beautiful photo by Bob, up by Kite Lake

My favorite part of having a dairy cow is what some folks say is the worst. The daily ball and chain. The day in, day out, heading down the hill to bring her in, wash her up, and sit beside her as you lean over to milk, warming your hands even on the coldest of mornings.

Swish-swish-swish-swish…

The rhythm of our day. A metronome pulsing in the background, mindlessly pacing us to keep up, keep on.

Something I could count on. Like the sunrise. Or the ticking of the clock.

For my child, chores have provided unspoken lessons of caring, of self discipline and responsibility, of humility. I don’t need to remind Forrest that the chickens are waiting to be let out in the morning or closed up at night. He has left the coop unlocked and knows the guilt and sadness of the resulting loss resulting from any one of the assorted predators that call the mountain home. He has let them free range on a day that was too quiet to keep off the coyote.

Remorse from his losses, affections from his nurturing, and pride as he comes in at night with pockets full of eggs, has taught him many of life’s most important lessons. Lessons learned better from his actions than from my words.

Like learning to take the eggs out of your pockets before you sit down.

yesterday... a frozen waterfall

Our second year on this mountain I kept a pig and goat. The goat was an unintentional pet. I have never minded butchering animals I have named, but I could not butcher the goat that went on walks (off leash and right in line) with me and my dogs. There I’d be, walking down the dirt road behind the ranch at the end of summer with three dogs and a goat behind me. Funniest thing was, no one noticed. No one ever stopped and said, “Is that a goat?” or something such as that. Nope. People really don’t know how to see clearly when they are so far out of their element, which folks often are up here. The pig, however, did not come for walks. He was for meat. I learned that the same effect altitude has on us (burning calories faster than one can consume, or so it seems), it has on pigs. This pig could not fatten up. He was at best, a lean porker.

All summer we tried to fatten him. We’d have the tourists in the cabins feed their food scraps to him. Thought that was a much better bet than leaving scraps in our trash area… which we were sure would attract a bear.

However, that is exactly what the pig did. Attract a bear. Mind you, it was a little bear and he was really not interested in eating the pig so much as eating the pig’s slop. But our intention here was to fatten a pig, not a bear, so his presence, although cute and hardly menacing, was counterproductive.

And it was no wild bear. It was tagged. The tell tale sign that this guy had already been picked up somewhere else for one can only assume a similar crime. Here in Colorado, bears get a second chance. Probably even a third. It’s part of our tourist revenue. They are cute. The tourists love them. In Colorado, the pioneer, homesteader, or family trying to live off their land and make a simple living hold less value than tourist attractions. Here, I have learned, the bear comes first. I was told (I kid you not) that if such a problem continues, I might have to get rid of my pig. On my ranch. Well, I would have liked to take on that battle, wouldn’t that be fun, and fight it I would have, as you can imagine. But the problem did not continue. The bear was removed, my pig still did not get fat, and we ended the season with very lean pork. And that goat followed me and my dogs on walks all winter. We finally gave him away in the spring to go harass some other unsuspecting family. (And you thought the bear was a problem?)

I still love my bears. Just not tagged ones that are dropped off near my pig pen. I leave you alone; you leave me alone. Which reminds me of another story about another bear… But I’ll save that for another day.

Icicles on the roof at sundown

I feel a commitment to the land, and yet, I am preparing to walk away.  I ponder this paradox. I have been through this before. 

A visitor speaks of his fierce attachment to the land.  I am intrigued with this expression, and consider his meaning further. A fierce attachment to the land.  What I see is a fierce attachment to the past.  He remains attached to a memory.  An important place in his heart, I see, but as vague and distant as a dream only partly remembered.  When he is awake, he is not here. He has built his life and home elsewhere. 

For us, it is more, it is less, it is good, it is bad. It is home, where we struggle and strive to be, to make a living, to raise our family, to build our house, to live best we can off of and with the land. We have been committed. We have remained, labored and strained in the face of family conflict, colts dying, financial woes, and weather changing for the worst.  We have endeavored and dared to make our dream come true.

