The Land of Storms

Pass Lake and one of its officially unnamed companion lakes...

It's the first accumulating snow of the season. At least above eleven-thousand. Meteorological prophecy foretells of the snow-line possibly dipping to eight-thousand by Thursday morning.

Although I was buffeted by some Tibetan gales upon the Roof of the World, it was not nearly as blustery or cold as I anticipated. The snow was not that deep. Maybe three or four inches in most spots. Although, for some of the places I walked, I was grateful I opted to wear gaiters. The occasional small snow devil danced within my field of vision.

Back at home, a two to three-thousand vertical foot difference, it was partly to mostly sunny with a strong breeze. The high peaks on either side of the valley were not enshrouded in grayish-white cloaks. Looking west, toward the Roof of the World, the clouds were thicker. Being up there, some of the ridges were hidden behind veils of mist and snow and cloud.

This is the time of year when the jetstream dips to fourteen-thousand feet, where it shall stay until April. Part of the reason it can be so windy up here. Anywhere the continent splits in half and waterways flip a coin by virtue of gravity as to east or west, the winter storms can linger for days. Sometimes up to a week and a half. It is said, and there is empirical evidence to back it up, that mountains make their own weather.

I'd simply wager that along the roof of the world, doubly so...

There were a group of snowboarders desperately trying to pile up enough fresh snow to ride. The exuberance and folly of youth. I was out for another late-season alpine excursion. Soon enough, the landscape will be blanket in white that will not melt until as late as early summer. There are some snowfields where I live that I speculate have not melted since before this part of the world was covered with many-miles deep glaciers. Such a thought pleases me.

I don't know how many more excursions I'll be able to make to the tundra this season. I don't know when I'll be snowshoeing for kicks. It doesn't matter. Here and now, I was able to get into that region of my outback. After walking a few hundred feet, I had solitude, silence, and serenity. That alone brings a smile to my face.

The Days of Gold and Rust

A lovely windbreak along the north ridge of west Loveland Pass. I named thee The God's Throne. Class, any guesses as to whose heretical backside may have sat there to take in the view whilst munching a trail snack?

Looking at Eagle Rock again. Obviously, autumn has up and popped here in our Sahel...

Up top of Mount McCellan at over thirteen-thousand feet. Torrey's Peak, in the distance, certainly is striking, and could lead to deep contemplation. However, I edged to that point at a crawl. Beyond that ledge was the naked space leading downward to the Steven's Gulch Trail some couple thousand feet below. I wanted the view, but not the vertigo...

Another from west Loveland Pass, this time around the krummholz. This may very well be one of the headwaters of the very river that runs across the street from my house...

It is a safe assumption that the aspens are peaking throughout our Sahel. There is a certain mysticism of walking through a wooded area with the golden leaves floating down like snow. The tundra is a riot of various shades of rust. Raptors soar upon the descending jetstream, hunting marmots and pikas as they scurry about in preparation for the coming winter.

I've been craving the alpine more than below timber as autumn advances. Soon enough, the snow will fly and it will stick. Up high, this means some places will present higher avi danger, therefore, keeping me away until summer comes once more. Somewhere like Loveland Pass, it means the Backcountry skiers and boarders will be out, and they are not always courteous to those who recreate in the snow upon snowshoes.

It's also hunting season. I am mindful of which wooded areas I go to as to avoid a case of mistaken identity. Certainly, I've established I'm tall. Freakishly so-superfreak, thank you-some have said. It would certainly to be awkward for someone with a rifle to take my walkabout rhythms as the movements of a lithe moose.

 Like the alpine inhabitants, I find myself hurrying before the snow really starts to fly. All those places I want to walk and explore before they're sealed off and I frequent my winter grounds. As I wandered Loveland Pass today, a red-tail hawk few past me at eye-level as it gained loft to hunt. It was fantastic. There were no greetings or goodbyes as our gazes met for that brief moment. We were just two creatures wandering the alpine, in search of our own goals.

The Beach Weather of Indian Summer

Sabina's sunflowers are hanging in there, despite the fact we kissed freezing-with tongue-the other morning. And I name thee Defiance...

One last columbine hanging on...

The other day, I drove down-valley-two- thousand vertical-to our community garden plot amongst rumors of weather and visions of pesto pizza. Although, it had been breezy up along the upper western valley as it meets up with the Roof of the World, the sun was shinning and there were very few clouds. I would later document the high temperature of the day at sixty-eight.

