It Might Get Loud

A little something I threw together for dinner last night...

The morning started with Pearl Jam and jasmine tea. Now, Tinariwen's Tassili album-one of those I was surprised I'd ever lived without-is my jam. Sabina is upstate, having partied with friends of her's from her new-wave days, those days when I was somewhere between twelve and fourteen. It's an annual thing, something that's been going on for thirty years straight. She jokes it's the closest thing she does to a reunion.

Something like this reminds me of how few people outside of family I've known for long periods of time. There have been occasions, when meditating upon the subject, I come to the conclusion I am just bad at forming long-lasting relationships. I've caught myself getting a little morose about this until I remind myself; misanthrope. When it comes down to brass tacks and bedposts, I am something of a solitary creature. Having just a few friends and acquaintances has thus far not proven to be fatal.

Having the house all to myself in the bipedal context-there's still the matter of cats, a hound, and ferrets, thus meaning I am not completely alone-means the place rattles with music turned up to twelve and making myself something for dinner I don't normally have. Usually, this is some curry that the very scent of can cause a mild sweat in those of weaker constitutions.

This go-around, I went for something a little more prosaic; I steamed a pound of mussels. There was drawn herb butter with sauteed garlic and shallots, as well as fresh rosemary and thyme, and a little vadouvan seasoning. Some bread on the side and soak up the residual juices and butter all washed down with a bottle of pinot grigio and one of the Hobbit films rented from the library for the evening's entertainment, because I know how to party.

I contemplate a wander up a bit of Grizzly Gulch. Winter may have announced its presence with authority back in mid-November, but it really hasn't snowed since. It has also gotten rather mild. Only the most suicidal are attempting ice fishing-how bad does your marriage suck? I mean, can't you just lock yourself in a room and drink?-on the lake two miles, and six-hundred vertical down-valley. I question whether I'll even need my snowshoes, despite it being higher up. On one of my last walkabouts, I carried my microspikes, just in case, and ended up not needing them.

Sabina will be back in the afternoon, bringing my bachelor time to an end. Technically, that night she invaded my muthafuckingkitchen brought my bachelor time to an end, but that's another story. The stereo might get turned down a couple of octaves so there can be the occasional conversation, although, she can appreciate a loud jam as well. Because it has been mild and warm I have defrosted steak to grill and that will be accompanied by steamed artichokes. Nothing special. Just something to masticate upon whilst regaling one another with our respective adventures.  

The Dude Abides

Chevy. My brother would say if any image encapsulates the breed of Australian Shepherd, it's this one... 



And this just somehow embodied his mindset...

My brother was the first one that noticed him, a puppy weathering a badlands downpour in an x-pen. For several years after, my brother would call that puppy, who would get to be seventy-five pounds if he were an ounce, in his prime, his dog. Yet, when it came down to brass tacks and bedposts, that dog came home with me.

When my daughter and I would go out to the farm to visit and she'd wander the length and breadth of the property, Chevy never left her side. Years later, even after the arthritis crippled him to where he could not join us for walkabouts, he would excitedly gallop up to her. If anything, he was her dog.

I used to ask my mother if I could take Chevy when I finally got a house with a yard. She would always tell me no, because, in his prime, he could scale a six-foot tall fence without complaint if there was a bitch in heat on the other side. He was not the type of dog to be hemmed in. Years later, after my mother died and I took both Chevy and Whistler into the mountains, I felt no satisfaction in my victory. They were my inheritance. My monkey's paws.

Chevy was trained as therapy dog, which fit his gentle and easy-going personality. My father would say the dog didn't have any enemies. To a degree, I believe that. I would tell anyone meeting my hounds that if Chevy growled at them, they needed to get the fuck away from me directly, because, obviously, they were the most vile of threats.

His arthritis first manifested within about four months of coming to the mountains. Over the years, it would progressively get worse. Yet, as long as he had a warm place to lay down, plenty of food, and the occasional pat on the head-even and especially from my daughter-he was reasonably happy.

