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 3

Let it snow!

Deck the Halls, December 19th  

After a good 8+ hour sleep we woke up to clouds rolling in with the first few tiny snowflakes falling.  Before long the mountain across the valley disappeared in the snow and low clouds, and over the course of the day the snowfall increased, the light powder blowing off the trees and roof in displays of aerodynamic physics.  We put out seed feeders and a suet block for the birds, and didn’t have to wait long for them to show up.  Stellar’s Jays, Mountain Chickadees, White-breasted Nuthatches, Juncos, and and Downy Woodpeckers were soon sheltering in the ponderosa pines near the feeder.  The larger Hairy Woodpecker rode the suet block, hung from our hanging basket hook, like it was a Tilt-a-Whirl.

Bump the Snow Dog, decked out herself!

Homemade soup with Tina's great whole wheat bread

We spent the day reveling in being at the cabin, fortifying ourselves with good from-scratch food like oatmeal with tart dried cherries and toasted walnuts and a sturdy vegetable soup with red lentils and ruffled campanelle pasta eaten with a fantastic loaf of home-made whole wheat bread given to us by our Tucson friend, Tina.  We got out the Kindles and read by the fire, watching the snow swirl outside.  The temperature had descended all day, from 24 degrees at dawn to 11 degrees at bedtime -- and it was hard to get our desert dog, the one with no undercoat, but a real cute over-coat from L.L.Bean, to go outside to do the necessaries.  We all bundled up and took a few chilly walks to the top of the saddle, returning covered in snowflakes, and ready to warm up by the fire.  But we had one other “chore” to get done, one we’d been looking forward to...decking the halls.

Getting started with Frank Sinatra singing carols on the iHome

Last Christmas, for our first stay at the new cabin, we’d brought up a retro-style three-foot tall white Christmas tree with multi-color fairy lights and a tote full off decorations, some new, some old, and most from some fun scavenger hunts at Tucson thrift stores.  We’d loaded some favorite Christmas music on our iPod and played Frank Sinatra for me and John Denver and The Muppets for Bob...our respective traditional tree-trimming music from the days when we shared that job with our children.  With the tree up and decorated, the window sills festooned, and glittery snowflakes hanging throughout the cabin, we broke out some wine, and watched the snow in the fading light, the reflection of our tree hanging specter-like in the front window, merging with the darkening ponderosas outside.  

Finished

We ended the day continuing the Rummikub game we’ve been playing since May of 2006 (our first summer stay at the old trailer); at some point in the distant past I was ahead, but now I am hopelessly behind, but it’s fun and I get whining rights.  My husband is gently triumphant in his near constant victories.  We are nearing the bottom of the second side of the old steno-book page, a relic from Bob’s Dad’s court reporter days, and I wonder if it isn’t time to start anew.  Or, as Bob suggested, we could just get out Blokus and I could whip him consistently for a change.  At least I’m not throwing Uno cards across the table as I have been known to do, albeit with a smile on my face.

Ho, Ho, Home...

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.

...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. 

One Month Down...

Looking for rain, same as Tucson...

...three to go.

It seems utterly impossible that we’re a quarter way through our cabin stay.  I have this visual of me grasping a large rope with my heels dug in hard, but being pulled along in spite of my best efforts.  The days reel by, evaporating hour by hour, to the point that I sometimes feel I must have fallen asleep for some of it (and we do take the occasional nap) -- how can it be 4 PM?  

How we spend our time:

Projects and Reading

Now that we are mostly sorted out and stowed away, less work and more play becomes a reality.  Or projects that veer away from being chores and are more like fun -- like forest clearing for my husband, or sewing projects for me.  And there’s always a stack of books to be read, and we’re doing quite well at that.  My two favorites of the half dozen or so I’ve read so far were Swamplandia!, by Karen Russell (fanciful and fascinating) and a real knock-out by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham (for The Hours), By Nightfall.  We are now card-carrying members of the Rampart District Libraries -- their card has a panorama view of Pike’s Peak -- and can use either of the libraries, a smaller one in Florissant and a big one in Woodland Park.  And get this...we are of an age that we have “earned the right to be late” and pay no fines.  Nice, especially since it’s the better part of a hour to get to the library and we’d never make a special trip just to return books.

We love the local libraries -- and these two books especially!

Family and Friends (and hiking and beer making)

Happy Birthday Marc!

