The Adventure Continues

Sunday, August 15th

Today was my last “off” day before heading home.  Tomorrow I’ll dash to the nearby -- well, a little over an hour’s drive -- mountain town of Woodland Park.  I’ll throw in a load of clothes at the laundromat, pick up my husband’s chainsaw that’s been in for a tune-up, return some paint supplies we didn’t use since we didn’t do the staining ourselves, and visit the library to check emails, post to this blog, and find a couple of DVD’s to borrow for bear visitor distraction in the dark hours.  I’ll also stop by the Forest Service and ask advice about my bear issue.  Someone told me they’ll give you a couple of M-80 fireworks to discourage, but not hurt, a bear that has become a regular visitor.  But doesn’t that mean opening the door?  

During the rest of my remaining time here, just three days, I’ll hold my breath while Contractor Brian shingles our steep 45 degree roof, inventory and organize the lights, door knobs, faucets, and other items I’ve bought for the cabin that will be installed in my absence, get the trailer ready to leave, and hopefully see some neighboring friends that are due here any day now.

I spent much of today on the covered part of the deck my contractor rushed so that I could experience what will be one of the most frequented and best loved parts of the cabin before leaving.  My morning included a travel mug of mocha and an afghan draped over my shoulders.  Later I loaded up one of my Mexican shopping bags with water, binoculars, bird books, wildlife and wildflower guides, a couple of novels, and a sliced apple with peanut butter for lunch and returned to the porch.  I didn’t get much fiction read, but spent a great deal of time reviewing Rocky Mountain flora and fauna, and ID’d a new bird, the diminutive blue-gray gnatcatcher.  It’s amazing what you see if you sit quietly and patiently with a pair of binoculars.  

Strictly decorative puff ball clouds turned more serious late this afternoon, and a few fat drops fell on me in the hammock where I’d retreated when the strong 4 PM sun had claimed the porch.  Thunder rumbled a bit and then quit, but by sunset the clouds were building in the west and heading my way.  The velvet antlered buck and his doe that frequent our site crossed the saddle and disappeared into the densest part of the forest behind me.  The sky turned orange both where the sun was setting and reflecting off the cumulus to the east.  I pushed my luck watching the show from the high rocks a hundred yards from the trailer as twilight fell fast and I wondered what my strategy would be if a bear beat me home.  

I’m now secure inside my “bread box”.  The clouds that made sunset so stunning are now illuminating the sky with explosive flashes of lightning, and the thunder is rolling around the valley like a tympani drum concert.  Nothing is striking too close, and that’s good as I’m quite aware I’m sitting on a ridge in an oversized steel can.  It’s raining off and on, big drops, but nothing too hard, hopefully just enough to keep bears and racoons snug in their lairs, just as Bump and I are snug in ours.  

Now if I only had an indoor loo...

The Last Weekend

First touch of the sun

Saturday, August 14th

I’m sitting in my trailer after a full day of “assisting” with the cabin build.  It’s dark outside -- I make sure to be inside the trailer by Bear O’clock, before the latest stage of twilight.  Something fairly light just ran across the roof of the trailer, and I can hear soft snuffling and a bit of low grunting or growling outside (or is that my dog snooring?).  This has been the pattern for the past several days, ever since we got “beared”.  Today when I got in the C-RV to go down to the ranch house for a shower I noticed some crumbly humus-rich forest dirt on the door handle, not what would splash up from a mud puddle on our dirt roads.  I think something tall enough to reach the handle gave it a try; I’m glad I’ve been locking the car.  Bob’s truck has bear paw and drippy nose marks on it too.  The noises outside right now could be a racoon -- they make a sound like a someone trying, and failing, to start a chainsaw at some distance away.  I’m trying to be relaxed about this stuff, especially now that I’m alone up here and don’t have my husband to alert with big eyes and nervous giggles.  I know I have no place on a bear’s food pyramid, but I also know I don’t want to cross paths with one.  I’ll stay in here (with the rare foray out for a pit stop after making some human noise and sweeping the area with my flashlight), and they can stay out there. 