That day I buried Whistler out back, he stayed by my side at every opportunity. Perhaps he sensed I needed comfort. Maybe he sensed his older half-brother was gone and not coming back. It could be that it doesn't really matter, that Chevy was nearby and I found solace in that.

It was within the last few days his breathing became labored. Almost like a constant snore. At first, I wasn't terribly worried. He still trundled around, drank water, and ate. It was last night, as I noticed the trails of drool from his mouth I felt concern. Morning came, and he didn't eat. My father once said the day Chevy didn't eat, dig a hole.

The ground outside is frozen, but you probably know where this is going...

One of the vet techs speculated part of the reason for his labored breathing was strain from his heart going. I theorized pneumonia. In humans, pneumonia is the body's way of saying fuck this noise! and shutting down, it follows the same would similar for something like a dog. In humans, we try so desperately to save someone with pneumonia, where as a dog has the option of being put down without someone getting slapped with a murder charge. In fact, it's called humane.

Dogs get the better end of that bargain...

Chevy's head rested in my lap, as it has many times. Sometimes, just to hang out. Sometimes, in lending that little bit of comfort. Trying to keep my composure as the hospice dose was given, I couldn't help but think of him saying something to me with his big brown and blue eyes;

The Dude abides...

This time, I will get ashes and divide them between my daughter and I. That was a difficult phone call to make. Both my father and sister seem to think, tragic as it is, there is closure with the other of the Grumpy Old Men passing into the Bardo. My brother tells me I did right by his dog. Part of me feels like I've either lost another touchstone to the memory of my mother, or perhaps a fetter of grief has been released, but I'm not quite sure. Perhaps it doesn't matter.

Here and now, I sip whiskey and remember. The last nearly sixteen years, and especially the last four and half when they were here. To someone else, it might be quite difficult to explain that Chevy and Whistler were beyond familiars, friends, or simple companions. I've lost a facet of my family today in a way language fails to articulate, six months and nine days after a similar facet was lost. I can never get this back. All I have now are the memories and the stories.

The Grumpy Old Men, Chevy and Whistler. Sabina took this about a month before I put Whistler down...

The Dude abides, is what his final glance told me. I take that anthropomorphizing thought seriously. It keeps me from screaming.

An Okay Blizzard

Looking up at the north face of Leavenworth Mountain...

To say I awoke to righteous blizzard would be something between folly and hubris. The word blizzard might even have been a stretch. Sure, the sky was leaden and its murkiness obscured the high peaks. There was wind and drifts. It was perfect Colorado winter snow, falling only sightly to the side.

As I stepped out with the hounds, hence answering the burning metaphysical question of our times, I was perfectly comfortable in my fleece jacket and beanie, as opposed to my heavy goose-down parka. In some places, The wind had blown the snow to only a thin layer of crust, not even warranting microspikes. Whilst greasy and snowpacked in areas, the roads were open. The reality was it was lapsang souchong weather. Nothing that called for my treasured last infusion of Nepali black tea. 

I've yet to meet that storm, and, when I do, I cannot say with any certainty whether I'll celebrate or mourn...

A breakfast of berbere-spiced eggs and toast. Something warm and Moroccan on the menu for supper. A space of daylight hours with no obligations to fill up in between.

Sabina dropped me off at the other narrow-gage railroad station on the way to her obligations, two miles down valley, so I might snowshoe up the canyon. We were going to be kicking around the Mount Evans Wilderness in a day, and, although I wanted to get out there, I didn't want to wander too far afield. Two miles and six-hundred vertical was more than adequate.

Looking back down the canyon from the tracks at the edge of Cemetery Hill...

It took me forty minutes to reach the cemetery, on the far eastern edge of town. Uphill? Snow that was deep in places? Pshaw!

I've always wondered how quick I could make that trek if I was genuinely in a hurry...

Returning home with visions of further infusions of tea and perhaps a documentary or two, in my skull, I took of the slowly falling flakes and murky sky. It certainly wasn't a righteous blizzard by any stretch, and even the term blizzard might be out of context. Be that as it may, for storm to snowshoe through, it did okay.

