The View from Here

May 25th

We drove over 800 miles, 14 hours, in two vehicles, to reach our friends in Colorado Springs.  Thankfully they welcomed us with a garage to park the loaded truck in, dinner, and a comfy bed.  The next day they followed us up Ute Pass to our place in the Rockies, bringing their dogs to show our dog the ropes of being unleashed in the mountains.  It worked.

Our contractor, Brian, is away fetching his son from college in Spokane, so we’ve had a few days to settle in, acclimate, take a hike or two, and do some tidying up around the building site -- a chore we begged for.  We have a gorgeous foundation, concrete pouring into insulating forms of styrofoam connected with plastic strapping, sort of like giant Lego’s.  Brian has worked hard to keep the cabin low to the ground instead of perched on the site.  The foot wide cylindrical piers are poured for the deck footings, and the wood is onsite to build the subfloor.  By the end of the week we’ll be able to walk around our cabin. 

It is heaven to be here.  The pines, fir, and spruce look fabulous; so green from a wet winter.  The aspen buds are opening to fill the space between the evergreens with a spring green mist of new leaves.  The kinnikinnick, more often than not what is underfoot, is covered with tiny pinched white and pink bell flowers which will eventually give way to glossy red berries.  Tiny white asters, minute white and yellow daisy-like flowers brighten hillsides in small patches.  Today’s hike yielded strawberries leafing out, some with flowers, and a small bouquet of tiny violets in a damp spot on the “around the block” trail (a two mile loop behind us into Pike National Forest).  But the most exciting wildflower has been the lovely pasqueflower, pale violet teardrop shaped heads that open to a startling white six pointed flowers with a spectacular yellow center.  I have never seen the flowers before -- we’re always been too late for these early bloomers -- and have only been able to wonder at the spidery hair-like remnants after the petals are gone.

We had some crazy winds yesterday.  We’re guessing there were gusts of over 50 miles per hour.  The wind screamed around the trailer, rocking it like a cradle at the hands of an angry nanny where it now sits up on the saddle, more exposed than where it sat for years on the cabin site.  We lost power for hours and when we decided to get in the car and go see how extensive the outage was, we first had to fire up the chainsaw to clear a tree that had come down on our long driveway.  It became obvious that this was a sizable outage, with many trees down, often taking power lines with them.  After being blocking on one road, we managed to get to our friends Fran and Don’s cabin high up the far side of the valley.  Last time we’d seen them was September.   They’d come for brunch and we were squeezed into the tiny dinette of our trailer while it sleeted and snowed outside.  We caught up with them while enjoying heat from their wood burning stove, and gazing at their breath-taking view of a snow-clad Pike’s Peak.  

Aside from being a bit more subject to the winds, the trailer is also now far from the outhouse, probably about an eighth of a mile, a good long block away.  I’m not complaining as it is terrific exercise (even get some uphill in on the way back) and Bump usually accompanies me.  I will confess to using some nearby conifers after dark.  It is convenient to the building site, however Brian tells us that it will have to be disabled prior to getting a certificate of occupancy for the cabin per a new regulation.  We think we’ll simply bang a board across the one holer, and retain this historic structure for a tool shed.  We’ve already installed some art!

It’s been fun to watch our desert dog turn into a mountain dog.  Four days ago she didn’t know how to navigate stairs, was never walked off leash, and had never seen a pine tree.  Now she’s negotiating the metal trailer steps with ease and is living off leash and making little nests for herself in the mulchy soil underneath the ponderosas.  She’s enough out of her element to stick close by, but confident enough to lead the way on hikes and cavort in the streams and creeks that abound here.  Instead of learning to avoid stepping on cholla cactus segments, she is getting savvy about not walking on the tiny Douglas fir cones that are just the perfect size to get wedged in the pads of her paws.  Our dear old dog Max, gone just over a month ago, road shotgun with me from Tucson, his ashes filling a quart sized white plastic box.  He would have loved it here, and Bump seems to be enjoying it enough for both of them. 

