iris in early winter

I called it monotone.  You knew I had always seen more.   I imagine you knew I would again. 

Hard as it is some days, I continue to look with great admiration upon the magnificence of this mountain, a place I no longer wish to be.  You may ask yourself how it can be a struggle, and I wonder why you insist on seeing only the shell.  Where is the pearl?  Perhaps still just a grain of sand.

Early winter colors seduce with their subtle suggestions.  They draw me in, tangle my senses in a smooth white blanket, leave me wanting more, not satisfied with a quick glance. I am forced to stop and stay a while if I choose to find the delicate beauty of the land in this season of so many grays.

The mountain understates her intentions now. Nothing is laid out plain and bright for all to see. This is not blatant beauty.  Look beyond the shiny surface. Feel the textures. Touch her icy flesh.

Nine below zero.  We don’t remain out for long.  I feed the horses, just toss out the hay and get moving, no standing around petting and coddling now.  My course continues back around the hayshed and past the slumbering guest cabins with shark teeth icicles clinging to the eves, a menacing grin luring me to step inside. We continue on our trail tucked in the trees, a brief walk for the puppy in hopes of relieving a bit of his abundant energy.  I break into a run just to keep warm, to quicken my time outside.

The sun will rise and warm our world.  For a few hours each day, we forget the chill of the early morning.  We are relieved of this frigid burden. We are free and warm and light.

And in the meanwhile, the world is mine.  The rest remain dormant.  The silence enwraps me.  And with the first light plays marvelous color upon the stark and exposed skin of the mountain left naked above treeline.  Mine, I may say and feel.  But surely, hers alone.

subtle variations in the landscape

Pole Mountain mid autumn

We search for beauty in a bland landscape

A view almost void of vibrancy

Before me now is brown and grey

A monotone mountain

Rolling hillsides covered in tall dried grasses

Seed heads mature and exposed

Ready to be carried away in the wind

Or crushed by the oncoming snows

Plainness of earth and sky

A lack of variation

And an inability to draw the line

Day fades into night and night to day again

The season lacks definition

There is no black and white

Subtle shapes and silent sounds

As the bids have left for the season

The mountain settles in her simplicity

The old tired woman lets down her hair

And prepares herself for slumber

The vibrant clear crisp bright days

Of when you were here

What you choose to remember

Warm sun and a passionate rain burst

Sending you skipping laughing carefree

Are long gone

Replaced by a landscape faded

Likewise, the intensity of winter

Our frozen white world that enwraps and enchants us

Has yet to arrive

Inevitable as we know it to be

We brace ourselves in preparation

For what will embrace us

But now, my friend, we and the mountain wait

We are still

We are in between

In the space

Between now and then

Here and there

Yesterday and tomorrow

Ah yes, you remind me, it is today

What an odd time and place to be

Cyndee shared this quote I have thought about over and over and over again:

“Between stimulus and response, there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response. In our responses lie our growth and our freedom.” 

I think about that as I feel the mountain

Cool and serene as she lets go of what was

And prepares for what will be

Ice on rocks in river

The water lures me as it has so many times before

The sweet smell and song dancing down the mountainside

Standing beside its emotionless banks

Which have been cut and carved from this unending course

Watch as the water begins to freeze

Winter begins to take charge of her course

Secrets and sounds will soon be still for the season

The long white expanse will be laid out before us

I loose myself in the last of this frigid rushing

The open stream surging over rocks worn smooth with time

Numb and callous with no voice of their own

Shaped by the eternal flow

Enjoy the sound and motion while we still can

A white noise louder than the clatter rolling around in my mind

I lean over and dip in my hand

Submerge the whiteness of my flesh just beneath the slick surface

Within seconds it turns red and throbbing

The river is stronger than I am

Will ever be

And you think of how many spend a lifetime

To subdue control alter and own

That which is mightier than you or I will ever be

Looking up River and into the high country from Snowmachine Point

Darkness arrives a little later each day.

The minutes of daylight are slowly extended.  The sun is higher in the sky; shadows are shorter; days are longer. We notice the slightest change.

The river begins to open, the Mighty Rio, swallowing mouthfuls of ice in its still quiet trail when no one is looking. A black ribbon flowing, twisting, dancing through the heavy layer of white.  Beneath, the river runs black and deep, quiet and still, a hidden grin on a somber face.

Without fanfare, it breaks free. So subtle and soft and slow this transformation.

Perhaps you did not notice And the tracks of the moose to the open water tell us they know.