First Shoeings

An almost bluebird day...

After a six day cycle of storms, the snow is just deep enough for snowshoes. We agressively researched this circumstance on a brisk day by going down the canyon as far as the ruins of the Lebanon Mine, which the narrow-gage railroad uses for tours in the summer. There were still spots where we'd hit against root and rock. So it goes. It's still early season. Our getting out on the snowshoes spoke to our own sense of desperation.

The snow was slightly deeper along the warren of wagon roads that make up the old townsite, but that's because of slightly higher elevation. However, three days out from the last snows, some of the trails were already fairly tramped down. After all, the place is a bit of a whore. It was a bit of an effort to find a place to be first tracks. Then again, in case you haven't met me, I can be tenacious.

Already the snow has started to sculpt familiar trails into other worlds, unique for that stretch of winter. Always a fascinating spectacle to behold. More snow is on the way within the next few days. Sabina counts down the weeks for our hut trip. In those weeks, it'll be a given we'll be out on the snowshoes, if, for no other reason, than we need to be conditioned.

Winter's Calling

A little rivulet along the Argentine Railroad Grade, two days back...

Despite the bluster to wind, it was a mild day. I would eventually record the high as fifty on the Fahrenheit scale, eighteen degrees above that of frozen water. Although I had a soft shell in my pack, the fleece vest I wore was suffice for bushwhacking through a heavily treed slope, which spends much of its day these days in shadow.

We climbed a couple hundred feet up the mountain, to an old wagon road my daughter and I found a few years ago. Other than a few cut trees at the avalanche chute, we were hard-pressed to find any notations of the passings of Man since out last expedition this way. Down on the main trail, we saw deer, prancing and cavorting in the woods. A day later, the magistrate would tell me hunting season was over. Perhaps the deer were aware of that somehow and frolicking in thanksgiving.

Later that night, sore and exhausted from scrabbling up mountainsides, I wondered if I was getting old[er] that such a walkabout would kick my ass. Then a gust of wind rattled the house. I knew what was coming, the meteorological prophecy had been doomsaying it for days. Now, my twisted skeleton was confirming it as more than just hype and other forms of hearsay.

***

I made note of the first flakes starting to fall shortly after ten in the morning. Sempai and I still tried to accomplish an outdoor project of covering some of his plants. No bad weather, just the wrong clothes. We didn't have everything needed to complete the project and I went to have my Brazilian-style shrimp-take that, weather! Ha-ha!-for lunch. It was shortly after two in the afternoon a traveler asked me about the Road.

"It's a long strip of asphalt which runs east-west through the state," I said honestly.

"I hear it's closed," the traveler said, somewhat confused by my very to-the-point answer.

"I've been detained as to not be able to check, but let's have a look-see," I said.

First accumulating snow, first closers along the corridor. It is the way of things. Even if Sempai, the bookkeeper, and I all agreed the amount of snow that had fallen, that continued to fall, hardly warranted it.

"Everybody's getting their snowlegs on," I told another traveler when they asked me how and why this sort of thing happened.

For the next three hours, I would be repeating words to that effect like a mantra. Or a broken record. Take your pick.

"Can't you just call the highway patrol and get an estimate of when it's going to open again?" A traveler asked me as he drummed his impatient fingers on the counter. He did not appreciate my reaction.

"They don't give us that!" I said only after my uproarious laugher subsided. "Sort of a covering of backsides on their part. See, if they said it'd be open in two hours, there'd be some people who'd be upset it took two hours and five minutes."

Some people translating into impatient, entitled pigfuckers, that is...

When everything opened up again, I pulled the trash and took my leave. Sabina was making pizza, Monday being one of the few nights of the week I let her into my kitchen to cook. I had a calming tumbler of whiskey when I got home. We pulled out our heavy down parkas for a walk after supper.

***

What a difference two days makes; looking at the Bull's Head from out front of the house this morning...