Today the sun is warm, the air cool and perfect for a long-sleeved tee if you’re working, and a light fleece if you’re slacking.  We’ve been getting things done, but also taking time to walk, read, and talk about the cabin project and our future years with many months spent in this idyllic forest.  We’re quite excited about our contractor arriving back on site tomorrow, probably with his son to help, and Bob will get to spend the next three and a half weeks building a new cabin where the old A-frame once stood.

The sky is a deep China blue.  Fluffy innocent white clouds drift by overhead.  The crisp air is filled with the sharp clean scent of pine.  Life is very good.

Cementing the Deal

When it rains, it pours.  Hot on the heels of the photos our contractor, Brian Shelton, provided us, last night we got some from our good friends and closest mountain neighbors.  Harry had followed the cement truck up the driveway and stuck around for some of the excitement of seeing the footers of the cabin poured.  We'll always be able to say to him "you were there at the beginning".  Here's a shot of the early pour -- Builder Brian is smoothing the concrete in the forms.

Here's a shot of the completed footer pour.

Harry spotting this group of elk a couple of miles from the cabin.  No doubt they'd heard about our place and were headed over to check it out!

More pictures soon of the stem wall and then of the foundation poured in Greenblock forms (Brian has a degree in environmental science, so we'll go as green as we can).  It's going to be snug.  I'm off to start packing my cabin treasures -- it's just plain hard to believe this is happening!

Tune in again soon.

Oh! You mean this is Real?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.  In my book that's AT LEAST!  And it can also make real what has been, up to now, something that might have been a figment of our imagination, wishful thinking, or an obsessive daydream.

Building permit in hand, our contractor, Brian Shelton, wasted no time preparing for the foundation (and documenting with his camera).  They'd expected to hit rock, but all they found was more and more beautiful decomposed granite.  With no need to bore holes into rock and epoxy rebar, the foundation is flat and level and we'll have a beautiful crawl space with a constant temperature of about 55 degrees, perfection for my beer brewing husband.

The pictures prove we'll have our almost dead-center view of Hackett Mountain, and it appears that the deck will be low enough to the ground in many places that we'll have lots of views unencumbered by railings.  The waterline from the pump has been installed in its deep trench and brought into the crawl space.

Some neighbors said they followed the cement truck up the day after we recieved these photos, and took some more for us.  Once we get those we'll post them -- foundation footers cementing our future in the Rockies.

We're a bit stupefied that two weeks from today we'll have woken up in our trailer, the first morning of a month of mornings.  It now sits far from the building site (and the outhouse), up on a ridge and in the middle of a seldom used track like a railroad car on a siding.  But it's a pretty spot, snugged up into the trees and with a good view.  If we can figure out a way to hook up to the power poles, also a fair distance away, we'll be golden.  Otherwise, it'll be a little more rustic than we'd expected.  A small price to pay for a transition into a real cabin with electricity AND running water!

After dreaming of this for almost 11 months, it seems impossible that it is actually happening.  I feel like a hurricane advisory -- "preparations should be rushed to completion" -- and it's hard to fathom how much I have yet to do before leaving a week from Friday.  Some things I'm trying to decide won't be decided until during the build, but I've certainly spent enough time pondering them that coming to a final decision should be quite informed and fairly quick.  And that's part of the fun of it.

We're ON!

After all the years of "that's crazy, the trailer's good enough", the yearning for a wood burning stove to cozy up in front of, the desire for a bit more of a kitchen WITH running water (the outhouse never bothered me), and wanting enough space to have family and friends join us in a way we could all actually enjoy, last summer we made the decision to rebuild a cabin to replace the one that stood on this land from the mid-60's until the Hayman fire claimed it in 2002.