We know the torrents that will follow when the melting begins in full force, the big brown waters of the wild spring runs. Subtlety is then lost, and none can overlook.  Now, it is only a hint in the calm, cool waters that have cut through the seemingly forever white landscape of the frozen river. It is but a minimal change, a hint, a suggestion of what will be, what is and lives beneath, beyond our blatant view. 

Nature is not ready to scream “Spring!” quite yet. For now she yawns, blinks her eyes, but does not stir awake. She will remain in winter a little while longer

The Rio Grande begins to open

This morning darkness is absolute. The horizon is black, pure and still.  Endless. There is no moon, only starlight to reflect back so faintly on the crystalline snow, and the delicate pattern of pin-prick lights across the vast black seas of the sky.  Between here and the heavens are the dark looming silhouettes of the mountain, complete, composed and motionless. They are this overwhelming bulk separating the faint glow on the surface of the snow from the twilight overhead.

Between the two I sit in silence, warm and comfortable, inside looking out, a part but so far away.

Looking up at the Little Cabins over the Rio Grande as the sun lowers behind

The kids, enjoying the last of the afternoon sun.

We await winter and languish in the relatively balmy days of sun strong enough still to melt the snow in spots where it penetrates the pending season, our paths around the ranch and through the woods, grass along the hillsides where the elk have pawed or bedded, the arbitrary tracks of the coyote, where the horses have tromped about the hay shed, the south side of our cabin.  The mountain appears as a patchwork quilt with bright white snow alternating with rich, dark, moist soil and pale dried grasses waving golden in the mid day sun. It is different every day yet so similar every year.  We wait for the unavoidable, the absolute white which swathes the mountain and closes the road and shuts down a part with us.  Like wild animals, we retreat to a season of dormancy, we do not fight the inevitable, my soul recoils to a natural hibernation while my body keeps on keeping on, perhaps only a little slower beneath the many heavy layers.

With each storm, anticipation builds, and expectations sprout up with the first forecasts.  We should know better by now, but we look for what we want to find.  And more often then not, what we get is sun. This makes it hard to complain.

The last storm passed us by gently. The air cleared with the usual frigid blast. Seven below zero on the first morning, the willows laced with heavy hoarfrost and the new snow sparkling and light and loose.

The air is warmer yesterday. There is a temperate release, like a relaxed sigh, a lack of tension about the mountain. The fear and urgency which accompanies the severe cold was gone. We walk comfortably and stir up a bunch of cow and calf elk that raise their heads and watch us. I am certain they somehow know hunting season is over.  They move off silently and secretly, sifting into the monotone woods of naked aspen. They do not run.

I work in the yard in a t-shirt.  No jacket.  No hat.  Not even gloves. The horses roll in the snow to cool off with their coats thick and fuzzy and ready for the cold. That will come.  For now, today, they are relaxed. You can feel it.  I work out in the paddock there near them.  They come over.  They can not help themselves, all of them, especially the kids. A magnetism grown from millennia of domestication and dependency perhaps.  Or perhaps because we are alone here together again. The kids, Beka named them, three horses in one.  The yearling Bayjura has her nose on everything.  Even the drill as I use it to set another screw.  There is little she will be frightened of for long when she begins to work on the trail with me next year. She has a comfort and confidence about her that I respect and admire.

I wipe off the mud she has smeared on the drill and finish my work around her.  We look to the west and judge time by the lowering of the sun, the shrinking distance between the sun and the silhouette of Indian Ridge.  I estimate but a half hour left before the sun drops behind and takes with her the comfort and warmth of the day.

tufts of grass on a cliff collecting snow

It does not happen all at once.  It is often slow, subtle, easy and soft.  Layer upon layer it builds, piling deeper and deeper, smoothing out the landscape to a gentle even white.  With time, with layers, rocks, roads, brush, even fence lines will become absorbed.  Our world will be buffered by snow.

Yesterday we watched the ermine, pure white but for his shiny black eyes and the dark tip of his tail, darting about in the yard along the coyote fence, nearly invisible in the fresh layer of camouflage white.  I remember several years ago, during the drought, observing the snowshoe hare already in their winter coats, but the ground was still open, exposed and brown.  We did not see many of their tracks in the snow that year when the white cover finally came.

Inside, unrelated to the world around us, there is a turning to white as well, as another baby dove grows his feathers, transforming from a prickly, naked pink to the soft, smooth white of his parents.  Unnatural, I believe at times, to be born at such odd times of the year, to be living out the cycle of life from the aviary we built in the corner of our kitchen. For these doves, this is all they know. They have room to fly, to breed, to raise their young.  They are wanting for nothing more. Unnatural, I still may say, as I open their cage and fill their food and water each morning.  This is my judgment, and yet who am I to judge? The same hands that helped to build the cage in the first place. The need to judge is outweighed by the need for life and beauty and song in our lives.  We all play the creator in our own lives, our own world, in one way or another.

