyone except your husband or your dog.  Living in such a remote location, especially at a time of the year where there are so few others around, can be challenging, but the challenge is tempered by the pleasure in solitude.

After lunch it was my turn to try the loaner snowshoes.  Bob had given them a go the day before and was quite enthused about them.  I parked myself at the end of the deck, a perfect chair height, and Bob helped me into them (a pleasure in itself).  I had a brief case of the Uh-Oh’s as they were being strapped on, a short case of dejavu from my brief, and miserable, attempts at skiing -- first husband (ski patrol) sending me off with no lessons, finding my attempts at the rope tow hysterical, my falling as I tried to ski off the chair lift and being unable to get up while those behind us basically skied over me sidesplitting, and then sending me down alone while he, off-duty, attended to two women with broken legs, my mission to get the ON-duty patrol to come do their jobs.  

The climb up with the tube;
mind the stump...

I had what was probably a quite moderate and very wide slope to navigate down a couple hundred feet.  As I snow-plowed as carefully as I could, back and forth across the slope, making little downward progress, something went wrong and I found myself in a huge face-plant with my legs crossed and my skies, which hadn’t released, doing a deep face-plant of their own.  I couldn’t move and couldn’t see.  At least I’d had my poles appropriately strapped to my wrists, so after a minute or two of trying to twist out of the position I was in, and failing, I began stabbing wildly with my pole for the ski releases.  Just about then I heard someone ski up, stopping with an experienced swooshing sound, and say with a slight chuckle, in the most gorgeous male voice I’d ever heard, “Do you want some help?”  And I will never understand this, but I said “No”.  Humiliation?  Fearing that he’d be Robert Redford?  That I’d rather die?  He said, “Are you sure?”  And I, of course, said “yes”.  So.  He skied off and I kept stabbing wildly and finally, mercifully, I got one ski off and could untangle myself and and remove the other.  I tucked those skis under my arm, walked down the hill to the ski patrol booth, completed my mission, and never, EVER, put them on again.  

Wheeeeee........

So it was a bit unsettling to have Husband Number Two affixing some different, but just as implausible looking snow gear onto my feet with which I was going to have to get up and move.  But these were shorter and fatter and were for anything but going fast.  In fact, I found them pretty darn easy to walk in as we headed down the drive and up to the saddle.  Heading off-road, down the slope and into the forest, was wonderful...we were in one of my favorite parts of our land, heading back towards the benchmark that I always seek out whenever we near that corner of the property.  I took two tumbles, the first probably tripping over a piece of downed wood under the snow -- or maybe over my own snowshoes, and the second near the benchmark as I tried to turn around.  The good news was that it doesn’t hurt when you fall down in a couple of feet of snow.  The not so good news was that it was reminiscent of trying to get up with skis on, but not quite as difficult.  But for the really great news -- this husband didn’t laugh.

A kid again...

With this snow sport success (well, not a failure anyway) under our belts our walk the last day before leaving found us in the meadow.  Huge fat inner-tubes lay at the bottom of a steep embankment, the "sled" run we'd been told about.  Our 60-something selves gave in to our inner child and we each, after wondering about the wisdom of it, took a turn trudging up to the top of the hill, plunked down in the tube, wondered if we were completely mad, and scooched on the snow until gravity took over and the thrill unleashed joyous whoops (mine was more of a scream).  Those few seconds of pure joy was the pinnacle of the Christmas trip for me, and will inspire other slightly risky, slightly imprudent, but inspiring decisions in the year to come.  A good way to end 2011 and start 2012.  

It can't get better than this!

And summer is not that far away.

The Christmas Diaries, Part 11

Just a Touch of Cabin Fever, December 28th

We’ve had just a touch of cabin fever the past couple of days.  It came on shortly after a too brief visit from our friends across the lake...just enough time for a cup of tea and a little get-away from their own kids and grandkids, a half an hour stolen from the afternoon they were heading back to town.  They’d bought us a pair of snowshoes to try out, and we had dueling conversations in too small a space, and it left us feeling a little bit lonely when they left too soon.  