The cabin was stained yesterday, a gorgeous transparent taupe that lets the golden tones of the wood shine through just a bit.  Advised against dark paint colors for the doors (they’re steel sheathed and get hot in the sun), I chose a soft, almost silvery sage green that looks wonderful with the siding and the driftwood colored shingles.  The gray green door will look great opening onto the Granny Smith apple green flooring that will run through the entry, kitchen, bedroom and bath.  The cabin promises to be a pallet of calming colors that don’t match, but blend well with the forest around us. 

Yes, SIR!

It’s my last weekend at the cabin project for the summer.  Today was a busy day with our contractor Brian putting up much of the support framing for the wrap around deck.  I made myself useful by cleaning up all the scrap piles of wood and policing the site, doing a little shovel and rake work leveling out the odd high or low spots around the foundation, moving cut deck joists to where they were needed, and occassionally holding the “dumb end” of the tape measure while Brian “racked” the deck supports, making sure they were perfectly square.  

Brian’s goal for today was to make sure I had a deck to sit on under the porch on the front of the cabin, and he accomplished that.  Before he left we were able to sit on the deck, temporarily a plywood surface, along with my neighbor Nancy, and raise our glasses of wine and bottles of beer to the best builder west of the Mississippi.  When Brian lived in the New England area he was the best builder east of the Mississippi, but I’m glad he’s on this side now.  

After dinner I mosied on down to the cabin again with a glass of wine and watched the first sunset from the deck, and was so sorry my husband is no longer here to share it with -- he’d have been so thrilled.  I did my best to enjoy it for the both of us (it wasn’t hard), trying a little mental telepathy, sending the blissful vibes to him in Tucson.  The sun set at 7:40, off to my right a bit.  Drifts of innocent clouds moved straight towards me, glowing first golden and then coral while the forest air quickly cooled.  The porch roof caught and amplified the burble of Deer Lake spilling into Turkey Creek below.  A quarter moon, brightening by the minute, hung low over Hackett Mountain.  The last of the daylight birds glided past into the pines and firs below, their final calls fading into quiet.  I thought of the countless sunsets we’d enjoy from that deck, the smell of dinner still lingering in the cabin behind us, the conversations we’d have, the laughter, the tender moments.  So many precious times lay ahead in this place.

I can hardly believe I’ve been here for two months this summer, or that it’s almost over.  I’ll be back in Tucson in less than a week, and that includes two days of driving.  Tomorrow is my last “free” day during this summer of building, and I’m planning on making the most of it by having coffee on the new front porch of the cabin, taking a nice walk with my pooch Bump, returning back to that porch for a good long sit with a book and my binoculars nearby for bird watching.  Then three more days of watching the construction -- shingling is probably next -- and pitching in when I can be useful, and then it’ll be time to pack up and head south.  As hard as leaving this place and this project will be, I’m looking forward to a happy reunion with my husband back in Tucson, where together we can dream of all the Rocky Mountain summers to come.  

Doors, Chimneys, Shingles, and Night Visitors

We have two exterior doors now that lock and a chimney that is hooked to pretty much nothing.  The shingles have arrived and some sit atop the loft roof, awaiting installation.  It's been a week of subs -- John and his son Alex from Mad Dog Plumbing, Guido for electrical, and the Western Fireplace team to fit the chimney, a necessity prior to shingling.  Richard the painter will come do the exterior staining on Friday, a job that constant rain prevented us from doing while my husband was still here.  

Bob's back at work in Tucson now and leaving almost brought him to tears.  I'm here for another week or so to answer questions and be able to help make decisions about the placement of lighting fixtures, switches, and outlets, and at least one more trip to big box stores in Colorado Springs.  Sadly, the old lights I sought out and purchased cannot be installed, at least not before final inspection, so my list of lighting fixtures to purchase will be a little longer than I'd anticipated.  I'm surprised Home Depot doesn't roll out the red carpet when I pull into the parking lot, but then again..