We had our third set of house guests.  Our friends from Tucson who moved to Colorado Springs four years ago, and who’ve hooked us up with everything from our dog (a rescue) to storage and hauling of our cabin things, came up recently for an overnight.  They’d come up in their Range Rover New Year’s Eve for the night (not that any of us were up to ring in the New Year) for sub-zero weather and a foot of snow on the ground (dedicated friends).  This time the weather was lovely, which was a good thing as it was Marc’s birthday.  We ate all our meals outside and took a long hike with the dogs; then Marc and my husband brewed beer, an ESB.  They filled us in on their Search and Rescue work before heading home for a few hours sleep before reporting for duty up at 11K+ feet on Pike’s Peak for some crazy car race called the Hill Climb (just in case someone went OFF Pike’s Peak).  An hour and half or so away, we’ll see lots of them this summer.

Can we see the cabin from here?

Shady chat during a hike rest

Taking the dogs to water along Little Turkey Creek

Even with everyone having five acres up here, neighbors are a big part of cabin life.  Most folks don’t have phones, so we’re never surprised by drop-in visitors.  Just taking a long walk here is a social experience if you don’t head straight into Pike National Forest.  We’re planning to walk all the roads here, roads named by my husband’s father, Fred, before summer is over.  We got a good start on that yesterday, hiking a mile to one of the highest roads around here.  It was a warm day, over 80 degrees (sorry Tucson friends; I heard about your 112s), and our dog found a trickling stream on the outer reaches (she has a whole lake near the cabin) of the hike.  She disappeared into the willows a brown and white dog and emerged a black dog.  She suffered her first bath in frigid well water when she got home.  But the steep hikes through the 800 acres here are well worth it.  The views are so varied from different places in the community, and it’s interesting to put names with lots, trailers, “shed” homes, and cabins.  

For the handful of us that are here for months at a time, getting together is becoming routine.  Every Wednesday night we gather, usually at someone’s cabin for games.  Yes.  Games.  Mostly we’ve played dominoes -- new fangled dominos for me, white with colored dots -- a game called Mexican Train (I don’t understand the reference and it can’t be P.C., but it’s right on the box).  It really is a hoot.  Last week we played Farckle, sort of a poker type game, but with dice and a lot more luck than skill.  Still, it’s fun to egg people on into risking their points by appealing to their greedy natures.  It’s a nice low key evening that combines catching-up with some friendly trash-talking competition.  It feels a little pre-TV (most folks don’t bother with that up here), or Little House on the Prairie, but I like it.

Trips to “Town”

Town refer to the little hamlet of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Florissant, a Florissant/Divide combo, Woodland Park, or the Big Adventure of going to Colorado Springs.  No matter which we do, we look forward to Buckin’ Blues (blueberry buckwheat pancakes) at the Hungry Bear, some quite good Chinese at the May Flower (both in Woodland Park), or some exceptional North Carolina style barbeque at a little old log cabin in Divide.  I will confess to enjoying the familiarity of the hot dog/soda combo at Costco for $1.50 if we go to the Springs.  

We look forward to our town trips, about one every week, which can include a trip to Waste Management to get rid of trash and recycling, Goodwill for a treasure hunt (plaid long-sleeved Nautica shirts for $4 for my hubby), various groceries (Costco if we go all the way to the springs), the hardware store, sometimes the feed store for fresh eggs and bird seed, and always the library and the Florissant Post Office.  We’re happy to go, but even more happy to get out of civilization and hit the dirt road on the way home. 

It was odd to have our normal 18 days at the cabin time-frame pass by and here we still are.  For so long the past six years we scrambled for every day we could get here, and now we have this four month embarrassment of riches.  The “we’re here, we’re here, we’re here!” racket is quieting down in our brains and we’re beginning to relax into our second home, its unique routines, and are thinking about some day trips (other than to town).  There are several ghost or semi-ghost towns in the area, all involving beautiful drives.  We want to go see the eagles that hang out in the next town west of us, Lake George.  The Nature Conservancy has a preserve nearby, the High Creek Fen, a continually boggy area similar to a cienega in southern Arizona, and similarly loaded with birds.  There are a lifetime of special places to see in this area of Colorado, and we plan to see most of them.

