Of a Cold Spring and Abundant Fast Food

Friday morning. Gray and cool with more (hopefully light) precipitation in store. Our son Nick is coming up from Laramie for the weekend and we've laid in supplies. The weather might improve on Sunday before he leaves, but then we've another week of cold and gray ahead. In some ways this really isn't so bad: the snow is still melting slowly, the fog atop the ridges is actually rather pretty, and the birds and assorted critters seem to not care a whit about the fact that the sun is out of sight. I'm tempted -- in fact I have yielded in moments of weakness -- to letting my guard down and allowing myself to actually enjoy the weird beauty of this difficult spring. Never-the-less, it has been one whale of a long winter, and we are both so sun-starved that it's hard to accept that the current weather is, indeed, spring-like. It's sunshine that we want and lot's of it.

As I said, the critters seem unaware that anything is wrong; they clearly are taking the weather as it comes and making the best of being here and/or out of their winter homes. This morning I've had the pleasure of watching robins make fast, low rolling approaches toward my picture window only to veer at the last minute. Stellar and gray jays have been on the prowl in nearby trees, and one particularly alert Stellar paused briefly on the snow outside my window which, conveniently, is exactly even now with the bottom sill. He (or she?) eyed me through the glass as I returned the gaze. It was a fine if brief moment during which I got a very good look at his (my gender preference) outrageously blue plumage. Then the bird was gone, off to the trees to unsettle a robin in its search for bugs. A busy morning in the air hereabouts.

The ground level of our mountain neighborhood is no less busy. The golden-mantled ground squirrels and Uinta chipmunks continue to scrounge for every scrap of forage they can find. We've helped the effort by spreading our now exhausted supply of sunflower seeds and peanuts on top of the old log in front of the house. We'll resume after buying more critter feed on our next run to Saratoga. In the meantime they'll make do as they have all along by finding and consuming what they find as the snow retreats. They seem to be doing fine without us.

They would, perhaps, prefer to be doing fine without one of us in particular. I'm referring to our attentive kelpie, Zoe, who is making great sport of trying to ambush both fur and feather-bearing friend. She's not having much (actually zero) luck and that's just fine. The birds and animals are attuned to the opening of our doors and scatter quite effectively long before she can make the scene. Fast is the operative word here; we've taken to referring to the squirrels and chipmunks as Zoe's idea of fast food...fast indeed, and never in real danger of becoming an actual snack. The story is quite different and far more deadly when a red-tailed hawk or fox appear. Baring their occasional predation, things go along pretty nicely for our small menagerie. Zoe is a nuisance but little real threat. We expect her to keep trying, and if past years are any guide she'll need to keep relying on her bowl of kibbles in the kitchen for her actual meals.

It's so much better to be taking notice of living things that are up and about again. We tend to forget during the heart of these winters that there are all manner of creatures, flora, and fauna on this ridge are patiently awaiting better weather. All that snow supports the illusion that life has been stripped clean and clear for good. Then the season changes, the days get longer, and the snow somehow and despite all apparent odds begins its annual retreat toward soggy oblivion. The birds and critters return. Newly bared patches of ground display sprigs of new grass and the early stalks of what will become mountain flowers in later, warmer days.

Life wastes no time in reasserting itself here at nine-thousand feet. Being here to see it happen in it's relentless if slow-motion pace is one of the real pleasures of living on Barrett Ridge. It's a deep pleasure we welcome every spring, enjoy as it matures into summer, and try not to forget when the small animals disappear, the flowers fade, and the weather changes, as it will, come autumn.

Winter will come again; it is never far away in the Snowy Range.

Reading Progress in a Record Snow Year

Thursday (late) morning. Gray, cold, wet outside. Drizzly snow 'till nine, then fog. Now partly cloudy and just above freezing. Hoping for some sunshine today...should definitely get some tomorrow. This is what spring is like at nine thousand feet. My patience has long since gone numb.

Finished Martine Batchelor's The Spirit of the Buddha yesterday. It is a fine recounting of the Buddha's teachings as gleaned from translations of the Pali Canons. The book has some structural problems and lacks any kind of concluding chapter. All the same it will likely become a reference for me for details that Ms. Batchelor's husband, Stephen, has elected to spare his readers. His may be the better approach.

Don't quite know what to start next. I've a coffee table full of books purchased for my birthday which I intend to work through over the next several months. I've still got Will Durant's The Age of Faith open and now have his and his wife Ariel's Dual Autobiography to peruse. Then there's a couple of new/old ones by Robert Fulghum. And some novels. I'll add all these to shelves in Moose Crossing after reading, but I'm having some trouble these days finding room. I've got to loose some non-essential magazines and older books or find another bookshelf. No room for that, so I'd best get to clearing things a bit.