And so as the snow falls down outside the window in heavy loads, painting the landscape an even pallid shade of white, inside we rejoice in the chirp of the young one, feeding from his father’s beak, spreading his brand new wings, and learning to fly.

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?

last light over the rio grande reservoir

Time is told by memories, by the change of seasons, the growth of our children, shadows from the sun, phases of the moon, placement of the stars in the night sky. It is a different story for each of us, based on a different history, seen from a different view. Though once we look around, it’s all the same, your world, my world, the same stars we look at from so far away.

Last week I could lie in bed, look up and see an unnamed star in an unknown constellation, the names of which are meaningless, we make up our own, their stories told by someone else long ago, yet still we recognize them all, seasonal travelers, or solid constants above our big back yard, this star now low in the southeast, shining in his spectacular technicolor coat.  We call him Crazy Star, dancing wildly to the west in the early night of spring, now in the mornings as I wake in darkness, peaking through the tops of the trees. I judge my timing on his placement, when and where he clears the trees, breaking into the open, and fading with the lightening sky.  I asses how much more sleep I am allowed.  I take a secret pleasure in being able to say, “Not yet…” and roll back over, snuggling against my warm husband for just a little longer.

This morning the moon was big, bright, overwhelming the fine and delicate pinpoint lights of the stars, and I could read by the long shadows coming from the west, by the silver glow touching the branches of the big blue spruce outside my window, where the moon was, how close time would be until I push back the warm covers into the cold chill of early morning in the cabin, walk down stairs in this semi-darkness, light the fire, and begin my day..

On days I wake with the worries of the world heavy on the pillow beside me, how simple it is to look up and remember the stars will shine with brilliance and clarity and a stability we will never know, despite my greatest fears. No, not despite me, or because of me, but regardless of me or my troubles, or even my hopes and desires.

The longer I lie there and look, the deeper and farther I see into that vast openness of twinkling space before me, just from the square of the window.  There is comfort in my insignificance.  My problems weighing grave on my mind become meaningless; put into perspective, they are nothing at all. For a moment, I fade off into the infinite horizon, then I wake and begin my day.

Looking in the yard in an early morning snow

They say a big storm is coming. We say, let it snow. We stir with anticipation and spend the day preparing, too excited to come in even after dark.  Tools, piles, stuff, junk – anything left out will be covered for the next six months. Four feet under, covered in a smooth, white all encompassing casket which encloses the mountain for miles and miles.

I am glad to have it gone, picked up, put away.  It is clean, neat, tidy.  There is a peace in that, in knowing everything is in its place. Safe for the season.  You decide what will be needed, what you can do without. Some of it I will not want to see again even in the spring.  But you better know where stuff is, and how to tuck it away.

Otherwise, it is buried alive.

Will this be it?  The big one to tuck us away for the season, to close our road and open our concealed vast white expanse of winter wonderland?

I don’t think so.  But fools we would be to be caught unprepared.  Do we challenge the mountain or ride on her waves?

The ritual of tucking away for winter, as natural as the change of seasons and as old as time. It was never more apparent than the years we had to pull the bridge before high waters would wash the timbers down river.  A ritual if any that claimed winters presence.  There from the high waters of the Pacific Northwest’s November rains, an average of 68 inches rainfall in a matter of months. Mud slides would close the road.  The bridge would block access to the cabin beyond. High waters, raging and fierce, so frightening I would not get near and hold back the dogs, did for me then what the snow does now. We would wait until the waters of the creek were touching the logs crossing the expanse.  Every year, putting off the inevitable as long as we could, then be out there scrambling in the drenched ground and soaked timbers with slick footing, grasping with wet and frozen fingers at the sodden, slippery planks.  Always just in time…

And here we await the ritual of the closing of the road, giving in to the inevitable heavy mountain snows. Leaving our trucks by the plowed section. Farewell to the easy access and a town trip, there and back, in one day. Suddenly it is easier to stay home.  Where would you rather be? 

A closed road, followed by a forced hibernation. 

You may at first look at this as unnatural.  But I believe it is not.  It is, perhaps, as natural as the rain or snow… We humans may have the extra baggage to care for, from bridges to tools and piles of, ah, junk… but is it any different than the bear or squirrel or Stellar Jay who knows food will be scarce, travel nearly impossible, and  does what it takes to prepare themselves, to tuck themselves away?