Now the dreams have changed.  Such is the nature of dreaming.  Such is the nature of life.  Things change.  How long do we remain committed?  When does it turn to attachment?  When is it time to let go?

In attachment, I see a holding on, a taking only. Attachment.  I think of a child clutching to his mother’s skirts, so afraid to let go. Afraid to grow up.  Attached.  Attachment is a needy state. We cling to what we barely hold.

Where is the sense of commitment? There is no partnership with a land from which we only take.  I seek a balance. I must give.  I must work on the land, with the land, of the land. I am willing to commit to the land, but not cling to attachments of a dying dream.

Commitment comes only with a struggle. We button up the coat and pull down the hat and brave the storm because this is our home, and home is worth standing up for. We don’t leave when the weather changes. This is all we have.  We are willing to fight for our home, our children, our lives, our land.

Commitment.  How do I define this?  I see a husband standing beside his wife as the storm approaches.  He reaches out and holds her hand and they know they will manage together.

And yet, here we are, packing our bags.  A bittersweet struggle.  A paradox.

Down in the willows before Ute Creek

Years ago, when I moved to the Pacific Northwest with my baby, I was the caretaker for a remote kids camp.  Closed for nine months of the year.  Only ours.  Ours to tend to, to toil for, to wake in the middle of the night and check on a crying lamb, to stay out in the rain through the last light to weed one more garden bed, groom one more horse, or repair one more broken pipe. And I loved it.  Learned one need not “own” something to make it theirs. We can commit without attachment. As long I was there, I treated the place as mine:  every animal, every pipe, every fruit tree, everything.  I felt appreciated. I felt at home.  I was committed.

Mind you, this was a seasonal camp for kids, and no where did I see the difference between the sense of attachment and the sense of commitment more clearly than I saw at camp.  The campers, or the adults who once had been campers, held an attachment so fiercely to the land, to the camp, to their past.  I saw men and women in their thirties, forties, fifties and older, for one week out of every year regress to their childhood reminiscences and once again “be” campers, holding on to a fierce attachment to memories of a land, a place, a way they once were.  And then they would leave, go home, return to their life for 51 weeks, return to their commitments and count the days until revisiting camp again.

On the other hand, were the locals, folks who were not amongst the elite of those who had been sent away to experience the world in which the locals lived. These were folks committed to the land.  Land on which they struggled to make a living, support their families, raise their children, grow gardens and animals and barns and dreams.  Land they  knew they could not get something out of, be it a safe and warm home, or a crop to sell, or a beautiful view, without putting into it, working for it, fighting for it. Committing to the land.  

And when the weather changed and the mountain threatened, there they remained long after the campers left.  They continued to toil, put up with the harsh winters. Droughts.  Calving complication.  Horse births. Crop failures. Floods, storms, wild fires, children who grow up, spouses that pass away.

Now, the neighbors – a small community of perhaps 200 people spread throughout the mountains – was built with the bricks of some remarkable human beings.  Women like I never had the opportunity to know.  My friends and neighbors were then in their 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. . Most that I remember were amazing women. Strong women.  Women who had homesteaded there. Built their homes. Worked their land. Raised and fed and taught their children there, found a way to scrape by a living, usually on the land. They knew how to work hard, were honest, sincere, caring.  It was not a place to “get away.”  It was a place to commit to, to work and reap the meager rewards. To hope and dream and struggle through hardships.  It was not their vacation.  It was their life.

They were surprisingly open to have someone from the younger generation show interest in the old time crafts, and were remarkably willing and able to share their knowledge with me.  I was lucky.  I wanted to learn it all, and they were willing to share. Many of these women were already widowed.  Since I left, three more have lost their husbands. Most still remain on their ranches.  All still work hard, for the land, or the community, or their families.  Full lives, filled with commitment to a rich life.

Looking north beyond Pole Mountain

I moved away.  I’ve grown.  I’m not the fresh young thing I was there and then.  Now I have a bit of the knowledge they so graciously shared with me. I can bake my own bread, milk a cow, make butter and cheese, grow my own corn.  Maybe now – or next time – it will be my turn to help share knowledge.  I’m not an old lady yet.  Maybe there is stage in between being at the receiving end, and being the teacher.  Maybe I just have to live it for while.