As I drove east, the clouds increased. Within the span of fifteen miles, I had gone from sunny to murky. From the sixties to the forties. I put on my soft shell over my t-shirt and zipped up against the damp chill to harvest my basil, purple bell peppers, and tomatoes. Later that night, I donned a sweater. On the drive up, I noted how the murk followed me, causing me to remark later that the dragons chased me up the valley.

Job, for all our differences in theology, will sometimes tell me he lives to hear of the world as seen through my eyes...

It was not without a bit of a chuckle that I heard the first snowfall happened down below and we did not receive a flake-unless you speak in context of some of the snowbums that inhabit the area. Oh, the schadenfredude. Whilst it was cool the day after weather moved in, the sky was clear and the sun was warm.

"This is beach weather compared to Denver," a traveler said to me.

"It's always beach weather in the mountains," I said glibly, even if, technically, and, geologically, the last time there was an ocean in this state was seventy-some-odd-million years ago.

"Even in January?" The traveler asked me skeptically.

"Especially in January," I replied with smirk. "Just think in the context of McMurdo Station. Easy."

Hey, on equatorial Europa, our January weather would be positively 'pocalyptic in context of temperature, and meditate on that for a little bit of perspective...

My Friday's walk had a bit of bite to it, but there is no bad weather. Just the wrong clothes. I did note there are far less neighbors holding court on their porches. Another omen of the changing seasons; the summer residents returning to their winter nests. The sun now sets straight down the middle of the valley, which can be blinding when walking straight into it. Slowly, our nearest star will shift south, toward the ridge line of Pendleton. A portend of the long dark.

The planet's tilt on its axis is the reason for the season...

Succeeding days have been warmer. Meteorological prophecy has foretold of little chance of precipitation and mild temperatures. Beach weather. The possibility of grilling and chimineas without the heavy layers.

I've heard whispers of  indian summer. I just call it autumn. It's all in the perspective.

A Hymn of Thaksgiving

I am surrounded by a sense of antiquity from a bygone age so close I can still almost hear their phantasmal voices, and stark, unyielding nature. Where the landscape is juxtaposed with rock and river and wind and storm and temperature. A kingdom of dragons, where the fantastical dances upon earthy feet. Where the Divine speaks in inaudible tongues of which you just might hear if you learn to listen. This dichotomy is fantastic.

I have found my bliss and follow it relentlessly, and I encourage you to do the same...

We exist in a world where there are still dinosaurs. Although, we commonly call them birds, thus removing the majesty and mystery. Then again, if you could see a T-Rex or a stegosaurus either in the wild or within the safe confines of a zoo, their magnificence might be considered old hat.

This is time when the future is now. Once upon a time, this was the purview of sci-fi; a world of hand-held computers approaching quantum speeds and the language of an atomic cosmos revealed. We have made our first forays off this tiny island into a great black sea. The most audacious of us will launch further into this inky black void of interstellar to explore, to perhaps find a new home.

There are those who might say these are the End of Days. Hell on Earth. Certainly, there are enough horror shows to go around and then some. And yet, these are just constructs, for the Wise will tell you we are the architects of our own imprisonment. In our hands, we hold the keys to a kingdom greater than any described by the flimsy religions of Man. We need only realize that.

These are, the best of times...

The Turn

Sabina's sunflowers are finally starting to bloom along the back of the house...just in time for frost...

Looking up at Eagle Rock and our back folly. With a wrinkle, a squint, and the benefit of the doubt, you might see some of the aspens turning gold...

A birthday present from a friend. I have named it Clyde, and step into my parlor, muthafucka...

Standing at the tarn of Hell's Hole, the wind kicked up. It carried with it a whisper. It spoke of layers and ice and deep drifts and avalanches. In the moment, under turquoise blue sky with very few passing cotton ball clouds and warm sun, I noted how the bonsai-baobab bristle cones were striking, and smiled at the harsh tundra beauty. Along the trail, squirrels scrambled about, stocking up for the chilled days ahead.

"It's coming," Miguel Loco said a day before.

"I'm not ready," Sabina said two days later, pointing to already changing leaves. "Don't want it."

Want and ready really have little to do with it. It just is. The turn, much like any other natural event, does not bother to consult with a species of half-bald monkeys who call themselves Man. It is folly to wish or expect otherwise.

A meteorological prophet of whom I give some credence on account of odds called the day after my birthday most likely the warmest day of the rest of the year. It was a lovely day, with a gentle breeze, strikingly clear skies, and soft sunlight. Sabina and I wandered what we deduced were some old logging roads. I was fascinated by some of the rock formations. The landscape there looked to be conducive to a good snowshoe come winter.