I'll look for interesting ways to add insights from all this reading to my daily notes and reflections. Unfortunately, all too many of my entries of late have dealt with the subject mostly at hand, which is the ever-present challenge of all this snow. Weather does indeed dominate one's attention when it consists mostly of snow and related lousy weather. This particular winter has proved to be more noteworthy than most...it's a clear record (and perhaps heart) breaker. We have achieved 200 percent of normal snow fall. The moisture and snow exceed any that the locals I know can remember. The levels may not exceed the ferocity of the winter of '48, but that was over sixty three years ago, which is why no one I know has experienced a worse winter -- yet. I've heard that the flooding could exceed any seen in the North Platte Valley since the white man came to it and started keeping records. So, Suzie and I have muddled through what is perhaps the most extreme winter of our lives. My my. This mountain home is beginning to feel more like a predicament than a place to live.

The melt has certainly begun -- over a foot and a half while we were away last weekend -- but these persistent cold fronts are slowing the progress. I can now see into the valley from my office without clearing what falls from the roof and have cleared the piles in front of the front living room window and the picture window in the guest room. The snow in front of the bay in our computer nook is not worth messing with anymore, and the kitchen and bathroom windows are mostly unobstructed. But that doesn't mean we are in the clear. There is still a good four feet of heavy stuff all around the cabin and the piles on either side of the drives where I've thrown snow all winter remain above my head. We're at the half-way point this month to Memorial Day and the crews are nowhere near getting the Snow Range road cleared. They are hoping for mid June this year but that's a very late opening for crews that pride themselves on always having that road clear by the holiday weekend. As I said, this is a non-typical snow year. Sheesh!

At least the summers are short up here!

Of Interruptions and The Cruel Joke That Is Spring

(Note:  this post was drafted on April 12th, a nice day.   We're in the midst of another storm as I write today)

Back in Moose Crossing-- finally. There have been interruptions attributable to weather, provisioning, and -- alas -- the IRS. We have allegedly entered springtime in the Snowy Range and the weather continues its pattern of setting us up for one cruel joke after another. As we work through the alternating fronts and unusually warm intervening days we also work through our larder and liquor cabinet. Hence the provisioning bit. As for the IRS, well, that's a seasonal irritant on par with the aforementioned cruel joke of spring. How on earth can this government agency call itself a "service?"  (I won't belabor this point -- never know who's reading this blog)

Today the weather -- what I can see of it -- is quite nice. We're approaching fifty degrees, the breeze is moderate, and the sky is pastel blue interrupted only by benign-looking clouds. What I can see of that sky is constrained by the snow bank that continues to dominate the large window beyond my writing desk. This obstruction, first mentioned in my March 10th post, continues to be refreshed by the frequent storms typical in April and May.  If  I don't scale the heights, snow shovel in hand, after each cold front the the view that inspires becomes the sight that depresses. I'm nowhere near advanced enough in Zen to find a mindful-in-the-moment state in all that snow staring back at me. Maybe that will come later. For now, I attack the pile resting as needed by comfortably sitting on the roof to survey my progress and the view.

What we need are more fifty degree days and far fewer snow-laden cold fronts. What we want, however, is precisely what the residents of the North Platte Valley dread. The snow level in the North Barrett Creek drainage (our neighborhood) is at 158 percent of normal. That translates to over 100 inches of packed snow which, when melted, becomes 33 inches of water. The story is the same in the other major drainages in the Snowy Range, and even more impressive numbers pertain in the Sierra Madres and, further south, the Never-Summers above Colorado's North Park. The water in these mountains is headed into the North Platte River and, if the melting happens too fast, that river will rise well beyond its banks. Saratoga flooded last year, as did Encampment and Casper and many communities downstream on into Nebraska. This year we have even more very wet snow, and if these intervening warm days provide any evidence of things to come, we can expect some very serious and rapid melting in the weeks ahead.

Friends in town are already stockpiling sand bags. Crews with bobcats and backhoes are at work reinforcing river banks with wire encased hunks of rock. Everybody is looking nervously at the mountains gleaming whitely and ever so innocently through the nice warm days. Most can only guess at just how much water is waiting for them up here in what a local ranching friend recently labeled 'Siberia.'

For their sakes we are mostly hoping for a slow thaw. Most mornings, though, Suzy and I cannot wait to see this white stuff go, and go very quickly. Whatever happens is up to Mother Nature, and she always has the last and all-too-often devastating word. Look out below!