We are tucked away.  We are safe. The fire is crackling and the world outside in the first light of the day shows me nothing but white.  We await the snow and anticipate the inevitable change and allow the calm, quiet white world to become all that we see and do.

Winter approaches like foam riding the waves in a deep sea, still so far from the shore.  Our emotions follow suit with the ups and downs.  There is balance only in time, evening out the extremes. The snow paints the pasture white one moment; the next it aspirates into the cold, dry winds and returns us to the dried, brown grasses.  The air has a chill about it now, even as we stand in the paling sunlight with her elongated shadows she tosses across the horizon. 

We have a resolve about us as we wait for “the big one” – the one everyone talks about, builds up, turns into another approaching doom.  We have learned to hesitate with expectations.  I try to refrain from assuming I know what my mountain will do. The more I am with her, the more I know her, the more I see my significance.  I have no control.  I learn to accept. 

A drastic and dramatic time of change, for the mountain, for wildlife, for us, filled with anticipation and apprehension, a natural unease of remaining when all others have left. We get over it.  We settle in like the frost in the ground, deeper every day, and become a part of what we choose.

I suppose the first few years we felt a looming sense of trepidation, following us around in so many questions and eyes and inside our own minds.  Stories of those who had tried and left.  Anxieties of sub-zero temperatures and snow so deep one could be buried alive by stepping off track, made bigger always by the tales of others. The unknown.

It is no longer unfamiliar, though always different, always changing. We learn not to expect, but do our best to adjust.  Making plans, dreaming, such a vital part of life, of truly living, here has been a great challenge, learning what little control we have in our own hands, as we work around the weather, around the constant trials of a sorry history grasping strong and tight, clawing for its last hold.

The air space within our view becomes more still as most birds have gathered and gone. The crows remain, cleaning the last of the carrion from this autumn’s kills.  The Stellar Jays stare in the window and wonder when I will break down and begin my winter feeding.  I tell them the skiff of snow and single digit morning temperatures do not qualify as hard times yet.  They must wait.  They too are plenty prepared. They know what to expect, know how to survive.  They do not need me, but always enjoy the ritual of the morning hand out.  Throughout the winter, they are more punctual than I am, and chastise me when I sleep in.

Our pantry is stocked, the hay barn full, and firewood piled in seemingly decadent abundance.  We sleep well at night and wait.

A late autumn hillside above Brewster Park

On a naked hillside

Where the aspen stand like sticks

Fine branches free of leaves

Starkly fixed against the autumn sky

Harsh and cold and grey

Stillness covers exposed rock and dirt

Undressed soil like flesh of the mountain

Plain with grasses dried and brown

Flattened from the last snow

And the nest snow

Static air barren of blowing leaves

Silence from the birds

Now abandoned without protection

Am I meant to follow suit

Though I choose to remain here

Against natures heading voice

Against your better judgment

Swirling winds agitate the last of life

Yet unable to awaken or arouse

On this deserted hillside

Unvarnished and simple and obvious

Where do we find comfort in this wind

When the world beside the disturbed branches

Is so subdued in this lingering moment

Grasping at motionless movement

As we remain awaiting winter

With a natural hesitation

And dance among the quiet trees

Looking at Lost Trail Ranch under Pole Mountain and a clear blue autumn sky.

Ice has started to form.  First as a film, a thin crust on a bucket of water under the drip line on the north side of our cabin, catching the melting frost each morning as smoke from our wood stove warms the roofline. Last week I could tap the bucket and the surface would crack.  Now it is thicker, more durable.  The bucket becomes a solid, heavy mass of black ice.  

Ice will remain and grow and thicken for many months to come.  It becomes a part of our lives, a semi-permanence in our world for half our days, like snow covering the peak of Indian Ridge outside my kitchen window.  There as I gaze from the warmth of our cabin.  There for more of the year than it is gone, lost in the lazy warm wash of summer, the short season of open roads, seasonal life abuzz on the mountain like ants on a picnic.

The sun still has warmth. We feel it, savor it with long lunches and coffee on the deck in shirt sleeves.  Enjoy it while we can so openly, as it fades to fleeting moments, delicious in its precious glimpses.  Yet no matter how temperate the front of our cabin will get in the protected balmy radiance of the log wall mid day, tucked in the back as a secret from the sun, the ice will remain, solidify and swell.  It will not thaw out completely until at best April when we watch the pasture fade from white to patches of brown, and we can drive the road once again.