That night, we had a chiminea with leftover cake and generous glasses of wine. It was a deliciously warm evening. The stars were brilliant and the first quarter moon, obscured by Pendleton, illuminated the ridge line in phantasmal hues.

Here it is the beginning of autumn. There was a dusting atop my personal Kilimanjaro, twelve-thousand, two-hundred, eighty-two feet high. In some places, it's late summer. Harvest time. In other spots, spring has sprang.

Time is an abstract...

There are places that have never known seasons. Voids where the nearest star is just one of the brighter ones you might see looking up at night. Locations that have never been-and perhaps never will be-insulted by a name given to it by a human being. There's poetry in that, but perhaps I'm just getting philosophical.

I know better than to thank or blame the time of year or the weather out my front door for my introspective and philosophical bents. These things just happen, like the turning of early autumn leaves from emerald to gold. It just is, simple as that.

A Discipline of Tea

Water is the most precious substance on the planet. Ask any scientist. I know I certainly do enjoy it, and, on the trail, even and especially during a hard-won push, it is ambrosia beyond compare. You may or may not see, but certainly feel, the Divine coursing through you.

It probably goes without saying I do likes me my dark beers, red wines-although there's something to be said for a summer white after walkabout-and whiskeys. There is something, which borders upon ritualistic about coffee with breakfast. My roaring twenties were spent almost exclusively in coffeehouses. In my opinion, the Buzz makes the best mocha in the county.

However, there is something that touches upon sacred when it comes to a cup of tea in the proper context. A cup on a cool morning or whilst watching the snow waft down in the slate of early evening as it becomes an overnight blizzard. Sitting out on a warm afternoon with a book and the songs of bird and breeze. You may or may not see, but certainly feel, the Divine coursing through you.

I no longer recall the exact what/where/when/why?/how of when I started drinking hot tea. My mother was a fan of sun and iced teas, which, to this day, I find utterly vile. I'd drink iced coffee first, and, that is an affront to nature along with SUV limousines. An x-girlfriend of mine introduced varieties of tea of tea other than jasmine. Although, she could never be fucking bothered to take tea with me. During the time we were together this bothered me greatly. These days, I see a twisted sort of symmetry in that, which probably only makes sense to me.

In the shrapnel of a bad break-up and the Machiavelli that followed, I got a little self-destructive with the drink. A deep-seated fear of mine is becoming my father's father; a man whose skin was the color dirty gold and urine upon his deathbed, because, for him, one was much too much, but ten was not enough. It was pulling myself out of that downward spiral of my own self-destruction that I adopted my discipline of tea. To this day, tea time, most often than not, proceeds cocktail hour. The only time my daughter and Sabina have considered an intervention with me has involved my tea consumption, what for how often I might want to skip to the loo.

Jasmine tea used to be my go-to. I still rather enjoy it, but there are so many other varieties I have in a stack of glass jars in my kitchen. They all have certain contexts, and it would be insulting to have them otherwise. I used to say hot jasmine tea could fix anything, even that, which was not broken. The bruja's rollover broke me of that superstition, just as my mother's illness exposed the phrase it's okay for the lie that it is. Tea may be meditation and insight and a passing touch of divinity, but, for all its magic, it is not that kind of a miracle-worker, and you've just got to accept that. Hurtful as it may be.

It's been an overcast morning with passing showers. Meteorological prophecy whispers of the possibility of it clearing later. I sip on Kuan Yin tea-oolong has this been going on?-to start the day. Shafts of mountain sun peak through as we contemplate the day's adventures.

Every so often, I change the amount of alcoholic imbibments I have to make sure I am no where near my father's father. Not too long ago, I went a week without coffee just for something to do. However, it has been said a day without tea is like three days without food. To me, those are true words.

Persistence of Time

One of the buildings at the Diamond Mine...

"Time moves on
that's the way,
We live and hope
to see the next day,
That's all right...
Time's short
your life's your own,
'Cuz in the end
we're all just dust and bones..."-Guns n' Roses

It bordered upon heartwrenching when I first beheld the ruin. When last I'd been there, not but a week or two before, it was still standing tall. Back when I'd first moved here, the walls were largely intact. It was only a winter or two ago that they began to fall prey to pot hunters and Backcountry vandals.

A homicidal growl pushed past my thin lips and I made no effort to stop it. I wanted to find the authors of this destruction and stab them in the chest. Thirty-seven times. Thirty-eight would be excessive.

What?!? Think of it as evangelical Buddhism; the First Noble Truth is the realization of suffering. Feel the pain?