  

Feeling Kneady

All of us have experienced loss.  For long-time cooks, loss often takes the form of an old favorite recipe, mysteriously gone from the collection of index cards or the shoebox of favorites clipped from magazines.  In my life I have lost two that were old standards which I started baking in my 20s, coming up on 40 years ago.  One was for a truly spectacular lime chiffon pie with a crumb crust from Sunset  magazine; the other was for oatmeal bread which was part of a Christmas baking section from the Family Circle Encyclopedia of Cooking, each of the dozen-plus volumes collected week by week as a grocery store bonus.  Somewhere during the dozens of moves I’ve made in my life, some international, I parted with the encyclopedia set, but I swear I wrote that bread recipe down somewhere.  Alas, it seems good and lost.

The last time I lived (and baked) in the mountains it was in a funky cabin at around 6,000 feet in Descanso, outside of San Diego near Cuyamaca State Park.  I baked dozens of loaves of this bread in the old cabin stove, the kind that was raised a good foot and a half off the floor on metal legs.  There’s little better in life than good bread that has cooled as long as you can stand after taking it from the oven, spread with soft butter.  Staff of life and all that.  

We’ve been at our new cabin for a month now.  All the urgent tasks have been accomplished -- furnishing the loft, registering the old Arizona truck in Colorado, making curtains and hanging more artwork.  The essential guests have come and gone (for now).  The pattern of several hours of reading a day is established, the forest is being tended by my husband and his chainsaw, and the dog is on squirrel patrol near the bird feeders.  There’s time to relax, TRULY relax, and my mind seems to be looping back to cherished experiences that I can try to recreate for us...mostly involving food.  

We’re reminiscing on childhood favorites -- my husband’s all time, hands down, number one meal his mom made is boiled hotdogs, fried potatoes, and Van de Kamps (accept no substitute!) pork and beans.  Ohhhkaaaayyyyy.   My mind turns to my Grandma’s peach cobbler (definitely on the menu for this summer), creamy mashed potatoes (or crack potatoes as I call them, and we had them over the weekend...yum!), and even those split hotdogs stuffed with cheese (American no doubt) and wrapped in refrigerated crescent rolls my mom used to make, so good right out of the oven.  

We were running low on bread and I wasn’t up for another trip to town, so today I tried to replicate the oatmeal bread of the lost recipe.  I remembered that you poured boiling water over the oats in the bread bowl to soften them, adding a knob of butter and either honey or molasses and a little salt, leaving it for half an hour or so to meld and cool off a bit.  Once that time was nearly up I added two packets of dried yeast to some warm water, spiking it with a sprinkling of sugar to give the yeast something to eat, and walked away for a few more minutes, fearing that watched yeast would not swell and foam.  Trick worked, and I added the yeasty liquid to the softened oats and other goodies.

Now for the part requiring some muscle.  I added a cup of “high altitude” flour and stirred.  Another cup and stirred...it was harder.  The third cup of flour yielded a stiff dough and after another little sprinkling of flour I abandoned the spoon for my hands.  After working the dough into a ball I turned it out onto the floured countertop and started one of my favorite parts of bread baking -- kneading.

Kneading dough is one of the best cooking experiences you can have.  Let’s face it -- food is a sensualist’s dream.  You look at it, the beauty of the form and color.  You smell it, the savory smell of a roast in the oven or the cinnamon scent of snickerdoodle cookies.  You hear it, the sizzle of bacon in a cast iron skillet.     You taste it, salty, sweet, bitter, sour.  And you feel it, the mouth-feel when you eat it, and with your hands when you prepare it.  And bread making is very hands on.

When first turned out of the bowl, the dough is still a bit crumbly with bits of unincorporated flour clinging to the lumpy surface.  Kneading works in the last of the flour and as you work the dough -- push away, rotate a quarter turn, fold toward you, repeat -- the glutens in the dough begin to form and turn the dough elastic and smooth.  When the dough no longer sticks to your hands and is as smooth and soft as a baby’s backside, you’re done.  Forming the dough into a ball by turning it in on itself, place it top side down in the washed and buttered bread bowl and turn it over.  Cover the bowl with a clean cloth and place it in a warm draft-free place for a couple of hours.  Punch down, divide, form into loaves and place in bread pans.  Bake until the loaves are browned and sound hollow when thumped.  Turn out onto a cooling rack.  Brush with soft butter.  And wait for it to cool; probably the hardest part of baking bread.