I awoke to single digits. The daytime high temperature would I would record would be twenty-two, twenty-nine degrees below two days before, and ten degrees below that of frozen water. Slush-bergs ambled down the river's current. In another month, there'll be places it'll be frozen over completely. The cats looked at the hounds and I like we were insane for stepping outside and I realized I'd need to start checking the indoor litterbox more often.

Despite the cold, there were still things that needed to be done. A few errands down-valley, a walkabout to a ruin at the edge of town. There's no bad weather, just the wrong clothes.

"Welcome to winter," I'd said to Sabina when I told her of the closer the day before.

Looking at meteorological prophecy, I'd wager I'm not far off, despite the fact it's six to ten days before my usual marker of when we lose direct sunlight on the house. It would seem winter decided to come a little early. Time is an abstract, after all.

I have the gear and it's been entirely too long since I snowshoed. We've only got six weeks to get conditioned for our hut trip. The only thing winter means up here is type of layering you do when playing outside. So it goes.

A Dance and a Walk

The first accumulating snow of the season at ninety-one sixty fell two nights ago. It was maybe two inches, and most of it was gone by afternoon. Soon enough, we'll get our basecoat of snow that sticks around until late March into early April. That's just the way of it.

Our town's Halloween Dance, sponsored by the historical group, was held on the first of November. Of course it was. This is the same town that has its irreverent midnight Christmas service at ten at night on Christmas Eve with an after party to follow-the matter of that high-octane eggnog-and Easter sunrise service promptly at the crack of two in the afternoon, complete with the Easter Gorilla.

If this all happened somewhere else, I might think it was strange...

Sabina won second prize for her costume; the fermented fruit bat. Someone asked me what I was supposed to be and I replied with an eccentric polymath that got me a confused look from the cat inquiring and an eyeroll from Sabina, for which I cannot understand why. Truthfully, I wasn't completely in any sort of costume. Often, I've stated how I've gotten cynical toward holidays, and it seems to have gotten more pronounced in the years since my mother died.  

Since it was the start of November, some of my raiment was more in line with Dia de Muertos; the scarf the bruja made for me several birthdays ago, a sugar skull t-shirt, and what I call my Graveyard Jacket for its painting of the Tibetan Wheel of Life on the back and the memorial patch to Jibril upon the sleeve. I'm sure the bottle of Spanish red I was drinking straight from the bottle and hob-nailed, steel-toe boots made some sort of statement.

When the dance was done, I did my historical board member duty of helping with some clean up before retiring to our x-carnie neighbors' house for further merriment. I ran home to grab another bottle of wine and promptly extricated myself from the jacket, scarf, and steel-toes in favor of my down vest and some low-top hiking shoes. I have stated before I can only play dress-up for so long. The Halloween dance showed me that's any kind of dress up.

I recently told the gypsy wearing pants was me dressing up...

Certainly, I might have my punk-rock sensitivities, but that outfit was more my gutter-punk days in the city. Another skin, another life. Any time I wonder how much has changed in my years up here, I have something like this happen.

***

It was a pleasant treat to only encounter a total of five people on the trail. Given it's part of the CDT, it is quite the whore. There was snow, but it wasn't deep. I brought my microspikes, but I didn't need them. The glistening snow off the high ridges of the Roof of the World offered a dramatic scene.

The Citadel...

Herman Lake...

I had the tundra all to myself. The sun was hot upon my face. I was grateful for the cooling breeze that kicked up as I ate my energy bar. When I stood to leave, I thanked the landscape for the silence, serenity, and solitude. On the way down, a long-tail weasel, in its winter coat, ran in front of me. Mine was the only vehicle at the trailhead.

It certainly was a good day. One, which held a lesson or two. I would say with a fair amount of certainty that one of those lessons was to visit this trail after the first snows has fallen, as to experience its zen excellence in peace.

Late Autumn Meditation

Ice is starting to form on the river...

By and large, it is has been a rather mild autumn. I've caught myself going without a jacket more often than not. Although, part of me wonders if it is not in defiance of the season, and, the season to come, instead of the ambient air temperature. Every year, as it cools down, I find myself silently wondering if I have truly gotten used to living up here, that my body has adapted to climate as my mind has to the environment. Most often, I know the answer is yes, but that doesn't stop the questioning.