I consider this change, and see a natural pattern.  I try to see my place between attachment and commitment and make sense of it all as I turn to walk away.

There is commitment in community. Here, I think this is what I have missed.  There is no community in attachment. One can enjoy each others company as long as the weather holds.  But when the storm clouds roll in and the leaves blow from the trees, one can walk away, each in their own direction, and perhaps each hold that attachment in the back of ones heart until the next summer arrives.  Attahcment allows them the hold on and walk away at the same time.    

I seek a place to remain.

The irony of it all.

I am not attached.  I am too practical to hold onto the past. I am committed only as long as I am here. But I am not tied to nor bound by this land.  Between the family conflicts and the ensuing wave of discord; a land that has killed my horses and part of my dream… what a fool I would be to remain in a place and position providing for others dreams when mine is only washing away with the heavy rains of summer? Does one remain committed in a relationship so imperfect, or does one strive for more?

I have compromised enough. I feel myself dreaming again.

I long for commitment as I long for a true home. A sense of being, a sense of permanence in an impermanent life. I am no closer than I was when I moved here, and began these years of commitment to a land I am ready to walk away from.  Perhaps permanence, home, commitment, these things are found only within us. 

Where does this leave me?

Looking up at Simpson Mountain

High Mountain Musing is changing it’s web site address from:  highmountainmuse.wordpress.com  to right here:  highmountainmuse.com. 

A bit confusing in the short run; but hopefully simpler in the long run.

The new blog address will be effective immediately.  Same author (me), same stuff – my rambles and the mountain musings – just a different web address.

One of the more complicated changes may be in leaving comments.  All previous comments to date should have transferred over onto this site, and I’ll ask that any comments in the future be submitted here, as in due time, the old site will become obsolete.

If you subscribe to the posts, comments or have the site saved in your favorites, please be sure to make the changes. 

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

Please let me know if you have any difficulty connecting here, or find any problems with navigation on this new site by leaving a comment here, or e-mailing me directly at highmountainmuse@gmail.com.   I imagine there will be some things we find that need to be tweaked – and thanks to Ron (J) we can fix them…

I’m not very computer savvy, but I’ll do my best to help in any way I can.

I’m taking the weekend off (going to the BIG CITY) and won’t be posting until Monday, so I’ll look forward to hearing from you then – here at the new site!

Warmly,

Gin

Looking in the east garden, early november, late afternoon.

Outside, the garden sleeps, the raised beds silent as graves in a burial ground, lined up as straight and somber.  Hidden is a promise of life deep with each bed, a challenge here to see what we can grow in perhaps but a month of frost free weather, with the monsoons providing untamed waters to my pleas at domesticating crops in this course landscape.

But try we must. We need our hands in the earth, the cleansing of dirt, of our soul within the soil.  We need to garden.  Is it the tending, the nurturing, the care of a tame and cultivated nature so fragile and unwilling on its own?

Here I have learned to turn my focus inside at times, to satisfy my need of dirt under my fingernails.  House plants are plentiful, it’s a jungle of sorts in our cabin. A bountiful crop of Jade, Philodendron, Christmas Cacti, English Ivy, Aloe and herbs.  In the southern corner of our cabin, a tropical paradise grows.  As a reminder of my summers long ago in the Greek Islands, I once bought a bougainvillea, thought it would be lovely outside a guest cabin, draping down the log walls, showering the cabin with fuchsia blossoms, a vivid contrast to this wild landscape and a refreshing change from the geraniums and petunias I tend to choose to decorate the outside of our cabins.

On the last day of June, it froze.  A heavy frost turned the leaves a dark, liquid green.  I was certain it was all over.  It was my first or second summer here.  I didn’t know better.  I didn’t realize a frost can come about any time here.  When you least expect it. I have learned to expect it.