The sun set just as they were leaving, shortly after 4 PM.  The winds that had been kicking up for a couple of days whistled around the corners of the cabin.  We thought it would be a good night to pull out the Netflix DVD we’d brought with us, and we set up the laptop on the coffee table and got lost in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.  

Dreaming of the ease of summer hiking...

In the summer we make regular weekly trips to town to provision, poke through a few shops, make a stop at the hardware store, visit the farmer’s market, have lunch, and most importantly, go to the library.  The cabin gets no cell phone reception and we don’t have Dish or a TV.  We have a land line, but no Internet which is the hardest to deal with.  We can go to the Ranch House, a mile up the road, and hope the satellite Internet is working and hasn’t had it’s daily megabyte allowance used up by someone downloading 47 pictures of a new granddaughter.  Even in Tucson we eschew cable, but do enjoy streaming Pandora during the day and an episode of something or the other on Netflix most nights.  We are on the computer at that “other” home quite a bit, and like email and using the web for news and as a reference.  We just plain miss it here, especially without our weekly wallow in it at the library.

...while enjoying the novelty of winter hiking

After about a week of being in the cabin with no trip to town in sight, having fully provisioned for two weeks due to the shortness of our visit and the iffiness of the weather, our joy and the novelty of being at the cabin and the magic of a couple of snowstorms began to collide with missing our normal mod-cons and our primary summer activities that keep us outside most of the day.  

We’ve actually be doing great with outdoor time, walking two or three miles a day along with other outdoor chores like snow shoveling and firewood hauling, but next winter when we come up we’ll have more outdoor toys (snowshoes at a minimum) and some better winter gear so that we don’t feel quite so cabin bound.  We know this is a fast moving “fever” and our bliss will be back soon.

The Christmas Diaries, Part 10

Boxing Day, December 26th 

Pygmy completes the Nuthatch Trio

After another good, deep cabin sleep, we woke up to a relatively warm, 28 degree, dawn.  High thin clouds turned shell pink in the early light.  Most of the snow was out of the trees.  The weather forecast called for a warming trend, and no hint of a coming storm that could complicate our departure a week from now.

I enjoy Christmas, but when it’s over, it’s over.  I still enjoy the lights and decorations and the tree, at least until January 1st, but in the music department, I’m done.  It was great to find a little early Jackson Browne on the iPod, and turn up the volume while doing a little cabin-keeping.  

We had a new visitor, and some old friends show up at the bird feeder.  I’m thrilled to have the two Nuthatches -- the white-breasted and the red-breasted -- at the feeder, but I noticed a new bird today.  It looked like a Nuthatch, but different...smaller and a softer gray with a slate gray eye-bar.  Juggling my binoculars and my bird book while reaching for the camera, I discovered it was the Pygmy Nuthatch, a new bird for me here.  A Trio of Nuthatches to complement the Trifecta of Juncos!  Also at the feeder were a pair of Cassin’s finch, the crimson tinted head on the male a dead give-away and such familiar feather friends from the summer.  Now if only the Evening Grosbeak would make an appearance.

When we left in early October the elk were bugling all over the hills surrounding the cabin.  We saw them frequently, along with the deer and even bear that call this habitat home.   Oddly, aside from birds we’ve see no wildlife this trip except for the odd tree-squirrel.  During our walks we always look for animal tracks in the snow.  Rabbit tracks are everywhere, almost more like a full body impression.  Lacy rodent tracks etch the surface of the snow.  And today we saw deer and elk tracks, lots of them, where yesterday there were none.  The meadows were a maze of rambling tracks, crisscrossing each other.  Wherever they went to weather out last week’s storm, they’re now back.  We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled.

Suddenly, tracks galore!