There are the omens of change in the air. Breath being visible at night and the early morning. The snow on the very high peaks is not melting away. Shadows grow longer. The sun ducks behind the ridge between three-thirty and four in the afternoon, giving one a slight chill at first. In another few days, the idiocy of Daylight Savings starts, and it'll get darker that much quicker. A few weeks after that, the sun will not rise over Pendleton's massif and those of us along Rue Maji will not get direct sunlight again until the end of January. In my mind, the beginning of winter is the day I notice we've entered the Long Dark.

The other day, we went up Grizzly Gulch. On the peak for which the trail is named, as well as along Torrey's, snow devils danced is the high alpine gales. Where we were, the breeze had a slight chill, but was gentle. I managed to get a better look at the bones of the avalanche that occurred sometime last winter. It was amazing and terrifying to figure out where the slab ran and the scale of destruction it caused.

"Snow can do that?" Sampai asked me the time I showed him the photographs from that fateful June walkabout.

"Um, yeh," I replied. "It's compacted water, and water is actually pretty fucking heavy."

True to fact, the thing that kills people in avalanches, besides suffocation, is blunt force trauma...

In another month to month and a half, we'll be snowshoeing. A place like Grizzly Gulch will be a place we only go so far, as to avoid those avalanche chutes. The rhythms of the seasons. Sabina and I have already booked a hut trip for her birthday snowshoe and I imagine kicking up some powder. The other day, a fellow proletariat offered me a pair of cross-country skis and was utterly shocked that I didn't telemark.

Here and now, it's late autumn, and a mild one at that. I know what's coming. I can feel it in the marrow of my twisted skeleton. That is not now. Now is a hike up a bit of Dry Gulch. Might need gaiters. The sky is that shade of blue, the sun is shining, there's little breeze, and the air is mild. What a time to get caught up in the moment.

Hardcore Desperation

Mount Sniktau and the Roof of the World as seen from atop the Bull's Head the other day...

A-Basin has opened, being the first such ski area to do so this season. Part of me is amazed by this, given the how little snow there is up on the tundra. Were it not for the wonders of modern technology, this would've never happened.

Desperate skiers and boarders head up, looking for a thrill. There's only one run open, which one meteorological prophet whose gospels I read called a WROD-White Ribbon of Death. I imagine it must be like the hardest of the hardcore surfers on the beach when the first signs of a new season are upon them.

Pass Lake, looking toward A-Basin...

I brought gaiters, microspikes, and had my down sweater in my pack, but needed none of it. Better to be over-prepared than under. My pack thermometer read forty degrees, eight above the temperature of frozen water on the fahrenheit scale. The slate colored clouds made what little snow there was on the ridges and in the shady spots that much more dramatic.

There were some rock formations I wanted to commit to my montane memory. Share some alpine intimacy with as I explored. Up along some of the terraces, I found a few excellent camping spots. Already, I think that far ahead. Having been up to Pass Lake during a meteor shower, I know the stars at night would be nothing short of striking.

Wandering along the ridges and rivulets, I eventually got to where I could see the lone run of A-Basin. Little black forms, like ants swarming over a clean and sun-bleached bone, sped up and down. The hardest of the hardcore. Part of me wanted to chide them for what I perceived as an act of desperation.

Yet, there I was, on a high tundra ridge surrounded by the mountain silence with chilled gentle breezes blowing by. It was sublime, certainly. I was endeavoring to experience some more alpine intimacy before the snow really starts flying and the snowpack really starts to build. Obviously, I was no better or worse.

Hardcore? Desperate? I reckon it is all a matter of aspect.

Pair 'O Dimes

Seasonal mole stout beer, something that makes autumn grand...

The seasonal paradigm has led to thermals under t-shirts, instead of flannels over them. At some point, come deep winter, there'll be times when the regiment is thermal, t-shirt, then flannel, or even a sweater. Layers are never put away here, just rotated throughout the closet. So it goes.