I had to let it go. Chalk it up to people suck instead of feeding that dragon. All across our Sahel, I have seen examples of affronts both to the wilderness and to the ruins of those gone before. It saddens sickens me.

Still, we live in an extreme environment. Wind, rain, freeze, and thaw can do as much damage, if not more, than any half-bald primate with scavenger's lust or small genitalia trying to impress someone-sometimes a combination of both. Even a place like Santiago, which us mill stewards managed to get a new roof on, will one day crumble into nothing more than splintered wood and rusted metal.

Nothing lasts and everything changes. That's the way of it. Even the stars die. Immortality is a curious jack-off fantasy at best, and a cruel joke at worst.  

I used to dread the march of years. Of getting older. Old was a terrifying concept to me. Now, I sort of look forward to it in a strange way.

A man in a warehouse told me once you reached thirty, you no longer had a bad attitude, you were opinionated. I was twenty-three at the time. A few years later I found I was cultivating the attitude of some older curmudgeons I know; here I am, you're looking at it. Although, I think I've established that I have a hard time caring about the social construct of reality in context to me.

Unless we want to poke at it for comedic value...

I confess that wasn't always the case. During my roaring twenties, even and especially about this time of year, I would note my chronological age and question what, if anything, I had accomplished. Sometimes, I would get morose because I didn't have the success one was suppose to have. Other times, whatever it is that has kept me on my Tao of Chaos would rise up in defiance. It finally hit me one day that, indeed, I've gotten to be who and what I wanted to be if I got close to growing up, and that's a grand revelation to have.

The seasons change and world marches on. Ruins fall further into decay. Mountains grind down to dust. Oceans dry. Young stars hurtle closer to their million-year long death-throes. So it goes.

It only becomes depressing if you give it that kind of power. Me? I find a queer sort of poetry in the infinite finality, knowing the only thing that doesn't change is that everything changes.

Of What was Lost and Found and Other Bizarre Happenstances

Back when I first started studying and practicing Buddhism, I had occasion to meet a man in a coffeehouse who introduced me to some of the sutras. He was older than I, being mid-fifties to perhaps early sixties. During his years, he'd spent a great deal of time in Buddhist countries and spoke of having traveled the length and breadth of the fabled Silk Road.

During one of our conversations over a cup he handed me what I would later learn was a Thai Buddhist prayer stone, encased in a pendant. Years later, a man in an import shoppe would tell me how monastery monks would carve these and they'd be traded almost like baseball cards. Such a happenstance got me to think of the stories of holy relics during the dark age Europe.

At twenty-three, I took this fetish with reverent awe, which could be considered awkward from someone so full of heresies, and a respectful inclination of my head. To me it carried the wisdom of someone more learned than I in the ways of the Dharma and the scents of the fabled Silk Road. Perhaps, I was giving too much power to a thing that was, when it came down to brass tacks and bedposts, just a trinket. A fetish. So many years later, I don't think it matters.

Some ten years after I was given that fetish, when I was trying to be something other than a friend to the gypsy, I gave her that Thai Buddha. To her credit, after her curb-kicking and me saying done and over, she offered to return it to me. I declined, saying it was a gift to her. She needed a talisman so well traveled-gypsy!-more than I. Occasionally, I confess, I regret that decision because of the auspice of how I received that trinket, but it would've been uncivilized to ask for it back. I might be the worst kind of bastard with the morals of an alley cat, but I do have manners.

A few weeks ago, at a bead show in Fairplay, I came across a piece of punched brass I immediately recognized as the countenance of a Thai prayer stone. On one side is the Buddha, and, on the other, some Thai script that might read eat at Joe's for all my literacy in that tongue.

Of course I had to have it...

Since its acquisition, I have found myself subconsciously touching or looking at it. Memories of a man who claimed to have traveled the fabled Silk Road flit through the corridors within my skull. I catch myself thinking I have recovered something I lost, even if, when it comes down to brass tacks and bedposts, that is not quite the case.

***

To barrow a metaphor a friend used a few years back, it would seem summer's back is broken. I've mentioned some of the omens I've observed. The emerald of some of the aspens has faded to duller green. One meteorological oracle I consult has spoken of a cool and moist autumn. It would seem we are seeing its prelude.

Another omen of the changing seasons is one of the local history groups giving once a month talks. Usually, this is September to April or May. A way to stave of cabin fever during the cooler, darker months, perhaps. This year, it's started a month early. The magistrate, who's great-grandmother and grandmother ran a few of the boarding houses in the area during the halcyon antiquity of the mining days, found, what he called, a younger couple to give a presentation of mining boarding houses in the mountains.