Deb’s Lost Oatmeal Bread

1 cup dry oatmeal (I use Coach’s Oats)

1/4 powdered milk

1/2 cup wheat germ

1/4 cup honey or molasses

generous teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons butter

1 3/4 cup boiling water  

Combine above ingredients in large bowl, stir, leave for half an hour.

two envelopes dried yeast

1/4 cup warm water (105 - 115 degrees)

1/2 teaspoon sugar

Combine above ingredients, stir, and leave to rise and foam for 5 minutes or so -- then add to bread bowl with  lukewarm oatmeal mixture.

Mix in about three cups of flour, one at a time, until stiff dough forms.  Turn out onto floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic and no longer sticky.

Turn in buttered bowl, cover, and leave in a warm place until doubled in size.  Punch down, divide, shape into loaves by turning in on itself, place in bread pans, and let rise halfway in pans.  Bake at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes (start checking at 35) until bread is brown and sounds hollow to thumping.  Turn onto cooling rack and brush with soft butter.  Cool.  Enjoy!

Special Days

Everyday is special at the cabin, but some are more special than others.

Father’s Day

Oldest and youngest living generations, playing Angry Chicken on an iPhone

My husband’s son brought the grandsons back for a couple of days including Father’s Day.  It was great to see the three generations of the family so tied to this place together, the two older generations with a combined history here of over 80 years.  The boys have been coming since we put a trailer on the property, post-Hayman fire, six years ago.  That’s a lot of history, but there’s much more to come.  It was one of the primary reasons we built the cabin -- to let the family tradition and legacy carry on.

Into the woods...

There’s something special about the male gender, especially when they gather in numbers.  From playing Angry Chicken Birds [oh, did I take some ribbing on this error -- it's okay, I'm proud of not being up on all the latest video games] on an iPhone to target practice, it’s better if it’s loud and involves explosions.  I was happy to have some hammock reading time and to let the boys be boys.  

Not that there wasn’t a softer side -- forest wanders to look for bugs and the nine year old’s serious discussion with his “hammocked” grandpa regarding the theory of relativity (believe it).  My husband’s son brought up the fixin’s for a truly fabulous dinner.  A very accomplished cook, including extensive cooking classes and internships at high-end restaurants (his day job is a prosecuting attorney), it is always such a treat to have him cook for you.  He made us Colorado lamb chops, thick and succulent and the best-by-far lamb I’ve ever had.  He deglazed the pan with veal stock (he makes his own), wine, shallots, butter, and a sprig of fresh rosemary.  There were incredible scalloped potatoes and a wonderful arugula salad as well, and the most astonishing bottle of wine.  His meals are always “the best I’ve ever had,” and he certainly deserves the chef’s hat he got for Father’s Day -- along with a copy of The French Laundry.

A son's dinner for his dad on Father's Day

Father's Day presents included a well deserved chef's hat

A grandson initiated discussion about the Theory of Relativity (would I kid you?)

Casey, my second favorite dog (don't come to the cabin without him!)

Laundry Day

Okay, this is a chore even here, but the novelty of hanging the fragrant clean linens out in the middle of a forest (no poopy HOA rules here) to air dry in the dry crisp air of the Rockies brings a great deal of satisfaction.  

Tide getting overlaid by the scent of pine

First Day of Summer

We’ve been here just over three weeks and I am already fretting about the time going to quickly.  My first thought was that by the time the season changes again in late September, we’d be getting ready to head south, back to Tucson.  And despite how much we love our lives there, it’s too new and too wonderful here to not want to slow our time at the cabin down.  True, we’ve been very busy since we arrived getting set up and provisioned, much of which will not have to be repeated every time we arrive for the summer.  That’s beginning to be less pressing, and hopefully soon we’ll experience more of what we can expect to experience in all our summer’s to come...more rambling.

Colorado columbines along our driveway

We took a long, slow wildflower walk on the first full day of summer.  The last full day of spring brought almost an inch of much needed rain, and with the warming temperatures -- meaning into the 70s most days -- the wildflowers are really coming into their own.  Here are some highlights:

Lady bug, lady bug...

New growth on spruce

Wild geraniums are everywhere

Down by our spring

A barely begun currant up on the saddle behind the cabin

Male broad-tailed hummingbird (yes, I was this close -- not telephotoed)

...and female