Learning

We’re a third of the way through our first summer sojourn in our new cabin in the Rockies.  Semi-permanent residence is a whole new ball game, and we have already begun thinking of this as the ‘shake-down’ summer.  There’s a lot that’s worked just as we expected, but there have been some surprises, and we have some learning to do.

Just about perfection...

Red-tail Hawk seen on a 'round-the-block hike

With most of the cabin furnishing and provisioning done (we’re heading into Colorado Springs again tomorrow to get a couple of bookcases and a small coffee table at an unfinished furniture place) we’re settling into more of what we feel will be the normal rhythm of life in this remote cabin in the Rocky Mountains.  As Harry, our neighbor across the lake and maker of carved bears, once said to me, “This is still your life up here, just in a different place,” and he’s right.  There are still chores, things to take care of and keep track of, and now two sets of household bills to pay.  We still have a social life to enjoy and friends and family to keep up with (and miss), no matter where we are.  There’s a LOT of togetherness, so far a good thing, and still forays into civilization for shopping, libraries, and eating out.  

Our life in Tucson is in many ways quite similar to here, despite it’s proximity to the conveniences of living near a city.  Our home is out in the Tucson Mountain foothills and we spend a lot of time outside hiking, tending our yard, or watching the abundant wildlife, just as we do here.  Mind you, in Tucson Costco is 10 minutes away and Sunflowers for rational quantities of fresh produce the same, so you can literally run out to do a biweekly shopping in less time than it takes me to drive to a store where I can buy a gallon of milk.  ‘Going to town’ here, something we do once a week, takes on the excitement you read about in Little House on the Prairie...it’s a big, carefully planned event.  If you forget to buy sugar, the hummers are going to be complaining all week (as they do the second they run low on sugar water, from about three inches off your nose).

Cabin Life Lesson #1 - Keep good lists of needs and wants for the weekly trip to town, and try not to make it resemble the Bataan Death March 

Best.  Ever.  Chocolate.  Cookies.

It’s interesting to go a week or more with what’s on hand, especially if you get a last minute call that you have incoming house guests.  I try to keep plenty of the staples -- milk, bread, and eggs around.  For those more perishable items such as fruit and veggies, I’ve come up with a few tricks.  Bags of romaine lettuce hearts keep well.  I have a jars of things like sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, olives, pickles, and pickled vegetable mixes around for when I can’t run out to get more fresh tomatoes.  Half and half, something I almost never have in Tucson, is a less perishable back-up for when the milk for coffee runs low, and as back-up to the back-up, I have a bag of powdered milk.  I make sure to have a few bags of frozen vegetables -- petite peas, corn, and French cut green beans in the freezer for when the fresh greens are gone.  I have stooped to dehydrated parsley, more for color than flavor in soups and stews.  I keep a good-sized jar of pesto (Costco’s is GREAT) in the fridge, not for pasta which we don’t eat much of, but for a wonderful herby base for making salad dressing (a big spoonful with a little olive oil, white wine vinegar or lemon juice, salt & pepper -- fab!), mixing with mayo for Italian sandwiches, tossed with rice or potatoes, as a pistou in soups, in scrambled eggs -- you get the idea --  is good for that fresh herb taste.  We eat the most perishable stuff, like strawberries, first...apples will keep.  I keep things on hand for bread baking, and corn bread is quick and delicious baked in a cast iron pan in the oven (which I can use all the time here, unlike Tucson).  I finally have my spice inventory up to make just about any kind of cookie we feel like (and with the hiking we’re doing, a couple of cookies a day seem to do no harm, just good.  Provisioning for a remote location is mostly common-sense, but we take it a bit more seriously here than we do in Tucson.

Cabin Life Lesson #2 - Provision wisely, be prepared to cook a LOT and well -- food matters

Cottontail taking shelter

It’s so obvious up here that we’ve moved into the habitat of the wildlife, not the other way around.  It’s almost like the physician’s motto, first do no harm.  While I was down at the ranch house making my bear post, the bear was at our cabin eating our niger thistle seeds, and probably getting ready to take on the regular seed and humming bird feeders while our dog cowered inside (as she should have).  When we saw the thistle seed feeder down, chewed up, and empty, we immediately scanned the area for the bear, realizing we may have interrupted it.  We didn’t see it, but we did hear it bellowing just over the rocks towards the lake.  The next day we got serious and suspended our feeders from pulleys high up in the trees around the cabin.  We can lower them for refilling, but a bear would (and could) have to climb for them, and this bear is looking for an easy meal.  If we have more trouble with the bear and bird feeders, we’ll consider taking them down all together, though we are very much enjoying the fantastic bird-watching from our cabin.

Cabin Life Lesson #3 - Do all you can to live in harmony with the wildlife

Sunset from the swing

After about six weeks we admitted to ourselves, and each other, that we were feeling a bit restless; maybe a little bit bored.  Personally, I feel doing without the easy diversions of streaming video and personalized radio stations, movie theaters and libraries a short drive away, constant access to the Internet, and shops loaded with things you don’t need is a good thing, especially on a part-time basis.  My husband, not so much.  We haven’t seen quite as much of friends and family as we’d expected, and do miss our Tucson life in several ways -- our fairly busy social life, our volunteer work (and those we work with) at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and Saguaro National Park, taking advantage of all the mod cons, and for my husband, recently retired, not work, but having more of a schedule.  This is definitely different, and mostly wonderful, but not without it’s challenges.  As with everything, no matter how great things are, they can become a little bit routine.  So we’ve decided to mix it up a bit, do more things, and make sure to do plenty of what’s so good here in the mountains.  First, remember how great it is to be here in the cool instead of in the 100+ degrees of a Tucson summer.  We’re reading more about the natural history of this area, to better understand and appreciate where we are (and how to be a good guest here).  We’re making sure we take a walk or hike every day, even if it’s just down the trail to the meadow, or more often our two mile ‘around the block’ hike, or to the overlook, or Cedar Mountain, or hiking the roads.  The hiking helps the cookies make sense.  Having overdosed on several books a week, we’re playing more games after dinner (I am getting walloped at Rummikub at the moment), doing the occasional jigsaw puzzles (I have a collection of some really good museum ones), and yes, listening to more NPR (but not too much) so we can bitch about congress and gird our loins for the campaign that is apparently (and appallingly) already underway.  We also have some non-provisioning day trips planned to experience more of this part of Colorado.  Oh, and more sunsets from the swing above our cabin.

Karen's Overlook, a favorite hiking destination with a view of Turkey Rock

Cabin Life Lesson #4 - Don’t get lazy, take anything for granted, or forget how wonderful your life is; be grateful and Be Where You Are Fully

More life lessons, cabin and otherwise, to come...no doubt.  In the meantime we’re off to play dominos with some friends at another cabin tonight and tomorrow we’ll head to town -- maybe I’ll get a piece of calico for a new apron or a shiny tin cup (reference may only be clear to lovers of Laura Ingalls Wilder).   

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.