We have a swing at the top of the rocks behind the cabin, a favorite sunset spot for us for many years now since long before we decided to rebuild the cabin...the Trailer Days.  My romantic husband thought we should head up there late this afternoon to watch the sun set over the snow-covered hills.  I was less sure about this, but game, so we bundled up again and climbed around the backside of the hill to the swing, cleared off the day before by Bob, and mercifully dry.  It took about 20 seconds, enough time of one big appreciative “ooh-ah” at the spectacular view all the way to the distant mountain range, to acknowledge that with the stiffening breeze it was bloody cold.  Having trudged up there against my better judgement, I was determined to wait the five minutes to see the sun disappear behind the nearby mountain.  That done we beat a hasty retreat with our disgusted dog, and spent the next our in the warmest part of the cabin, the loft, finishing a new jigsaw puzzle of a wildlife scene in the Sonoran desert, a location and topic that helped banish the chill.

Dinner done, Bob returned to his Kindle and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, an astonishing novel by Jonathan Safran Foer.  I’d finished reading it since arriving at the cabin an suggested it to him as a possibility following his finishing rereading Jeff Shara’s books on the Civil War.  I’m happy to report that he’s hooked, even though he’s having a little shut-eye, stretched out on the couch with his sleeping Kindle in his lap.  Lots of fresh, chilly air at near 9,000 feet will do that too you!  I think I’ll try to quietly bundle up one last time and take the dog out for the last time today...could be exciting as it’s gotten quite windy outside -- I can hear it and the swaged Christmas lights are dancing on the front porch.  It will certainly feel even colder than it is with the wind-chill factored in.  No worries... warm bed snug with flannel sheets awaits.

The Christmas Diaries, Part 9

A merry, and very white, Christmas!

Christmas Day

Merry Christmas!  What fun to have it be a snow-filled white Christmas, the first we’ve had together, and the first for me in a long, long time.  We watched the sun hit the mountain across the valley, coffee in had, fire roaring.  We tossed an extra ration of seed out to supplement the feeders for the cold and hungry birds.  It was a bright clear day and we had a piece of the Cranberry-Orange Walnut bread to hold out for a big brunch later in the morning -- a big scramble of potatoes, peppers, onions, garlic, olives, tofu, and spinach...well seasoned and very welcome.

Around 1 PM our newly arrived neighbor buzzed over on his ATV to invite us over, their present opening session and lunch finished.  They have family with them, their daughter and her husband and two grandchildren -- all of whom we’ve known for some time now.  Just before leaving the phone rang and it was my daughter, calling to wish us a Happy Christmas from her husband’s family home in San Luis Obispo.  After a good long and cheerful conversation we headed down the hill and past the lake and headed up their steep drive to their cabin.  The drive was being plowed by none other than Santa!  Or at least it was being cleared by a guy driving a tractor with a plow who was wearing a Santa Hat.  

What sleigh?  What reindeer?

Margaret and Harry’s cabin is one of my favorite places to be, and nothing is better than coming in out of the cold to their enchanting space with a fire roaring in a  big stone fireplace.  There was a real Christmas tree decorated with flickering lights, incredible German decorations and music boxes, and a huge spread of homemade traditional Christmas cookies, some from recipes over 100 years old.  I’m always grateful to be in these friends’ presence.  Soon we were joined by “Santa” and his Dad, visiting from Texas.  Conversations swirled in the cosy cabin, sugar cookies were washed down with hot tea, and every where you turned there was someone else you were anxious to talk to.  Margaret encouraged us to stay for dinner, but she already had a houseful and we made a plan for them to pop over to see us in the next day or two, and made a date for them to have dinner with us late in the week.  It was a bit of a shock to step out into the late afternoon cold, the sun close to setting, but we had our own warm cabin to return to, and a dinner already prepped to finish up and pop in the oven.