The guest who had been staying in that cabin was from Florida, where these plants do grow.  She laughed and told me you couldn’t kill a bougainvillea if you tried, suggested I cut it back and try again.  I did, cut it all the way to the stem, leaving a sorry basket filled with ugly grey sticks protruding.  And then a funny thing happened.  It started to grow.  Six or seven years later, it is still growing.  It remains indoors now, and I can’t say it drapes and languishes over my log walls anything like I remember these plants did in the Greek Islands over the white washed walls. But it is alive, and blesses us with bright blossoms quite regularly.  As out of place in these mountains as a tropical bird. 

Now our lettuce has sprouted, our winter crop, beginning its life in our kitchen window.  It will end its life there as well in the spring, yet provide us with fresh greens throughout the winter.  Nothing fancy, no greenhouse, no grow lights.  Just a large planter in the window.  Things will grow.  If you give them a chance, they grow.  

And things will die.  The garden outside is dormant now.  There is not life I can see.  Perhaps an earthworm buried deep beneath the frozen surface. I wonder how they survive the deep freeze.  The beds have been prepared for next year, softly tucked away for the season beneath a blanket of manure, so plentiful here, a pity my crops can not be so.

I prepare it all in anticipation of what will be, yet I wonder if there will be a next year.  I look at these beds, this garden, this soil, and wonder how long it will take to return to the earth from which it all came, to turn fallow and free and forget about my futile attempts.

And still, what can I do but try?

Looks a little lonely out there for this bull.

Lost:  One big, bad red bull.

No bull! (You knew I couldn’t resist that one.) 

Remember my story of losing the bull?  Well, I suppose I shouldn’t feel too bad after all.  Seems to be a regular thing.  Even the big outfits do it.  At least, somebody else did.  And it wasn’t me this time.

This fellow’s been out and about, wandering alone for weeks, in plain sight, not quite as tricky as that one I lost in the woods.  Hanging close to the side of road, perhaps hoping to hitch a ride.

Guess he missed the last chance, but he’s no fool, this big boy. Found him a good home complete with shelter, water, tall grass… though he’ll be wanting for a way home soon enough.  Winter is on its way, as a snow again this morning portends…

In the middle of the last storm, demolition began. 

In the midst of demolition, the walls of Cabin #2 still standing.

And now the walls (and more) removed. Too bad I didn't take a true "before" picture. Beka - do you have one of the kitchen area?

The weather determines our lives, our patterns, our habits, our events not so differently as that of the wilds around us.  The red wing black birds gathered about yesterday on a thawed section of grass outside my kitchen window, feeding on what I could not tell.  And then they left.  I will not see them again until spring.  They are among the first to return, calling out their arrival from the old tree to the east of my cabin before the snow has even melted off pasture.

We can seek shelter of roofs and walls, of wood stoves and down jackets.  Were it not for these, we would not remain, would leave as the geese, gathering and moving on as the seasons dictates.

But we do remain.  Stubborn and solitary.  In a world that will slowly ice over before us, weighty and white like an aged stone statue. A cold blank stare is all you may see at first.  But stay longer, look deeper, and in the still and subtle ways of the long winter, all around us there is a beauty unlike any other you may ever see.  It whispers in the long shadows through the pale green gray bark of the dormant aspen, in the softness of a heavy storm as we walk through the dense spruce forests laden with the weight of the snow, in the endless soundless reverberations that be still our senses and allow us to hear what really matters within and without as we stand alone in the open parks, in the vast and frighteningly wild open world above tree line, and in the time and space of our family together here alone with the smoke from the stove slowly wafting down the protected valley, the only noise is our voice as we read aloud together before the warmth of the fire.

Forced indoors by the might of the passing storm, we began a winter project, the remodeling of guest cabin in need of a change.  The cabins are like our children.  We care for them, clean them, get to know them, their strengths and weaknesses, and help them grow in times of need.  This one needed it.

While the tempest ruptures in the world outside, under this roof we proceeded to rip and tear. This part goes quickly.  What we do from here will take up much of the winter.  Starting with plans.  A blue print, so to say.  Last major remodel we did, the blue print was drawn out on a dinner napkin.  I still have that napkin, a keepsake of sorts.

For now, just the crow bar, a screw gun, and a big hammer.  The interior becomes an open page, a clean slate, in no time at all.  We look around together and smile.  A new little world about to slowly unfold.