Honestly, there were a few things that made the decision easier.  My husband is no more than two years from retirement, and hopefully only one.  We'd spent enough years there in longish vacations in the trailer to know we both loved it and would be happy with the simple life of puttering, hiking, bird watching, and star gazing -- and sharing all of that with family and friends -- for the rest of our years to make the investment in money and the commitment in time.  Perhaps the clincher was my husband's grandsons, at five and seven old enough to know if they enjoyed their time in the mountains, and it was oh-so clear that they did -- from fort building in a rock outcropping down the hill to tirelessly hiking to the meadow and Karen's overlook and trails beyond, to crying half way back to Denver when it was time to leave, this was a way to give to them what my husband's children knew their whole lives, at least until the Hayman fire.  More time to look like something out of Where the Wild Things Are:

Our contractor, Brian Shelton, called this morning to say that the building permit would be in his hands come Monday and that work on the foundation would begin this coming week.  It's been over seven months since we first met with him up at the trailer, thinking then that we'd not be building until next year and later deciding not to wait.  This year will be the building year; next year the occupying year.  Hopefully we'll get a bit of time in the cabin before summer's end and are planning a week at Thanksgiving, but we have our fingers crossed that next summer will be the first summer of the rest of our lives, with months of time spent in the Colorado Rockies, getting used to the wonderful rhythms of life spent enjoying the long days at 8,600 feet.


By the time we get there, four weeks from today, there should be a foundation fully decked and lumber staged for the framing of the walls.  My husband will get to help raise those walls just as he did over four decades ago with his father, other family members, and neighbors.  After the nightmare of losing the original cabin, being part of rebuilding of the new cabin will be the fulfillment of a dream.

Lost and Found

During the couple of weeks of building permit limbo and just over a month before leaving for the site in Colorado, I decided it was about time for me to make that housewarming visit to my sister and her husband.  They had relocated last fall to El Paso after decades in upstate New York.  It had been more decades since we lived within an easy half day drive of one another and I wanted to establish what I hope will be an easy exchange of short visits several times a year.

I decided to go alone mid-week for just a couple of nights, my rationale being to get a little solo sister time -- it had been almost two years since we were together, sadly a shorter separation than typical for us -- and to avoid leaving our very elderly and much beloved dog Max without one of his "humans".  The outward bound trip was lovely, less than five easy hours on an empty stretch of I-10 watching the Sonoran desert transition into Chihuahuan, with vast stretches of bajada gilded with carpets of Mexican poppies before butting up against distant rugged mountains.

My sister's home is warm and inviting with charming river stone garden walls, good-sized bird-filled trees and views of the nearby Franklin Mountains.  We walked her handsome and gentle German shepherd, Luke, on three miles of the Rio Grande river walk, throwing the Frisbee for him and trying to identify water birds.  We sat out back during the slow twilight while her husband grilled steaks and salmon and veggies over a mesquite fire and then ate the delicious results.

At some point during the day my sister had mentioned a quilt she had that she wanted to give to me.  She wasn't sure about the origin, but thought it was from our grandmother we'd lived with until I was nine and she was three.  I thought she was talking about a partially completed quilt I'd seen long ago at my mother's, but I didn't associate it with my grandmother, the woman who'd been more of a mother to me than my own Mother in my early years (much to my Mother's irritation I'm sure).  When my sister brought the quilt out I almost fell off the couch -- it was THE quilt I'd grown up with, a wedding ring quilt hand patched and quilted -- every stitch -- by the hands of my Grandmother.  It was the quilt that always covered me when I was feeling puny and was upstairs for special Grandma treatment, the one when miserable from one or another childhood ailments I'd try to find all the matching fabrics, and there were many to find matches for.  Its puckered worn surface was so familiar, the softly colored patterns on the white background, all edged in a rosy pink calico.  I thought of it many times over the years, assuming it had gone to the "other" part of the family over three decades ago.

Early the next morning I got a call from my husband that our sweet old dog was having a crisis, probably a stroke, and could not stand.  He took Max to the vet where they cared for him until I could make what now was a too long and too sad drive of over 300 miles to a place and task I did not want to face.  Shortly after arriving at the veterinary hospital my husband and I performed the last kind act we could for Max, holding him close while he was euthanized.

