Photo Essay: Lathrop State Park

Lake with the Spanish Peaks as a backdrop.

Peak Peeking.

A Tempting Trail.

Anytime. But nary a horse to be found.

My best friend ready to head on.

Today’s gratitudes:

• Goats
• Grazing alpacas
• MKL
• Tulips blooming today

Spring, Maybe?

At least it’s pretending to be so.

I am hopeful.

Quite hopeful.

Today’s gratitudes:

• Lovely neighbors
• Horses
• Counting down the days
• A plane ticket in hand (even if it’s just to Dallas)

Photo Essay: Hwy. 12 – LaVeta to Cuchara

Corners Diner, which looks sadly defunct.

Such unique rock formations.

Curves ahead.

Roadside barn.

And roadside shed.

My stomach was disappointed that it could not have a burger at the Dog Bar. A little too early for the season.

Happy Mailboxes.

Today’s gratitudes:

• That MKL came up for the day
• Only nine more days until I actually live with my husband
• That the Fire Department is trying to contain the fire four miles northwest of here (which is really stressing me out)
• A successful experimental smoothie

Photo Essay: CR 560 to Home

Via a rather circuitous route that included Hwy 69, Hwy 96, and Hwy 165.

The Sangre de Cristo range.

Abandoned.

But still watchful.

The Three Trees.

Contrasts.

My Best Friend.

Grazing.

Aspens on the verge of Spring.

Higher and higher.

I found some bison!

Along the road home.

Today’s gratitudes:

• Trying to figure out the cat
• The first tree in bloom
• That K is back safely from her trip

Wind

Wind. I’ve never liked it, except when it rustles the fronds of the palm trees. Contradictorily, that’s my favorite sound. But I’d scarcely call that wind. That’s a breeze, gentle and joyful.

Wind is what we get here in the Front Range and the Wet Mountains. This is what took down a 75-foot tree that miraculously and by the slimmest of margins missed the Carriage House. This is what makes me look with great skepticism out of the living room window as another giant pine tree bends and twists against the blue sky, its trajectory perfectly aligned with my bedroom.

Wind is what never hesitates to remind me of the ruptured eardrum that I suffered at age two when my mother was in the hospital with pneumonia. Each time the wind, anywhere from lukewarm to freezing, gains access to my right ear, it hurts like the dickens.

Wind is why I don’t like Wyoming. It seems ever-present there. I recall spending a night in the back of my truck the summer after college trying to sleep through it – wasn’t sure if I was going to freeze or go mad, and it was June.

And wind is what led to the destruction of the Cozy House and an entire community. Wind that decide to dance with fire — and what a dance it was.

From the Retreat, I can’t see the wind coming because I’m already in it. But further away from the mountains, it’s easy to tell when it will be a day of the warm, dry, harsh winds that indigenous people used to call “snow eaters” and which we call Chinooks. There’s a bright clear sky and over the mountains, a thick shelf of white cloud in a straight line. If you’ve lived here long enough, you know to hang on to your small pets and tie down your trampolines when you see that anytime between November and April.

Ages ago, I read or someone told me that the indigenous people called them “the winds of madness”. I’ve never been able to find a source for that, but I don’t doubt it’s true. The sound, the uncertainty, the constancy of them can indeed make you feel more than a little crazy.

Unfortunately for too many of us, they now raise feelings of pain, fear, loss, anger, and trauma, digging into wounds that are only barely starting to scab over. I have reminded myself a dozen times today of the freakish circumstances that made me lose the Cozy House and that there’s nothing left to lose there now. But at the Retreat, I have the rest of what’s left to lose. It’s impossible not to think about it, about what I would take, about how to arrange the house so I could quickly pack those treasures I didn’t lose. About how a single spark from a cigarette tossed out of a car window on the Frontier Pathway could take all this away from me.

About how little control we actually have.

Today’s gratitudes:

• Decent sleep
• Wise decisions
• Experimental cooking
• Good books

Tousled

Hotel Boulderado

Today’s gratitudes:

• The first hint of green in the Valley
• The Final Four
• Sushi
• Experiments

Comparison

Yesterday. More snow than I expected.