So, here’s the link:

Beka’s Blog!

Hope you take a look and enjoy…

Yesterday morning on the ranch.

In a once and future day, I had a garden worthy of canning.  At nearly 10,000 feet elevation and with perhaps at best four frost free weeks per year, I hope my current excuse is legitimate. 

At times, of course, I miss it: the early morning calls to the garden to inspect the ever changing challenges and rewards, the extra hours in the evenings pulling weeds and picking at the edge of ripeness, putting up in jars and drying racks…

I believe the soil becomes a part of you.  It binds you to the land.  Here and now, I can leave for days during our summer and ride up to ditch camp to work without fear of the garden missing me.  There is little garden to care for. There is little to do. Even few weeds will grow here. Time for other things, though for those of us with black gold in our veins, gardening is always time well spent. A time gone but not forgotten.

Stocking up for winter here is no less important, though very different from my gardening days.  More vital, at times, with a road that will close in a month or two at the latest, leaving us somewhat closed off, blocked off and inaccessible until late spring when the county sends the dozer to break through the snow banks en route to our ranch.

Folks often ask us how we manage to supply ourselves adequately to make it through the long winter.  I remind them we are not completely isolated. We do have snowmobiles and skis.  In fact, riding along the packed trail or zipping across the frozen surface of the Rio Grande Reservoir on snowmobile is far more comfortable than taking a pickup along the rutted and ripped up track we call a road during the summer.

So, during the winter season, a 6 ½ mile sled ride brings us to our pickup truck, which brings us in an hour of so from there to town. Providing the road is plowed.  Otherwise, stay home and wait out the storm.

But we do stock up. Obviously, we need to.  A trip to the grocery store in winter is an event, usually spanning two days to get it all done. The list gets long.  Talking tends to take up more time than anything when you finally get to town. 

What do we keep on hand? The basics.  A full freezer of meats, pantry of canned goods, fresh lettuce growing in the south window.  And baking goods.  Plenty of baking goods. Sugar, chocolate chips, yeast, salt… and flour. Usually I go through about 150 pounds of flour a year.  That’s a lot of bread and cookies.  For winter, I usually store about 4 25-pound bags of all purpose flour, and we just squeeze by.

You have to be organized.  Keep track of what you have, keep lists of what you need, know how much you tend to use.  That kind of thing.  Get used to doing without or making do.  And if you have an abundance, learn to use it.  Waste nothing.

In my attempt to avoid a town trip and shopping spree to stock up this fall, I sent my boys.  But alas, I did not send a list.  Just general instructions to “stock up”…

What they came home with was twelve 25-pound bags of flour.  That’s a lot of flour.  Nice of them to make sure we would not run out.  Though finding a place to store it all is not a simple matter.

Ah, think of all the baking I get to do this winter.  Just when I was wondering what my purpose in life was.  The answer came to me in 25-pound bags.

At least for now, that will do.

Old and new. Forrest doing school work by the glow of the computer... and oil lamp light.

With solar electricity, cloudy weather spells low power.  We learn to do without, and appreciate what we have.  It is easy.  It is simple.  We have lived completely without for enough time to be grateful for the little we have.  We can use it wisely.

And yet, evenings following those robin blue sky days of abundant sunshine, we may flip on five lights.  All at once.  And feel we are living large.  And somehow, take a decadent sinful pleasure in that.  Why?

I read about a family surviving life back in the pioneer days, and considered the hardships, the sacrifices, the lack of luxury.  I looked around my home and my life and felt guilty. I saw unnecessary luxuries. Waste.  Fluff. They keep us removed from the land, from the core of our life.  Removed from what matters most. 

We have too much. The land fill is spilling over with plenty. And our homes? Our fridge? Our closet? Our cars? Our full schedules?

We grab onto more and more and more. We take pleasure in amassing. Perhaps a safety and security. A fear of being without. It seems no matter how much we give away, how right and generous we feel we are being by sharing, donating and getting rid of things… all we do is make room for more. 

We grasp onto labels like “natural” and “organic” and “recycled” and feel we can buy and purchase and support and spent there because they are… better.  It’s still spending.  It’s still getting too much, isn’t it? It’s still more than we really need.

