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 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...

The Christmas Diaries, Part 2

Last year's raspberries casting their late afternoon shadows on the snow

Arrival...Sunday, December 18th

We did our typical trying-to-get-somewhere early morning wake-up at the motel, checked in with each other -- “Are you going back to sleep?  Me neither. Let’s go.” -- and were on the road by 5 AM.  We gassed up at Circle K, got coffees, and dug into our friend Geri’s Christmas present of zucchini bread before we’d hit I-25 North.  In the pre-dawn we congratulated ourselves on missing the blizzard that was coming through this area this evening, a blizzard that would, in fact, eventually close Raton Pass, our passage into Colorado.  At first light you could see the snow-chalked ground below the pinon pines and juniper, the white horizontal striping of the mesa ledges.  With some Windham Hill Christmas music collections playing, we watched it get light, enchanted with the snowy scene.  Our excitement mounted with every passing mile.

After a quick stop at our favorite Chinese restaurant in Woodland Park, The May Flower, we went on to Florissant, turned north, and soon hit dirt roads.  They were a bit snow-packed in places, so it was a slow trip in, but beautiful.  It felt like we’d been away for a few days instead of 10 weeks.  When we’d left in early October our neighbor had been fly fishing on the lake below the cabin; now they were ice fishing (and had a beautiful big rainbow trout to show for it) and ice skating through the powder that had fallen over the frozen lake.  

It was all good until we hit our driveway, much of it covered in nearly a foot of snow.  Someone, thank goodness, had driven up fairly recently, so we had their tracks to help navigate the steep, near quarter mile to the cabin.  We made a few runs at it, having to back up a time or two to get further along the unplowed drive.  When the cabin was in sight we decided to leave the car for a bit and hike on up through the snow, anxious to make sure the cabin was alright and that we had power and heat and no frozen pipes.  It proved to be in fine and welcoming shape, relatively warm inside (mid-50’s) thanks in part to the low angle of the sun flooding the cabin with light and the propane heater set to low just to keep the cabin, and its pipes, safe.  

It was great to arrive at a cabin that was fully ready to be occupied.  Both last Christmas and last summer we had either no, or not enough, furniture and there was much moving in and organizing to do.  This time it was turn-key ready, or as turn-key as a cabin like this can be.  We got all the power on, went down in the crawl space and turned on the well pump, checked for leaks, and got a fire going in the wood-burning stove.  My husband went back down the hill and finally managed to get the car up the drive (next time the chains will be put on before trying), and unloaded.  There was a ton of stuff to put away, fire-wood to be hauled up, and totes and duffles to be stowed, but we found time to sit for a short time on the front deck, a bit of a heat trap, where it was, oddly, sweater weather.  It was a mild day with a high in the low 40’s, and we knew the next day would be different, with a predicted high in the 20’s and a few inches of snow.  Perfect!

After an early dinner of some chili I’d made in Tucson and brought up in our cooler, we were in bed by 8 PM -- not so surprising when it gets dark at 5 PM -- and we slept the deep sleep of arriving home after a 900 mile journey.

The Christmas Diaries, Part 1

Somewhere...yawn...along I-25 heading north to Albuquerque

Departure...Saturday, December 17th

After waiting for 10 weeks to return to the cabin, it seemed there was a great deal to do at the last minute.  I’d decided to provision everything we’d need for two weeks before leaving, and when I started packing I wondered if we’d be able to fit it into our Honda CRV.  In the end Bump, our dog, had to be content with just over half of the backseat, and we were on the road early than we’d expected.  The seven hour run to Albuquerque is, frankly, a little boring, but it was good to get there and get settled.  We did have a treat spotting Sand Hill Cranes both flying south and on the ground in open fields along the Rio Grande Valley.  We knew that soon after heading north the next morning, we’d hit the pinon pine forests, rolling hills, buttes and mesas around Santa Fe, and it would be great scenery for the rest of the trip.

Remembering the Firsts

Arriving

It's been four weeks since our frantic closing up of the cabin and the toboggan ride down our long, steep, snow glutted driveway in our SUV.  It was an exhilarating first stay in the beautiful completed cabin, and exhausting too, feeling driven to get this image I'd been working towards for a year and a half out of my head and into reality.

Bottom of the toboggan run...oops, I mean driveway

We had to move out of the trailer to move into the cabin.  And then there was all the stuff we'd brought with us and a huge truckload of things stored in our friends' basement in Colorado Springs which required fetching.  After a couple of nights of sleeping on the floor on pads we realized our 60-something bodies were none to pleased with that and a 100 mile round trip run to Costco for a bed was an imperative.  We decided to stop by the Broadmoor Consignment stop, not far off our route in The Springs, just to have a look.  We ended up buying a table, a couch and an antique dresser; another trip to pick them up.  All the shelves in the kitchen a bathroom had to be lined before moving into those rooms.  And there was the kitschy fake white Christmas tree to get up and decorate and the colored lights to be put up on the porch.  Artwork I'd been collecting needed hanging, the bathroom towel bars, hooks and holders had to be installed, as did the swing-arm reading lamps in the bedroom.  Firewood had to be fetched from the pile and moved near the back door, and the fire needed tending relentlessly.  There was a lot to do, but it was exciting to see the vision of a finished, furnished cabin become a reality.

There were a lot of firsts:

First running water EVER!

First fire in the wood burning stove

First morning's light on the knotty pine ceiling

First snow storm

First cabin Christmas

First sub-zero (note the minus in front of the 13)

First overnight guests

First snow for a desert dog (an unhappy desert dog)

First hypothermia for a desert dog

First watching of ice skating on the lake below the cabin

We also had our first family visit; Bob's three nieces made the three hour trip from Denver for lunch and a hike, pre-snow (and we also had the first announcement of a pregnancy during that visit, a great-nephew with whom to look forward to sharing the cabin).  We had our first dinner guests, our dear friends from across the lake -- after years of incredible hospitality from them it was such a thrill to host them in the comfort of a real cabin.  We had neighbors stop by for hot chocolate, and other vigilant ones to check to see what the lights and chimney smoke were all about (they were relieved to find us there and not interlopers).

Each day was so fraught with "firsts", so thrilling, and yes, so exhausting.  After a year and a half of planning, consulting with our builder, Brian Shelton, two months of being on site during the construction, deciding on materials, looking for just the right things to help make it an "instant" home, and writing checks that made my hands shake, we were finally able to live inside the dream turned to reality.

It was so hard to leave right when I could see that I might be able to just sit and enjoy our labors for a day, but duty called.  The white knuckled, but successful 4-wheel drive sleigh ride down the long steep driveway behind us, the road slowly improved, and soon -- too soon -- we were heading south to our other home in the Sonoran desert where we'll once again dream of the reality of the cabin and look forward to a long, and often lazy, summer in the cool Colorado Rockies.

Desert homeward bound