After spending the night with Bob's sister in Denver before she oh-so-kindly dropped him at the airport shuttle at 5 AM (!!!), she and I spent the morning catching up and harvesting from her fabulous garden we capped the visit off with lunch at a fabulous Indian buffet.  Filled with terrific food, I headed back to the wilderness, running the gauntlet of heavy rains near Colorado Springs, a rock slide near Manitou Springs, and a black as night storm that felt like I was driving through the Gates of Hell in Divide.  The dirt roads were slick with mud, so it was very slow going once leaving the pavement.  Over a dozen squishy slippery miles later I pulled up behind our trailer, relieved to have finally gotten home safe and sound.

My protector.  Right.

Or had I?  How'd our seven gallon blue water jug end up so far from the trailer?  And where were my bird feeders?  The propane tank from the gas grill was tossed aside and the drip pan lay in a nearby low-growing juniper.  Large paw prints covered the trailer and the windows had been smeared by a large and drippy nose.  We'd been beared.  Having had some success with seed from the feeders, a suet block (where the heck was the wire holder for that?!), and the grill I figured the bear might return for a second helping.  Bump and I were inside with the doors locked as darkness fell.  Around 2 AM I awoke to a shuffling sound on the deck, but the flashlight was useless for looking outside, and by the time I'd gotten up and turned on the porch light, whatever had been there had moved on.  The next morning, our contractor, Brian Shelton, came up to check it out.  He warned me to close the sturdy louvered windows at night (I hadn't), as all bears needed was to hook a nail, but that if I made sure to leave nothing outside a bear would be interested in that in a night or two it would stop coming around -- just like we'd quit going to a grocery store whose shelves were bare.  Last night I kept the porch light on, closed the windows and opened the ceiling vents (inconvenient with the sprinkle we had around midnight.  Before bed I heard something on the deck, but quickly switched on the radio and by the time I looked out I saw nothing.  This morning the bucket we keep outside for hauling water was turned over, but nothing more.

I'm considering turning on the radio loud some time after midnight tonight (oh for an M-80) and waiting for a few minutes before putting our pooch on a leash and going outside to see the Perseids meteor shower, which should be spectacular here -- the stars on a clear night with nothing special going on knock your socks off, so maybe a meteor shower would be worth the risk.  Or maybe I'll just have a bowl of freshly picked wild raspberries with whipped cream and call it a night.

Warm from the sun

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Home

Robert Redford, eat your heart out

The cabin is beginning to look, and feel, a lot like home.  The roof with its black paper coat awaiting shingles is weatherproof, so we have been able to experience the shelter the cabin will provide from sun and precip.  The closer it moves towards completion, the more we love it.

The view from the loft

It’s been a week of decisions.  We reverted to our long ago flooring picks when we were advised that the vinyl floors we fell in love with were not only quite pricey, but required mar-free subfloors and days to mop up the oozing glue after putting them down.  Actually, going back to some original thought will give us a cabin with more of the casual “good enough” flavor we wanted in the first place.  The kitchen, bath, and bedroom will have foot square Armstrong commercial vinyl tiles, quite rigid, in a speckled color they call Granny Smith, reminiscent of the apple with some sages tossed in the mix.  We found an engineered laminate “wood” floor with a hand-hewn look named Sand Hickory which is very pretty with the hickory cabinets.  I’ll be looking at tile or slate for under the wood burning stove.  

I simplified the kitchen a bit, making it a straight L shape without the little return on the far end, saving not only on the cabinets, but more importantly on the Formica countertops which are a pretty hazy soft yellow just touched in places with apple green.  The simpler cabinet configuration saved some money on the countertops which are frankly, to me, the most outrageously expensive part of the build so far.  But you’ve gotta have them.  

What the Rocky Mountains DOESN”T need is another brown cabin with a brown or green roof.  We’ve chosen a sandy gray/beige color for the semi-transparent stain and the shingles are a driftwood color of mixed brown, blue-gray, and light beige speckles.  I’m thinking of painting the front door a dull medium red color.  I picked up interior paint chips in a color that looked good with the flooring and cabinets and put them up on several of the cabin walls and a week later they still look right, a yummy color I have only just recognized as the color of dulce de leche ice cream, pale caramel with a hint of yellow.  I’m bound to be hungry all the time here.