Holidays are a bit of a test with our newish vegan diet.  I make the rare exception for desserts or dishes that I figure contain some butter, eggs, or milk.  And it can be challenging to come up with something fun and satisfying when tradition dictates a roast turkey or beef occupy center stage.  We had all the sides instead -- roasted acorn squash with a maple syrup glaze, a truly delicious vegan bread stuffing baked in a pan, homemade whole-berry cranberry sauce, and steamed broccoli.  We ate a little too much, out of obligation, and passed on dessert after having had our fill of Margaret’s wonderful cookies.  

Just before 9 PM, our usual bedtime (if we last that long), the phone rang and it was my husband’s grandsons.  Sitting next to him on the couch I could hear their excited voices, but not every word.  An animated discussion about glow-in-the-dark dinosaur puzzles and rocket ship PJ’s followed.  Snow levels of here and Denver where compared, and sledding possibilities in both locations discussed.  Tentative plans were made for a quick trip to Denver to see them before heading back south to Tucson.  For my husband especially, a perfect end to an otherwise very special Christmas.

The Christmas Diaries, Part 8

Late afternoon sun streams in on Christmas baking fresh from the oven

Christmas Eve, December 24th

Christmas Eve.  Baking.  Obviously.

We’re hoping to get some company during the next several days, both the just-dropping-by variety and friends for dinner.  Christmas is tomorrow and I was feeling festive and decided to lean into a bit of vegan baking, something new for me.  I made Cranberry Walnut Oatmeal Spice Cookies from Vegan Planet...pretty tasty through they didn’t flatten out like cookies.  I use a cookie scoop and the second two dozen I flattened with a wet hand before baking and they looked more like you would expect of cookies, though they make me want a cup of tea when I eat them.  In keeping with the cranberry theme, and much more successful, was a Cranberry-Orange Walnut bread -- almost as wonderful as the Silver Palate’s recipe (though that one had a lot of eggs and an embarrassing amount of butter).  

On Santa Watch

Christmas is sort of soft-pedaled at our house.  I love to decorate, but don’t go crazy.  We enjoy the Christmas lights on the front porch at least as much as the few folks that will see them.  I love the music we listen to for only a couple of weeks a year.  It’s fun to be with family and friends at this festive time, be we also enjoy some solitude during these longest nights.  We’re living in our forever-more Christmas present to ourselves, the cabin, so there is (at least currently) nothing under the tree for either of us.  And that’s fine, especially since we recently gifted ourselves with a new iMac and Kindles.  We buy presents for my husband’s elementary school-aged grandsons and shoot for something that strikes us as just right, without going consumer mad.  This year it was space-themed pajamas, jigsaw puzzles, and games.  I like to think of them opening the presents from us with all the excitement Christmas morning brings to children, and hope they like what’s under the wrapping.  We also hope that before too many more Christmases have passed they’ll have opened at least the gifts from us here at the cabin.

Snow angel -- next year I'll work on technique

This afternoon we took a walk towards the meadow on the plowed dirt road.  At our turn-around point my gaze fell on an almost pristine expanse of snow, untouched except for what looked like the faint track of some small rodent.  Something from long ago triggered a memory of making snow angels.  I couldn’t quite remember exactly how to get down in the snow to create the perfect impression, but after careful consideration I decided my falling-backwards days were over, at least in snow less than three feet deep and this was half that much.  I lowered myself down, stretched out tall...feeling how strange it felt to voluntarily lay down in the snow (actually not bad at all)...and moved my arms up and down to create my wings.  It’s certainly been over 50 years since I last did that.  Some things are worth repeating as an adult; I think we appreciate their particular fun more that when all the world was nothing more than our playground.

We’d left shovels at the bottom of the drive and collected them on the way to our friends’ cabin across the lake.  They were coming in late that evening after a big family dinner and we wanted to at least break through the three foot snow berm at the foot of their driveway that the plow had kicked up.  We went on to clear enough space for them to park a car before hiking up to their cabin, which was going to be anything but easy.