We start small.  Considering what we can give up.  What we can do without.  One thing at time.  One thing that need not be replaced.  An empty space that can remain open, clear, uncluttered.  Slowly, we begin to pare down to what matters most.  And suddenly, there is room to breath.

The cows back home, settling right in after returning to their summer pasture.

They came home.  All three of them, and a little bull calf named Shaggy.  These are our Highland Cattle, the simple beginnings of our little herd, our fold.  A humble start.  But enough for now. 

These are nice cows.  They come to their name or the shake of a bucket.  They eat out of my hand, slobbering all over with the fat rough tongue.  And their sweet furry faces…

Just home from their past couple months hanging out with the “real” cows, and their big bad bull, so that next year we’ll have a couple calves of the Highland/Charolais cross.  Fuzzy white calves, perchance?

Our furry Zen Masters.  They are content, clear, trouble free, wanting for nothing.  Wouldn’t you be too in that field of green?

Of course, I just get to watch and enjoy them on pasture.  The boys and our friends who had been pasturing them in the valley are the ones who had to separate them from the bull and other cows and calves, and load them in the trailer to bring them back home… Perhaps not as idyllic as this scene before me now.

Ah, but they do come home.  Alas, just wait, and it all turns out alright, doesn’t it? And in the meanwhile, we can run around and fret and fight, as I know I do at times. Or lay back in the tall grass, enjoy the summer breeze, chew the cud, and think about little more than beautiful world around you.

Moving dirt with man and horse power

And now for the what of Ditch Camp.

In a previous post, “Where we’ve been,” I shared with you a bit about how the ditch came about, and what the purpose of it is. We’re just there to do the maintenance, to keep the water that belongs to others flowing from one side of the Divide to the other.  It’s all about water rights and claims for them. Numbers and figures that are complicated and convoluted. It’s all about packing and digging and felling for us.  Pretty clear and simple.

We’re there thanks to our horses, who pack us and our gear in up the two hours into the Wilderness from the trail head to our camp.  Tools, food, tent, clothes…us… the horses carry it all in, up the often steep and rocky trail along the east side of the Divide.

A typical day, if there ever is such a thing, starts with waking dawn, which is now perhaps 5:30, and putting the horses out to graze.  They’ve been on the high line all night long, and they are ready to eat.  Then coffee is started on the single burner propane stove, while I head out on a quick early morning walk, perhaps to check on yesterdays accomplishments or consider what needs to be done today. It is frosty in the morning, and often a heavy layer of clouds or fog lies along the floor of the meadow before us. My boots get wet.  I am grateful for my wool hat and mittens. The view is soft and secretive, and I feel like one of the moose, elk and deer that drift about silently in a protected world.

When I return, the coffee is ready.  Cowboy coffee is easy.  Just let it boil until you’re back, then give it a minute to settle those grounds. And don’t assume it really is “good to the last drop.” I build a small fire in our fire pit, enjoying its warmth along with the hot coffee in my hand as I sit and write and wait for the boys to wake.  Breakfast is cooked over the fire, and water is collected from the little creek for washing up. 

Now the sun is shining, and we lay out the damp clothes and sleeping bags to dry before the next round of rain arrives, which hopefully will not be until after we collect our dried garments.

The horses are checked, the draft horse is called upon and saddled up for work. We head out with horse, tools and a back pack stuffed with food and water, walking up the ditch bank to the next place work is needed.

The work usually involves moving dirt.  The horse is far better at that than we are, effortlessly hauling a full slip, each load of the slip equivalent to perhaps 20 of our shovel loads. He makes light work of this heavy labor. But before he can move the dirt, we have to get the dirt.  This involved picking and raking at the hillsides with hand tools to slough off rocks and soil, creating a bank with a smooth and gradual slope that the grass we reseed will be able to take, grow, and prevent further erosion.

Our muscles can only take so much pounding at the hillside, as so we alternate our digging with the horse pulling several loads, cleaning up the piles we have created, and bringing the needed fill to the down hill bank.