The view from the bottom of the stairs

Fireweed, the slimmest of silver linings

We’re getting afternoon into evening rains now -- one day we had 2.6 inches in just a couple of hours! -- and it is hurt-your-eyes green here.  The wildflowers are doing well, making a recovery from the late season hailstorm that drove us out of here almost two months ago.  I have never been here this time of year before and our site is riddled with thousands of raspberry plants, burgeoning with ripe wild berries.  You can eat as many as you can stand to pick, fighting off the chipmunks and golden mantle ground squirrels.  Our contractor, Brian Shelton, cannot believe we have never seen a bear up here, a critter that would be serious competition for the fruit.  Maybe it’s just that since we’re never here this time of year -- that is, up to now -- we’ve just missed this pilferer.  We know black bears inhabit these mountains and hear about their escapades in the interfaces between humans and wilderness -- scattered trash, stolen 40 pound sacks of dog food, and a taste for the sweet syrup from hummingbird feeders and cooling cherry pies on kitchen counters.  This is a place that makes it clear to you that you are only borrowing this land for a brief time and are still obliged to share it with its original inhabitants.  It feels right.  

Wild (and delicious) raspberries on red rocks behind the cabin

Back for More

Tucson tried, but failed, to keep us there with a beautiful soft sunset our last night before heading back to Colorado.  It had been a tough month of wanting badly to be elsewhere, not to mention the searing heat and the late monsoon.  We did the trip right this time, with a layover in Albuquerque after a seven hour drive.  It seems we had to leave home to experience rain, which we did a few hours south of our first day’s destination, and we were treated to a lovely view across the Rio Grande valley, filled with rain, to the brightly lit bluffs to the east.

Travel day number two found us anxious to get on the road.  We had another seven hours of driving to do, plus some brief provisioning stops, just enough for a few days as we wanted to catch our contractor, Brian Shelton, onsite before he headed home for the weekend.  Turning west onto 24 out of Colorado Springs, we climbed through the gorgeous Ute Pass with a passel of other travelers pulling trailers and pop-up campers and ATV’s, all trying to get a jump on the weekend.  We gloated that we were heading up for weeks, not days.  Arriving, we could see the framed peak of the cabin from the road below, and whooped at the top of the drive as we saw the cabin with most of the siding and windows in place, and the roof half sheathed.  It was our first complete view of the shape of the cabin and we were thrilled.  My husband even had a couple of hours to pitch in with the work before Brian and his son, Brett, headed out.

Over the weekend we cleaned up around and in the cabin, my husband moving lumber into sorted piles, beginning his work on revegetating our abandoned down road, having a little chain saw therapy, and both of us sweeping up inside the cabin.  We can look out all our windows now, the actual windows, and the views are just wonderful -- somehow taking on a very precious quality from the limited lines of sight framing specific sections of our panoramic view.  There are now five gorgeous 4x12 beams across the living area which not only give it a very massive lodge-like feel, but which will be great for the hanging of kitchen and dining room lights.

The weather is lovely here, cool overnight and warm by day.  Sleeping is delicious and deep, under a blanket in the trailer bedroom that is barely bigger than the queen-sized bed, and with windows open on three sides.  The days generally start bright and clear (no jacket required), but over the course of the day clouds appear overhead out of nowhere, and to the south and west they build behind the mountains, slowly sliding north and east later in the day.  Afternoons often have a soundtrack of thunder growling across the valley, though we’ve not had much rain here either since our arrival.  The birds are out in full force, and we are enjoying the bossy rufous hummingbirds, a stunning iridescent burnt orange.  We had dinner with our friends across the lake on their deck and it was hard to concentrate on the excellent company because of the antics of a myriad of birds -- woodpeckers, black headed gross-beaks, pine siskins, chickadees, and nuthatches -- and the continual zooming by of hummingbirds, so close you could feel their wind wake on your cheek, to the half dozen feeders ringing us.