Over a simple dinner of our favorite vegan chili and some yummy pumpkin biscuits (Vegan Planet), we talked about Christmases past.  We’ve the last nine of them together, but both of us have memories of Christmases when we were kids, and when our children were kids.  It was odd how little we remembered about the gifts themselves...it was so much more about the experiences -- where we were living, who was with us, family and friends.  Later we settled down in front of the radio to listen to NPR’s A Christmas Carol, narrated by Jonathan Winters.   I never get tired of that story, and never give up hope that we can all learn the important lessons of kindness and caring, and remember them all year long.

We no longer have to go through the motions of leaving cookies and milk for Santa (no wonder he’s so chubby!), but we did decide to leave our outdoor lights on for our late-arriving neighbors...a little cheer before they reached their cabin after a cold, dark hike up a steep hill in two feet of snow.    

The Christmas Diaries, Part 7

Hard work, and a little patience required

Santa Arrives Early (on a grader!), December 23rd 

It was zero at dawn, and fell to minus 3 before we’d finished our coffee.  We weren’t surprised -- a friend in Chicago had called and checked for us online while we were on the phone and the prediction was for even colder than that.  And the night had been clear, so no coverlet of clouds to keep in whatever heat we’d gained during the day.  With first light the birds hit the feeders and suet block hard, and Bob scattered some seed just to facilitate their breakfast.  The pines and firs were laden with snow caught up in their needles, but it was dry and powdery, and even a Mountain Chickadee hammering open a seed on a branch could send a plume of snow falling to the ground.  With no more snow predicted, we knew this was the epitome of our snowy Christmas -- and yes, it would be white (our first ever together).  

Heading down the driveway

It warmed up to around freezing in the early afternoon, so we bundled up and headed out for a good walk.  It felt terrific to stretch out our legs after and lazy day inside during the storm.  Bob did some shoveling, but abandoned it when we decided to break our way through the snow on the drive on foot and walk along the plowed road below the cabin.  The bright sun was just beginning to do its work, melting a bit of the snow off rocks and plants, and letting the evergreens lose some of their snow load, bough by bough.  We were pretty quick walking under snow filled trees, knowing we could end up getting quite a load of the cold white stuff dumped on us without much warning.  Pictures I’d taken a few days ago, impressed with the decoration of the four inches we’d gotten the day after arriving, were now totally obsolete with the addition of another 10 inches, so there was nothing to do but retake them.

Walkin' in a winter wonderland...

Last summer's rose hips

We made, at my suggestion, an ill-advised attempt to break through the snow to the meadow.  With us tripping over unseen rocks and snags under the snow and the dog floundering in what was chest deep snow for her, we gave it up and discussed getting snow-shoes for next year on the walk back to the cabin.  I’m a little bit more superstitious than my husband, or maybe feel that getting sucker-punched by The Universe is not outside the realm of possibilities, and I figured that getting snow-shoes would mean we’d never see much in the way of snow up here at Christmas again.  It is, we’ve been told, more unusual than it is usual to have a thoroughly white Christmas up here.  And I’d hate to mess with that.  But hey, what about a sled!

Snow and ice; rock and lichen

Shortly after we got home Santa arrived early for us in the guise of our neighbor with the road grader, making short work of clearing our driveway.  It was going to be a Merry Christmas.

The Christmas Diaries, Part 6

Winter Wonderland, December 22nd 

No other name could apply.  We were living inside a snow globe.

It was still snowing at dawn and we had seven inches on flat surfaces around the cabin that had been cleared the day before.  It was 11 degrees, which sounds cold, and is, but so much better than the minus 13 we’d experienced last year.  We layered up, put the coat on the dog, and went outside to clear the decks and shovel a few paths around the cabin.  Bump went charging off down the drive, coming to an abrupt stop when the shoveled path ended and she met a near two foot wall of snow.  