Yesterday morning the thermometer read thirteen degrees. Will we no longer see a morning reading above freezing until next spring?  We begin to look around the ranch, our home, our lives, decide what we need, what needs to be done, quickly now, under pressure for time we put on ourselves, the season puts upon us, in the short days remaining before the snow covers us and the mountain.  Stocking up for winter concerns us no different than the Stellar and Gray Jays and tree squirrels, all anxiously stashing their cache for the approaching season.

The ice multiplies, intensifies and spreads in the undisclosed pockets and private parts of the mountain, on the north slopes, tucked in behind the trees, there behind the cabin where the frost line begins to dig deep.  Silence starts to grow. Our blood thickens and slows as we watch the mountain clear and settle, recover from the season, and prepares for the long reprise of winter.

The chickens help weed the garden after a humble harvest.

A temperate spell charms the mountain, warm as the color of the leaves ablaze across the hillsides before us.  We head outdoors in shirtsleeves, allowing the down jackets and wool hats a week of rest before what we imagine will be the beginning of the end of balmy days.

A welcome interlude. The frozen air has already visited us, spreading its frosty silver lace across each blade of grass and the remains of the garden, now barren for the season, awaiting its heavy white blanket tucking it in for the long season of rest.

I envision others elsewhere right now. Overwhelmed with abundance.  Drenched deep within the feast of the harvest.

Consider zucchini. Ah, perhaps you take it for granted, this humble fruit of your labor and soil. But please do not!  Remember it to be the beautiful blessing it is, even if it takes over and seems to besiege your garden and kitchen table. For you, those lucky enough (yes, I really do mean lucky) to have zucchini from your garden, I share this recipe.  Alas, not from the harvest of my garden.  This recipe is from my mother, who also manages to grow this humble vegetable in plenty, and still finds creative ways to use it all. I hope you try and enjoy.

Zucchini Chocolate Cake

 1 c. whole wheat flour

1-1/4 c. all purpose flour

½ c. unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1-1/2 c. sugar

1 stick unsalted better

Recipe called for ½ c. vegetable oil. Instead I used ¼ c. marmalade and ¼. C. applesauce

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla  (I added 2T triple sec, a liqueur)

½ c. buttermilk

2 c. grated unpeeled zucchini (about 2-1/2 medium or one really big like I used)

1 c. semisweet chips

¾ c. chopped walnuts

Butter and flour a 13x9x2 pan.  Stir together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl. Beat sugar, butter and oil in large bowl until blended.  Add eggs, one at a time. Beat in vanilla.  Mix in dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk.  Mix in grated zucchini.  Pour batter into pan and sprinkle chocolate chips and nuts over.

Bake at 325 degrees for about 50 minutes.

The lonely view from hunting camp

There is often comfort in the rain, in heavy clouds wrapped like arms about the waist of the mountain, soft and protective, cradling the valley in its syrupy shroud. I lie in bed and listen to the drumming on the metal roof; the white noise sends me drifting back to sleep, a sleep as sweet and thick as the clouds pouring over the hills.

Awake, I worry.  I worry about the water running brown and silting the ditches.  I worry about the colts chilling in their shedding foal coats.  I worry about leaking roofs and windows left open and laundry on the line. I worry about Forrest, still up working at hunting camp…

Yesterday I was on a mission.  A mission for hug!  Five hours up the mountain trails, alone in the saddle, passing but a couple hunters and two neighbors fishing and hiking. I arrived at the camp where Forrest is working, and there was no one.  Not even a horse…

Would you ride five hours through the mountains for a hug from your kid?  I would too.  Tell you what though, when you arrive at your destination, and no one is there to hug you… that, my friend, is too bad…

Still, riding along the trails soft and slick from the fresh rains, under the heavy shifting leaden sky flashing with distant lightening, peeking through the breaks in clouds at fresh snow on the distant peaks so delicately lacing the rocky slopes, listening to the thunder on one side of the valley and the bugling of the bull elk on the other, so close my horse stops and looks, and shows me where to glance through the brush to catch a glimpse of the magnificent beast proudly strutting along the steep slope, calling out to anyone interested.  Lucky for him, no hunters were there to hear.  Funny that it is the same call for survival that can so easily call him to his death.

But alas, I am still awaiting my hug. 

Riding away from hunting camp... without a hug.

Early this morning, snow dusts the high country above the ranch.

Before your very eyes it is changing.

Green turning to gold.

Watch!  With each ephemeral moment, do you not see more and more?

How quickly this revolution occurs.  How magnificent each day on the mountain…

And by this evening, the golden fire on the Aspen hill sides begins to explode.