I realized that I’ve never been here this time of the year.  After jumping the gun the first year we had the trailer, five years ago, we settled into a pattern of last week in June/first week in July and a return trip of a week towards the end of September to see the aspen turn.  Our first trip this year in late May/early June was chilly, and we often resorted to fleeces if we sat in the shade midday to read.  Now it’s jeans or shorts and t-shirts weather, and I haven’t touched a jacket.  We’ve yet to sit inside to read, even in the early morning or late evening, in fact we’re hardly reading at all since we outside working or wandering from sun up until it gets dark after 9 PM.  For those like us who aren’t happy being inside all day, this is heaven.

We can’t help but think forward to next year when we’ll arrive at the beginning of June and stay through late September or early October.  Our cycle will be determined by the aspens, arriving as they begin to leaf out and leaving when their leaves have turned to gold and tangerine, and have faded and are falling, fluttering to the ground.

But for now, we have weeks to come here this year, the good company of our many mountain friends, the much-anticipated visits from family, and many exciting phases of the cabin build to experience.  A summer to remember and the beginning of the rest of our lives.

Decisions, Decisions

We are nearing the end of our Rocky Mountain exodus and preparing to make the return journey.  Our time in Tucson has been filled with work and endless decisions.  For my husband it meant work work, four ten hour days a week of it, plus working on things that needed attention at home, his volunteer work with the botany department at the Desert Museum, and spending time with Tucson friends. For me it meant the usual chores, grabbing some girlfriend time, and making decisions, finally, about everything from door knobs to cabinetry to flooring.

I swear, it was easier to decide on the cabin design that to make a commitment to the details of the material and color of its contents, or maybe our contractor, Brian Shelton, just made it seem that way.  I've been thinking about all of this for over a year, pouring over books and magazines of cabins and small homes, drifting through endless websites of furniture, rugs, and lighting, doing sketches of kitchen layouts and other interior details in an attempt to visualize my ideas.  I've considered, and often discarded, dozens of materials (beadboard got tossed out for instance), genres (not brave enough to do a genuine retro decor), and configurations (open shelving in the kitchen is now about six inches worth).

When it became clear that our Tucson time was running out, I made an appointment with a kitchen designer, Vicki Pilant, at the west side Home Depot on Costco Drive.  She had connected with me as I was sweating bullets over the Formica possibilities, and during an ensuing chat we discovered that she had lived in Colorado not far from where we're building, and at a much higher elevation, so she understood the whole small cabin in the Rockies thing.  Ever prepared, I showed up with a drawing, to scale, of my idea for the kitchen.  It's L shaped, with the short side housing the fridge and stove against the wall and the long side dividing the kitchen from living/dining area, with the sink and dishwasher.  Though she had sold me on the idea of hickory cabinets with their beautiful mineral streaks at our first encounter (echoing my contractor who is also enamored of this lovely wood), there were still lots of things to consider such as wall height, appliance sizes, and exactly how I used a kitchen.  I enjoy cooking, for us, for family, and for friends, but I wanted several people to be able to pitch in to get meals on the table.  The nearest place to get a sandwich or a gallon of milk is over 16 miles away, and most of that on dirt roads, so we need room for provisions and plenty of space to prepare those three meals a day, seven days a week.

Home Depot has some pretty snazzy software for kitchen design.  Exact cabinetry and kitchen components can be grabbed and put into the plan, though having done GIS (geographic information systems, computer mapping) for a couple of years I could see that there was considerable skill required to really use the program.  My kitchen designer came up with some fantastic ideas, like TWO lazy susan cabinets to utilize all those corner spaces, and a wide cabinet door to make sure I didn't have to be a contortionist to get at my dishes.  Vicki was a master at problem solving and suggested solutions for things I didn't even know might bother me down the road, like too many shallow drawers or too small an over the fridge cupboard.  The real magic comes when she pushes the button that gives you a picture of what your kitchen will look like from different angles, right down to the cabinet style.  The other button gave me a total price and it was right on budget, and my budget was not that big.