Today. The blue sky and sun helps.

Amazing how much difference a day can make. It feels like the extremes are more extreme up here. Weather never just fades away. It’s either on or it’s off. No in between. I either feel like Jack Nicholson in The Shining going mad or Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music twirling on a sunny mountaintop.

In other news, Pharoah and I are getting along famously. He made an appearance on my Zoom staff meeting this morning, slept on my stomach all night last night, and was absolutely shocked at my taking a bath.

One shocked cat.

I don’t think he’d ever seen a human do such a thing, so he delicately walked around the rim of the tub. Thank heavens for his sure-footedness, as I’ve had a cat fall into a bathtub with me once and it is not an experience I would choose to repeat.

Today’s gratitudes:

• A helpful, ethical well services guy
• Living with a cat again
• Sunshine
• Snow falling from the pine trees

Cold: An Original Wednesday Poem

Cold

The cat curls himself into the hollow of my knees
Under the blanket that kept my mother warm before she died.
Soft
Sage green
with a pattern of leaves, 
the tones of his brown fur 
echoing the shades.
I warm my hands on him
under the serendipitous guise of petting,
as he doesn’t seem to mind.
We are still 
becoming accustomed 
to one another.

Yesterday’s blues have turned to gray,
pure white piling
up along pines and trails,
the Spring of Deception 
showing itself in a freeze of glory.

My coffee now only remembers warmth
but I still drink it.
It is not worth 
disturbing the cat
to heat it up again.

Today’s gratitudes:

• That A is moving into a more permanent place today
• Warm fuzzy socks
• Classical music
• Spaghetti squash

Spring Blooms Eternal

I went back to the cozy house last Monday. The space looked different somehow. It might have been the first time I’d seen it without snow. The green mulch cannons had disturbed some of the ruins. They must have been fairly powerful. Someone had put an uncharred piece of ironwork where I would find it.

I wept some. I hadn’t been looking forward to going back because I’d been feeling relatively happy. And I’d felt guilty about that, guilty about not visiting the cozy house for several weeks. Of course I hadn’t forgotten. The thought of the loss is with me always, lurking, popping up unexpectedly. But being in the midst of it, face to face with shattered pottery and melted glass and memories lost and those never to be made, tears at my soul. It feels as if, just to the right of my heart in the center of my chest, there is a blackened fist-sized piece of wood. I don’t feel it as much when I’m not at the cozy house, but I know it lives as a part of me now.

In the midst of this difficult day, I found hints of hope.

The tulips that I planted long ago at the edge of the front walkway have come up.

Snail shells are everywhere. I don’t know why. But they’re pretty.

Striped squill – which I don’t recall planting – are coming up at the back of the former greenhouse and on the mound.

Ex-Pat’s first dandelion. Dandelions should be elevated to hardy flower status instead of weed. Then everyone’s yard could be beautiful.

I FaceTimed with K, and she reminded me of this split rock, which marked the resting place of two baby birds that we’d buried there when she was small. A bird had built a nest in an old mailbox on an abandoned power pole at the back of the property. We watched diligently as the babies grew, but before they were old enough, a cruel summer wind took down the mailbox and the birds with it. I remember that we held a solemn little service. That old power pole is now on the ground, burned.

But our flag still stands.

And love still lives.

And while most of us have committed to participating in the town’s clean-up program – which feels like a questionable decision at this point – some who had the resources and wherewithal have proceeded with clean-up on their own, with the intent to rebuild.

We will never be able to bring Original Superior back to what it was. We cannot rebuild history or duplicate our old houses with all their quirks and foibles. But there will be new houses, small ones with character and charm. There will be gardens with hyacinth and iris, with snapdragons and California poppies, with tomatoes and too many zucchini. I don’t know what will emerge from the ashes. But I know something will.

Today’s gratitudes:

• Lovely neighbors
• Hawks
• That vague feeling of spring (though in Colorado, we know it to be false)
• Calving season

Plaza Hotel, Las Vegas, New Mexico

Never forget to look up.

I am pleased to report that I’ve heard birds in our trees the last two mornings and that the daffodil blades have broken through the dirt.