Flocked with the real stuff

The birds were busy at the feeders, flitting around the deck chairs, sheltering underneath them.  One of them caught my eye...it looked familiar, but different somehow.  Our regular Gray-headed Junco had been joined by two other juncos, the Slate-colored Dark-eyed Junco and the White-winged Junco, neither of which I’d seen before.  A Junco Trifecta!  

Near the fire, a Kindle on your lap, a dog at your feet
and a snow-covered landscape outside...bliss!

It was a perfect day to stay inside near the fire, read, and watch the snow drift down.  The loft, always cosy and warm, had a puzzle of Colorado landmarks to be finished, and Bob was up to the task.  By sunset, shortly after 4 PM, the snow had stopped and it’s blanketing whiteness was as unmarred as it would be.  We counted ourselves lucky to have gotten a good snowstorm two years running, at least until we thought about how we’d get the car down the drive.  Oh well, we’ll worry about that some other day.

The Christmas Diaries, Part 5

A snug cabin in which to ride out the storm

Storm Warning, December 21st 

It’s nice to welcome winter in a place that has the quintessential look and feel of winter.  Snow on the ground and dusting the evergreens, a nice contrast and keeping it from looking at all bleak as it might in some landscapes, the temperature in the low-20’s appropriately brisk, to say the least.  Our wireless weather station has flashing snowflakes displayed for a “future forecast” (bit of an oxymoron, me thinks).  The sky is clear and a light blue at the horizon, intensifying at the zenith.  We’re hoping for several hours outside again this afternoon, knowing it might be the last comfortable outside time we get for several days.

Prepared

There’s a winter storm watch on from this afternoon and through tonight, tomorrow, tomorrow night and into the following day.  We could get nothing, or we could get the 2-5 inches they’re predicting, or we could get more.  Most assuredly we’ll dip down into single digits (on either side of zero degrees), but our cabin is so snug (thank you builder Brian), and our wood supply is essentially endless.  We’re provisioned well for a month (less well until the spring thaw).  We have little to worry about with a storm, and that is more than offset by the excitement (weather junkies that we are).  We have two big bookshelves filled with fiction, non-fiction, and reference books on nature and cooking, Kindles loaded up with reading material, an absolutely full iPod, NPR on the radio, one DVD to watch on the computer (Snowflower and the Secret Fan), jigsaw puzzles, games, two laptops, a sewing machine with projects galore, three different places to nap (the loft is the warmest), a phone to call family and friends, the chains on the SUV, a good dog, and binoculars near every window for bird watching.  And, thank goodness, we truly enjoy our own and each other’s company.

Sharing the road for a bit

After lunch the temperature climbed to near 40, so we put on a couple of layers plus our fleece vests and headed out for a pre-snowstorm walk.  It had clouded up and was looking quite gray in the northwest, so we knew we wouldn’t be going far.  We headed down the drive and up the main road in the opposite direction to Tuesday’s walk with our happy dog trotting out ahead.  We rounded a corner and found a neighbor’s dog lying in the road, keeping an eye on things.  He joined our dog for half a mile or so and then scenting with his nose deep in some tracks in the snow, headed off into the forest.  Bump took a few tentative steps to follow him, ended up in chest deep snow, and thought better of it, rejoining us on the road.  About a mile along we turned back into an freshening breeze and a darkening sky, and retraced our steps.  The snow scrunched underfoot, and with the increasing chill we were glad to get back to the warm cabin.

This way home...or maybe
we'll walk the driveway

It started snowing around 4 PM, and half an hour later we had an inch on the deck and were losing sight of the features across the valley.  We know that landscape so well that as it disappeared from view we still thought we could see the ghost of the mountain forming our horizon, but it was gone.  I took extra pleasure in making us a hot dinner -- oven roasted potatoes and a Greek veggie-tofu scramble -- which we devoured with a glass of Malbec.  The evening was spent with the porch lights on, watching the snow thicken and the depth increase.  We went to sleep snug under the quilt, unable to shake the vision of swirling wind-driven snow, wondering what we’d see when we looked outside in the morning.