But wait, there's more!  One of the best things Vicki helped me with was coordinating all the other things  critical to the look of the cabin.  Once we knew the cabinet style, wood, and stain (American Woodmark, Annapolis collection in hickory with a sheer spice stain), we could think countertops, flooring, and wall colors.  Vicki guided us away from the too red, too dark floors we kept choosing.  Walking around with the Hickory Spice small cabinet door sample, we found some color families that would work.  We didn't love any of the laminate fake wood flooring (a necessity for us in a cabin that we want to be a relaxing place for everyone, including grandkids and a steady stream of dogs).  To my surprise none of the "safe" white paint samples did a thing for the wood cabinets, and Vicki suggested that with all the windows we were going to have something with more color might me nice -- we found a delicious hue in the Freshaire collection named Natural Ginger Root.

We decided to cast a wider net for flooring, checking at another big box home improvement store, but with similarly ho-hum, not-quite-it results.  A last ditch stop at an independent flooring store, THT Flooring presented us with an option that we're thrilled about.  They carry Karndean flooring, flexible virgin vinyl that looks, I kid you not, like hand-crafted wood.  We chose the Aged Kauri style, and it is gorgeous and works perfectly with the hickory cabinets.  We still want a little contrast in the kitchen, so we'll likely use some of their "tile" vinyl flooring in the kitchen and bath.  Unlike conventional floating floors, these floors are impervious to water, so there are zero concerns about using it in a kitchen or bath area, or doorways where folks will track in snow.  The dealer said that it is so durable that both Safeway and Walmart use it in their stores.  I remembered being amazed at the gorgeous wood flooring our local Safeway had put down in the produce section during their remodel three years ago, so yesterday I went back in to have a look and it was still in perfect shape, and still fooled me and everyone else I mentioned it to in that it was vinyl plank flooring and not wood at all.

We had a trip to the lighting store and found a couple of sconces for a little general lighting in the living room and the stairs, and lights for the bathroom.  We're debating kitchen lighting, but as there's a convenient beam above the kitchen counter will likely opt for using track lighting.  After grappling with the need/don't need decision of a ceiling fan, we caved in when the slightly smaller version of the one we love so much in our Tucson living room showed up on sale.  We're being frugal where we can, and splurging just a tiny bit where we think it will pay off.  Frankly, we only want to buy these things once and that this will almost undoubtedly be the only home we build together.

So we're heading back to the Rockies with lots of decisions made (and many of them in the cargo area), but still lots to come.  We can't wait to see the progress on the cabin in the month+ we've been away.  The windows are going in and the siding is going on.  I'd guess the roof is next.  Uh-oh...there's a decision due on the shingles!  The stain for the siding!  Well, gotta go...

SHAZAM!!!

It's been over a year since we decided to build this cabin.  For all of that time I've been agonizing over every single detail of it, down to door knobs and drawer pulls.  We're preparing to return to Colorado in 11 days (but who's counting?), and it was Come to Jesus time on some of the purchases we're responsible for.  As it is frankly easier to get small stuff here, where Lowes and Home Depot are 13 minutes away, rather than wait to get to Colorado and then spend whole days in Colorado Springs instead of in the mountains with our project, we spent the morning buying everything from dead bolts and lock safes to faucets and sink strainers.  You wouldn't think this would be too arduous, but after all this time it was hard to actually commit, for SURE, to brushed nickel everything.  Plain wore us out.

We arrived back home, taking refuge inside from the triple digit heat.  Checking our email we found a note from our contractor, Brian Shelton, with four -- count 'em, FOUR -- photos attached.  We've been away from the project three weeks now, and Brian was away for over a week of that on a trip to visit family, so we were not expecting the progress we saw in the photos.  We were blown away!  When I handed my husband the printed photos you'd have thought I was handing him his newborn child -- and since that is completely out of the question, the cabin is clearly his new "baby".


The second floor is framed and the trusses and huge Versa Lam beam up.  You can see the shape of the whole cabin now, and we LOVE it.  From the front it is classic Cape Cod -- the front door smack in the center with two same-sized windows equidistant on either side, and a steeply pitched (45 degree) roof, pretty much what most kids would draw when they drew a house.

From the back, what you'll see when you come up the drive, the raised portion of the roof, the better to accommodate the loft, is quite obvious.

This shot was taken standing outside at the back of our bedroom looking up at the loft.

Of course now all we want to do is pack the car with our door knobs and plumbing fixtures and head north.  Now, right this very minute.  It's going to be a long week and a half.