Some Simple Wisdom From a Wise Man

There are gloomy days in abundance on Barrett Ridge, and not all of them can be blamed on the weather. When the blues borne of too much winter and snow and too many budget woes loom, I often return to the Joseph Wood Krutch's essay On Being an Amateur Naturalist for some needed grounding. The following quote is particularly helpful:

I think what I have wanted most out of life is to find living itself rewarding. I'm sure that I have wanted that more than I wanted wealth or fame. As Thoreau said, I don't want to feel when I come to die that I have never lived. Like Thoreau again, I am inclined to say that I came into this world not primarily to make it a better place to live in, but to live in it be it good or bad....I haven't always been happy -- who has -- but I have usually been interested.

This passage has three key phrases that stay with me: "what I wanted most...is to find living...rewarding," then " I came into this world not to make it a better place...but to live in it be it good or bad," and "I have usually been interested." These can be boiled down (ever a tricky thing with Mr. Krutch's already spare and efficient prose) to: Find living itself rewarding, live in the world as it is, stay interested.

Not exactly words to inspire mental fireworks of inspiration are they? The effect can be rather flat, or maybe even frustrating. I mean really, if you aren't finding your life all that rewarding...just how do you go about making it so? And living in the world as it is sounds like great advice, but if the world isn't going along so well, then are you supposed to just accept that? Mighty passive way to live. Finally if you aren't finding much reward, and the world you find isn't much to admire, how are you supposed to stay interested?

Even so, I find true wisdom in that boiled down line. It's the kind that doesn't so much impel me to charge out and change the world, as it cautions me to stay the course. "Steady as she goes" is what I hear when I re-read Krutch's paragraph. I can choose to be frustrated, or I can choose to look beyond what's wrong for the rewards that lurk just out of sight, but not out of reach. Seeing the world as it is can be painful at times, but clear vision is the best tool for making the best out of less than perfect situations. And there are so many interesting things out there. One doesn't have to look all that deeply to find and enjoy them.

The trick here is to keep giving myself permission to look for the positive that lurks nearly everywhere.  Mr. Krutch did just that through his long and varied life. I count him as one of my wise men. But that's a topic for future posts.

(The essay, On Being an Amateur Naturalist and many other fine ones by Mr. Krutch can be found in The Best Nature Writing of Joseph Wood Krutch, University of Utah Press, ISBN 0-87480-480-9)

Walking On The Snow In Early Spring

Wednesday afternoon. Sunny, thirties. Yesterday's few inches of new snow have melted away. I can see Medicine Bow Peak quite clearly now. Earlier Kennady Peak kept us company throughout the return phase of our morning walk up Forest Road 231. Quite the amazing view out this window in my little writer's nook -- Moose Crossing.

Although I returned with somewhat sore feet and a small pain in my lower sacroiliac I enjoyed the walk. The road is five feet deep in snow but hard-packed at the surface by snow mobile (stink machine) traffic and repeated freezing and thawing. For now we can walk upon it without snowshoes, despite the depth, which allows us fairly unencumbered access to the early spring solitude of the forest. We can (mostly) expect solitude because there aren't many snowmobilers interested in this route at this time of the year; we've encountered one group of five in the past five days. The result is an entrancing walk through a snowy wonderland where the only signs of company are the prints of squirrels, snowshoe rabbits, and the foxes hoping to make of them their next meal. The path isn't perfect. The surface gives slightly and is often slanted at odd angles depending on the angle the snowmobilers took on earlier visits. This, combined with the changeable texture of the snow at the surface requires us to be careful of our footing. There's just enough slipping and adaptation to grade to induce the aches and pains I mentioned above.

The slight discomfort is more than worth it. This trip, as I meandered along behind Suzy -- she is usually on point for these walks -- I found myself thinking over the latest harvest of quotes and ideas that have absorbed my writing of late. It occurred to me that there may be no finer luxury for someone like myself -- a dreaming idealist with a fondness for pondering questions great and small -- than a walk in beautiful surroundings with the mental company of some mighty fine thinkers. The fact that I have the time for both the walks and the research that gives access to the thoughts of so many wise individuals isn't lost on me. I know I'm lucky. With all the challenges of living on this ridge year round, there are compensations. The regular experience of beauty and solitude and the ability to celebrate and enhance that experience through thinking, reading and writing constitute a rare form of wealth.

I'll have to keep these thoughts in mind when the inevitable heavy snows of April descend. Maybe we'll be spared this year -- wishful thinking, I'm sure.