The ditch has been in use since the 1930’s, and yet, it is build of dirt and rock, and running water.  The equation of erosion is guaranteed.  Add to that the damage of the slush and ice running down there in the early season of each year, the tracks and debris sloughed off from the feet of the moose and elk who call that ditch their super highway, and the blockage from the falling trees from the beetle killed hillside through which the ditch runs, and you can see there is always something to do. Low spots that need to be raised.  Damage that needs to be repaired.  Blockage that needs to be removed.  Slopes that need to be adjusted and altered.

lumberjacks at work

When the water is flowing in the ditch, moving dirt and rock within the ditch are put on hold.  Our focus turns to felling the dead trees that are guessed to be the next obstructions, those already leaning into or across the ditch, or blocking the trail along the down hill side of the bank.

We stop for a hot meal at lunch, checking the horses and putting up our dried clothes at that point.  The afternoon is more of the same.  We work as long as we can, which on most days brings us out there only till about five or six. Then we return to camp once again, tired and hopefully fulfilled from the days accomplishments.  Horses are tended to, the fire is built up, a simple dinner is cooked, and water is heated for washing up.  Perhaps a quick evening walk to inspect the days work, and sitting around with the horses, relaxing, writing, soaking in the view, the silence, the peace.  Then crawling into the warm, dry tent, no matter what the weather brings, and being grateful for a well earned sleep…

Alan inspects our work

The crosscut saw on the stump of a felled tree along the ditchbank

The ditch lies at the base of a mountain spread heavy with dead standing trees, mostly spruce trees, victims of the devastating but natural cycle of a beetle.  We refer to this as “beetle kill,” and it’s become a familiar site here in Colorado, and from what I hear, throughout the Rockies. 

Sad though it may be to see a hillside brown with dead trees, when we walk in that same forest, we see lush life and new growth plentiful, and await the changes Mother Earth plays out before us, knowing how little control we have over these matters, but appreciating that in the long run, the forest will regrow and remain strong long after we are gone.

In any case, these dead standing trees are a current threat to the ditch we maintain. With a shallow root system, they fall in the wind and weather, taking the ditch bank with them as they fall or blocking the flow of water in their path, and as was the case earlier this month.  The blocked flow of water backs up, rises, and causes the resulting blow-out on the banks. 

With these dead trees comes a new part of our job besides digging and moving dirt:  felling trees.  Easily said and done when we’re back home at the Ranch.  Bob’s a master with his chainsaw.  But therein lies the problem.  No chainsaws in the Wilderness, and remember, this is the heart of the Weminuche Wilderness where we’re working here.

And so, we begin to learn the old lost art of felling with the cross cut saw.  We began last year, slowly and not so surely, felling and removing a few threatening trees from the ditch bank.  We were slow.  It was hard.  We longed for the chain saw.

Since then, we have practiced more, read more, learned more, and began to use new equipment – including an antique two-man saw that was hanging on our cabin wall as decoration.  After a little sprucing up from Bob’s dad, we packed the saw in by horseback, and gave it a go.

A dozen trees down from that old saw last week, and we’re on our way to learning.  A long way to go before we master the art, but if you look at the number of dead trees in need of removal along the ditch bank, one can but assume we’ll be pretty proficient by the end of this season.

Anyone interested in a little how-to?

Forrest clears bark from the tree we will fell, and prepares the area

We begin by de-barking the area the saw will cut into.  Although there are specific tools designed for de-barking, we find an ax works well.  Debarking is essential for maintaining a sharp saw, and believe me, you won’t want to waste your time cutting with a dull saw.  At the same time, the area is cleared, an “escape path” is established, and footing is secured.  This can be a problem working along side a ditch filled with water.

Bob and I working on the face cut

Next we make the undercut, or face cut.  This is the wedge that will determine the direction of the fall, and counter balance any lean to the tree. We begin with a horizontal saw cut into the tree, and use an ax to chop out the sloping cut.

Forrest and I working on a backcut

We follow then with the backcut, two of us sawing a horizontal cut from the back side towards the facecut just above that first undercut, with the third person spotting, keeping careful observation of the top of the tree which is where you’ll first note movement, and alternating by tapping wedges in behind the sawers on the backcut to prevent the saw from binding.