During that long day I did not know I had that many tears in me.  Part of them were shed on that old quilt, folded into a soft memory of comfort and love, and unexpectedly found during a time when something so beloved was lost.  I only wish my old companion, Max, could have lasted the several decades the quilt has existed instead of the 16 years -- extraordinary for large dog -- that he had been able to give me.  We had hoped Max would be with us this summer in the Rockies, snoozing in the sun and watching the chipmunks during the cabin build, but that is not to be.

Back home, while I laid on the couch with a cold wet cloth on my face, so distressed that I feared I might join Max in the Great Beyond, my husband brought a large box from the porch that had been delivered that day.  I knew it was the quilt I had bought online for the cabin.  It took me a few days to have the heart to open it, but I was not disappointed when I did.  It is nothing like the delicate handwork of my Grandmother's quilt, but intricate and well-crafted enough, and the colors are those of a ponderosa pine forest at dusk.  It will look wonderful in the cozy bedroom of our new cabin, a tailored denim bed skirt below and made up with sage green chambray sheets; a nice place to rest after another lovely long day in the thin clean air at near 9,000 feet.

My Grandmother's quilt is now folded across the foot of the old painted brass bed in our Tucson guest room, only for its beauty and cherished memories.  It is too fragile for actual use, that is until this found again quilt is needed for a loss that is almost too much to bear.

For more about Max and what he meant to us see the Tribute to a Good Dog post in my Writing Down the Desert blog.

Thaw

Our contractor promises us the snow is melting and that the cabin will soon start going up.  The flurry of signatures on county building applications and checks for application fees and engineers has been the extent of our own personal activity for the cabin of late.  Unless, of course, you count the little bit of adding to the cabin trousseau I've been doing.  I found a wonderful old Mennonite bench from Mexico, six feet long and with the original old red paint.  It will do dual duty for us in the cabin, either sitting along the dining table for extra seating or under the front windows serving the same purpose in the area around the wood burning stove.  Until it makes the journey from southern Arizona to central Colorado it's sitting happily in my guest room.

The building permit is hoped for this coming week, and expected the week after that.  It's very strange to think that the next time we are on the Colorado property there will be the beginnings of a cabin sitting there.  We are counting the weeks, though we're not totally sure how many we need to count as our departure date is a bit up in the air due to some unexpected work commitments, but somewhere between six and seven.  In some ways that seems way too far away and in others it seems way too soon.  There's much to do and decide in the next few weeks; decisions easier to make here where Lowes and Home Depot are 15 minutes away, not an hour and a half.

I am thinking red.  A light-hearted cherry red.  A cheerful red front door, maybe a kitchen counter.  White walls -- I don't want to be locked into a color scheme.  I'd toyed with oil-rubbed bronze hardware and plumbing fixtures, but it's a new cabin and I want to celebrate and honor that a bit, so we'll go with brushed nickel.  Not only much more available and reasonably priced, it'll go nicely with the hammered aluminum I've been collecting for the cabin.  These trays (and several more) will decorate the wall in the dining room, gently reflecting the warm light from the wood burning stove.

I've been dreaming of a cabin all my life it seems, and it always seemed a fantasy.  Until last summer I was sure we'd make-do with the trailer, and a nice make-do it was too, but since we decided to rebuild the cabin I have been living inside this imaginary structure, and stocking up on Ebay, Etsy, and Goodwill goodies to make the dream more concrete now, and quicker to realize when the cabin is done.

I'm thinking pie...cherry.  I can almost smell it.

A Little Alchemy Help Please?

We made the decision to rebuild a cabin, found a terrific contractor, and took the financial hit on the well (but at least we have a GREAT well).  We've scrambled to find the money, sold off things we'd held for over a decade, and are doing all we can to live simply now, storing up our financial resources for this project.  I've been "living the cabin" for months, wandering through the floorplans, thinking through materials and colors and hardware and lighting, ferreting out retro items to mediate the shiny newness when it's built, grappling with plans of how to manage two good-sized dogs in a trailer in the wilderness, all while managing our life in Tucson from a phone and Internet free location in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.  I'm not ready yet.

