Monday, July 2, 2012

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.