Deep Snow, Illusions, and Change

Thursday morning. Clear, forties. Nice day that could almost make one believe that spring is here. I know better. We have more snow ahead...many feet if the experiences of past years are any guide. Still, days of warmth melt the new stuff and, with some luck, the overall depth won't increase; it will gradually shrink until -- wonder of wonders -- bits of bedraggled ground will begin to show.

Today there is no such ground to see. In fact, to look out my window at the sun, trees and blue sky, I am required to look out and up, over the accumulated ten by twenty by thirty foot slab of white stuff that extends from eye level out into the near distance. The slab is the accumulation of what has slid off the roof of my small cabin/writing studio and the snow I clear from the deck of the main cabin and the surrounding walkways. Beyond the slab the average depth on our property is a good five feet, packed and settled. Our dog, Zoe, can porpoise along in it quite nicely for now, chasing after various toys we heave and she retrieves. Later, after a few more days of alternate melting and freezing, she'll gambol freely across it without sinking, flushing the hapless robins who are certain to return within a few weeks.

As for the business of looking out and up, I don't really mind that for now. What I've lost is the view into the valley of Ryan Park. When my parents bought this cabin forty years ago the main part of that valley was empty of houses and roads. It's main features were a picturesque mountain stream, willows along the banks, and an expanse of sage and grasses stretching to the surrounding forests. Deed to the valley was granted to the owner of a lumber company in exchange for his own lands further into the forest. He, in turn, sold the valley to a retired automobile company executive who expected to sell lots and make his millions. Things didn't sell fast or well. Millions were not made. But roads were cleared and lots did sell, and, over time, homes small and large sprung up.

These days Ryan Park has lurched and stumbled into a small community of families, mostly weekenders, who come to snowmobile in winter, ride four-wheelers when the roads aren't buried in snow, and generally take advantage of the various ways to recreate in these mountains. We have a home and property owners association, a volunteer fire department, and an annual fund raiser to support said fire department and raise money to keep our roads more or less repaired. It is a decidedly loose, if not entirely informal, community and I'm mostly okay with the growth that put it here. Mostly.

But I do remember when that valley was empty. Years ago a much younger me would drive on summer nights from homes elsewhere and stop to gape at its splendid emptiness illuminated by a full moon, no sounds but the murmuring stream and rustling of the trees in the light breeze. I'd breathe deeply and wish with all my heart that nothing would change, that the meadow and stream and forest would stay high and lonely and lovely. It was a naive wish. Even then there were other homes, long established, hidden in the forest at the edge of the park. The valley was certainly far from empty. I loved an illusion.

I love its memory still. Today, and for the next few weeks, as long as this snow before me lingers, I can allow myself to recall and even rest in that illusion. I can't see the valley; I can't see the houses. I can see the forest above it and the tip of Medicine Bow Peak atop the Snowy Range, and I can and will pretend that all is as it was.

And watch as the thaw melts the illusion. And carry on with the way things are now.

On Reading History From The Philosopher's View

Thursday afternoon. Snowing all day, but nothing is accumulating...just warm enough and the white stuff is falling slowly enough to essentially stay neutral. Not supposed to be much different through the night. I'm not optimistic about NOAA getting that right. Weather permitting we'll head for Cheyenne and Laramie tomorrow (hence the non-optimism). Got to pick up my Mom's tax stuff, see our son, Nick. We also need to get out of the mountains for a while, but we may be clearing some snow before we can leave.

I have just finished reading Will and Ariel Durant's Vol 9, The Age of Voltaire in their eleven volume Story of Civilization. I am mostly reading these volumes in order (I've temporarily set aside  Vol 3, Caesar and Christ)  but I reserve the perfectly natural right to move about at whim, and Voltaire and the European eighteenth century have my attention for reasons I won't go into today.  I cannot read any of these works for speed. They must be encountered with attention and no small degree of respect. Also, there is so much packed into each page that sometimes I despair of ever getting even part of their richness into my thickening skull.  I have concluded deep recall should not be my goal. The only thing possible for me to expect is to acquire a general framework of the overall story the Durants have conveyed so thoroughly and well. I can, after all, always return to the respective volumes to recall or review.

It occurs to me that in case of a fire, the first books I would try to save would be this multi-volume set and any other Durant works on the shelf. The Story of Civilization series is out of print and not easy to recover intact on the used book market. I don't ever want to be without my own set.

And just why am I working through these volumes? Because they are the heritage of mankind...our real and best story. I do not want to end my days without at least having tried to get the major parts of that story into my head. 

Besides.   Up here at Elk Crossing, I have the added advantage of time and no need to be in a hurry.  Luxuries indeed.