It is all about rhythm and motion, flow and tempo, pulling and giving, pulling and giving… any pushing causes a bind and throws off the rhythm, undermines the team efforts.  We work to be smooth together.  We strive to get that saw to sing.

We try to make it look easy but it’s not yet.  I don’t know if “easy” will ever be the word for it, but our goal is to be good at it. Chances are, a few dozen more trees and we’ll get the swing of it…

And yes, please don’t worry, safety is our top concern.  Remember, those are my boys I’m out there working with!  And the added bonus?  It sure beats going to the gym.

Bucking logs is so much easier...

The picnic table on Artemis Hill

A few years ago, I went on a picnic table building spree.  My theory behind it was the same as when building the blue bird boxes:  if you’re taking the time to build one, you may as well build four.  Only thing is, it was a lot easier to make the simple measurements, cuts and assembly necessary for the bird boxes than it was for picnic tables.  They were not only far bigger, but because I was using all recycled/reused old lumber, each board had to be processed after cutting in order to clean it up before assembly.  Bottom line – I confess it would have been so much easier to build just one, and to use new, store bought dimensional lumber.  But here we are, many years later, with several new picnic tables all about the ranch, and I can feel good and “green” about having built them all with lumber destined for the wood stove or burn pile, but given a second shot at life.

Well, this past week, we moved two of these picnic tables down the new road to sit along the cliff above the Big River.  One table is now outside the Little Cabin. A comfortable place to sit in the morning sun and enjoy coffee, in the evening to watch the shooting stars in the beginning of August, or on a quiet afternoon with a good book and cup of tea and the roar of the river behind you. The other is on the bluff shown above in the photo.  We call that place Artemis Hill.  That is where we laid the little horse to her finally rest.  And now it has become of place of reflection, of rest, of relaxation, and rejuvenation.  A place for us, for all, to sit and listen to the river, and to gaze up through the pasture and back at the magnificent and majestic Pole Mountain.  I feel it is a simple gift. For our selves, our guests, and the mountain. 

Nothing more than a place to sit.

The old wood cook stove, hooked up and fired up for the first time in years.

I try to be practical. I’m not one for collecting (except maybe horses?) or keeping things just for show.  A wood cook stove sitting around just looking pretty to me is… a waste of space.  I want it hooked up, fired up, and baking!  Yesterday, we had the opportunity to revive the life of an old stove, and in turn, bring the Little Cabin by the Big River to life.

There’s something about a wood stove that warms you to your bones better than anything.  It’s the real deal.  Fire. 

Growing up, we had a fire place.  It was big and open and put out heat if you pretty much sat inside it.  But ten feet away and you’d be chilled again.  Kind of like a camp fire on a chilly night, you know? But wood stoves are so much more efficient. Having lived with woodstoves for my primary heat source for the past two decades, I’d say nothing warms you deep inside, and warms up your cabin, quite like it. 

Add to the wonderful warmth, these old cook stoves work.  Those of you who have used them know – they take a little getting used you, but before long, you feel lucky to be standing there frying the bacon while being so comfortable and warm, with no more effort than that of feeding a few sticks of wood every once in a while.  So simple.  So efficient.  So warm!

Anyway, we got the old stove in through the door of the Little Cabin. Had to turn the stove on its side to slide it through, but didn’t even have to take the door off the hinges.  The boys climbed up onto the old roof (in need of new roofing, no doubt on the list as finances allow), opened up the hole in the roof and got the chimney hooked up through there.

Although it was a blustery day and the smoke blended with the grey of the sky and moved so quickly in the spring wind, you can just see the smoke wafting from the stove pipe. I wanted to see that since we moved the Little Cabin down there.  Something about seeing the little drift of smoke rising from the chimney symbolized life inside the cabin. 

And indeed, we were warm inside. Alan quickly found his place by the stove.

We sat there listening to the “snap, crackle, pop” of the wood, and the roar of the Big River so close by, and the rain began to fall and everything felt very right.  No doubt, it was home, if only for the few moments we remained and rested there.

Smoke coming from the stove pipe...