A large part of this plan included my husband's taking up to three months off from his job to go up and help with the final stages of the cabin, something our contractor, Brian Shelton, actually encourages -- he understands that folks need to be able to save some money by doing some of the work, and that it also helps them feel invested in their new home.  It's one of the reasons we decided to hire him.  We were hoping the timing would work out so that he'd need us in mid to late May, and that we could spend most of the nicest part of they year there (with the rampant wildflowers) while avoiding the hottest part of the year in Tucson.  With the support of his boss and the financial troubles municipalities these days we figured he'd get some kind of award for volunteering to take three months off without pay during a time when employees have to take furlough days.  Not so.  We were shocked when the request was flat out denied.

So, where does that leave us?

When my husband ended his 24 year career with the state he was getting nearly six weeks of vacation a year.  Now he works under one of the most archaic vacation policies I've ever heard of -- two weeks off a year for TEN years.  It was almost a deal breaker for him, but then he struck a verbal agreement with his boss (and her boss, and her boss's boss) that he could take up to 12 days a year of unpaid leave.  After five years he's never taken a minute of it.  Adding up his meager vacation days, fulough days he has to take before June, and a couple of holidays, we've scrapped together a little over three weeks to be in Colorado this summer -- no where near what we need.  Oh, they've suggested he revisit the request in a month or two and request just a month.  And we must be one of the rare families that is praying for more, a lot more, furlough requirements starting in July.  Rumor is that there will be 80 more hours, so that gets us to over a month.  And even if we can just get one set of 12 promised days for this year, that would be helpful.

This plan to spend time during the build was much more than helping reduce the cost of the cabin -- my husband makes more in his job than he will laying floors.  He helped his father build the original cabin in 1963, and spent many vacations as an adult doing serious cabin maintenance and land stewardship.  It was his favorite place on earth, and still is even though the cabin was taken eight years ago in the Hayman fire.  He wants, badly, to be part of the rebuilding of the cabin and not just the guy signing the checks.

That's where the alchemy comes in.  How do we stretch somewhere between three and half weeks and a month and a half into three months?  We need a presence on site during the finishing of the cabin.  We trust our contractor Brian completely, but I have a clear vision of what I want the cabin to look like and how I want it to function and need to be there while decisions are being made.  We're not sure how we'll work it out, but it appears that after an initial and critical few weeks together, there will be airlines involved, with flights between Tucson and Denver shuttling my husband between work and cabin building to stretch out the time.  I'll stay behind, with decisions and sourcing and labor and trying to keep track of the dogs by day, and lonely evenings and long walks to the outhouse by night.  I'm still hoping we'll manage to be in our new cabin for my 60th birthday early in August, joined by my daughter and her husband and a few dear friends if they can manage to get there.

In the midst of the unwelcome problems created by the leave without pay denial, a sweet surprise arrived.  I'd been haunting Ebay for cabin stuff -- mostly vintage things like tablecloths, hammered aluminum, depression glass, and lighting -- until I discovered Etsy.  Etsy was a whole new world, more of an online community than a place to shop.  One of the things I found was a set of vintage hanging lights for over the kitchen counter.  They were from a farm in Canada with softly frosted half round shades that were like the best beach glass and brown Bakelite fittings.  I'd looked and Looked and LOOKED for something different but not weird, and certainly not from Home Depot.  These were perfect.  Over the course of the transaction I got chatting via email with Penelope, whose shop it was, and sent her the address for this blog.  When the lights came, along with some charming little owl decoupage plaques I'd also purchased, there was something else in the box -- our first cabin warming present.  This delightful little hand-painted pitcher will be used frequently at the as yet non-existent cabin, and will never fail to remind me of an unexpected bit of encouragement from a near stranger at a time when close associates had let us down.

Thanks Penelope!

Click here to visit her shop, Birch Beer Boutique, on Etsy.