The mister of this couple was easily five, if not ten, years older than me. A great many cats I'm acquainted with refer to me as young man. The baby. Of course, a great many of these cats are my father's age, if not older. I mine them for stories and they speak of when they had my energy levels. I find irony in this. Perhaps the only thing more ironic was when the magistrate, whom is possessed to a warm and jovial manner and, it has been joked, would befriend a rock, told me recently that, whilst he considers himself a patient man, he thinks I perhaps have him beat.

Then again, I am in possession of formidable patience of which saints and monks prey for and upon...

***

Although, I've often thought of Job as my guru, it seems our recent conversations have not involved him breaking down cosmic wisdom. It seems I've been trying to encourage him to pick himself up by his bootstraps more. What a friend does.

"Well, my young friend, thank you, as always, for the scintillating conversation," he said as we concluded our most recent chat. "You've given me so much to think about."

Curious. Time was I'd go to Job for advice. For insight and a differing perspective. That after our conversations over many, many, many cups of coffee, I'd have a skull full of new information of which to process and apply. We've know each other almost twenty-one years now. One of my oldest and dearest friends. It would appear that within the course of almost twenty-one years, the tables have turned.

Funny old world...

Going Nowhere and Everywhere

Whilst walking along the Roof of the World...

Some of the best walks are those without a set destination. Point your feet in a direction and get to trekking. It is there you can find wondrous things.

The tundra starts to rust. Recently, I told someone the alpine has that vibe of a juxtaposition of the Scottish Highlands and Patagonia. Being mostly Scottish by ancestry makes me wonder if there's part of its appeal. Then I dismiss the notion as being absurd. I've never been into ancestor worship. How I succeed or fail as me is more important than the glories and blunders of those who came before.

  
Looking west...

I could say where I stopped is my new happy spot, but I also found this absurd. Erroneously, I was saying that about Grizzly Gulch for a time before I realized how the zen and serenity and magic and mystery and coo-coo ka-choo was in so many of the other places I wandered. I fucking live in my happy place, I realized, like I had to be reminded.

That concept of Kashmir, don't you know?

A ptarmigan chortled an avian hello as I headed down. Recently, I met a man who was obsessed with knowing what another person's trade was and telling everyone his own. These days, when asked what I do I reply with caustic honesty; whatever I fucking well like. I never wanted a career or a house in the ticky-tacky suburbs or the two-point-five kids-one's enough. What I've wanted is to be able to go my own way and do as I please along this personal Tao of Chaos.

I'll be forty-two in two weeks, and, so far, so good...

Other Side of the Season

I find a queer sort of joy in those imperceptible things. The subtle changes. Whisper in the ghost or, that, felt down in the marrow. The realization of how it's different now.

According to my records, the average lows are now in the forties. Think swing bands and those classic black and white moving picture shows. There is ravenousness amongst the hummingbirds and mosquitoes. Last hurrahs before migration or the death-sleep. The other day, coming back Guanella Pass way from a road trip, along the western side of Mount Bierstaidt's massif, there was a thin dusting of snow. I have read in Alaska, such phenomena is known as termination frost; when you see snow on the high peaks, it means summer's coming to an end. 

A photographer of my acquaintance and I trekked Watrous Gulch. So queer to have two-legged company with me on a Tuesday that's not blood related. The wildflowers are starting to fade, but not the serenity of the landscape. There are no ugly or bad times up here. Just the morphing between the seasons. I noticed the a few leaves starting to fade. In a few weeks, the leaf-peepers will be up, looking for a muti-colored thrill.

Later that night/early unto morning, with said photographer in tow, Sabina, and I went to Pass Lake to watch stars fall from the sky. The shrapnel from a previous supermoon gave the illumination of monochromatic daylight across the ridges. We wore fleece, and I wore a skullcap. It was surprisingly warm upon the tundra that late at night/early unto the morning. The few plummeting cosmic jewels we saw were worth drive up. Peter Gabriel's Passion was our jam, and it was in perfect context.

Of course, I could argue, it was the stars, and when isn't the celestial worth it?

Humidity, Colorado monsoon storms, whilst hopping up over for errand adventures. I wore jeans for a walk to the post. Jeans, or, other long pants, after dark are becoming a little more frequent these days. So it goes. It's the shadow of the season. I still wear sandals. Shorts, when I can, until late September, early October because I fucking say so.

Summer grows old and autumn is coming. Imperceptible birth-cries and death-rattles. The way of things. My birthday is in a few weeks and we might be hut tripping it. Something to do.

Life is good, but when ain't it?