A few days back, the snowline was at ten-thousand, and it was a rather definite line. Down at ninety-one sixty, it was flurries that at the heaviest point left a dusting upon windshields. We made a big pot of chili.

In those past lives I remember, but you do not, down below, in the badlands of eastern Colorado, or within the borders of the greater metroplex, a big pot of chili and snow, even if it was just flurries, meant holing up. Perhaps watching a film, or several, or perhaps grooving it out to some Mozart and/or jazz.

We went for a walkabout. These days, even when it's sub-zero out, I can only make through about two hours of streaming documentaries before I get restless. I have the ways and means and live somewhere that playing outside is a holy sacrament. It seems madness to waste the whole day indoors.

I catch myself fascinated by the myriad of mentalities. Country and city. Destination/resort and office. My siblings are both quite happy in their suburban enclaves with their respective families, thinking their elder brother is strange, bordering on crazy, for being a mounting man. Yet, I'd rather shoot myself in the face-twice, in case I missed the first time-than live in a land of perceived tickie-tackie.

Neither of us are in the wrong, it's just we have different paradigms. Simple as that. Things would be rather fucking boring if we all saw it the same way. It's something I have to remember when I encounter the traveler who looks at me funny for saying there's no bad weather on a blizzard day in mid-February, or the couple from California, heading to Vail, who gaze down their snouts at anyone they see as lesser than themselves. I don't always do the best job of it, but at least I can acknowledge that.

It is interesting to think of the shifts in paradigms. What was important once verses what has become so in the present. For instance, how I enjoyed reading Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg so much down below, and these days groove on Edward Abbey and Aldo Leopold. I find myself rather grateful for this, actually, seeing it as a way of rounding me out.

Certainly, I have regrets; I've yet to be to Brazil, the only language I have full fluency or literacy in is English, and other than bitch, I've never rode a motorcycle. Horrible. However, any time I might get the delusion my life has been boring-if looking at the pointed things I'm surrounded by doesn't shock me out of apathy-it seems something comes up in conversation; like the Sub Genius conspiracy theorist I once knew, the time at an artist's loft where I ended up with my own bottle of Spanish red because the hostess ran out of glasses and I'm not proud, or bushwhacking up some rockface for kicks reminds me that I've had, and, continue to have, a good time.

This meditation-brought to you by the First Syllable Om-coalesced as I wandered the canyon in the early morning hours. Old Scratch required some maintenance-baby needs a new pair of shoes-and I wasn't about to waste part of the day by going back home to cat nap. Time was I would have. That time is not now.

 
At the Lair of the Boogieman...

The Boogieman in question. What? Did you think I make this shit up?

The paradigm these days is I can find zen bliss in an early morning walkabout as the sun first starts to paint the valley walls of our Sahel with golden brilliance. There is silence and the air is pleasantly crisp. It's sublime. My morning tea had a new mysticism to it when I got home. I have found when you ride the currents of your shifting paradigms like that of a cosmic river, you find yourself having more adventures than if you planned them, which is good, because the quickest way to make a deity laugh is to make a plan.

Mid-Autumn

Looking down the river from my sitting rock across the street from the house...

As I finished up with my obligations Saturday, noting it was havemanyintoxicants-thirty, all I could think was thank the gods and bodhisattvas the calendar had turned October. The weekend before, that last weekend in September, saw my love-with malicious intent-of crowds in its full flower. One of my volunteers even noticed. I told her come January, I'd be begging for such crazy, crowded days. January is when it is dark and quiet and cold and liner time stops working.

It is not January or even close...

The leaf-peepers are not as legion as they had been in the waning weeks of September. Some struggle to understand how our leaves could be past peak here, or how the winds could be as audacious as to strip many from the trees. There's still some color, lower and on south faces, but that, which draws the lookie-loos like locusts to crops, has faded. Now comes the time we catch our breath and get ready for winter.

Cornices begin to form on the stark and sheer tundra ridges. It was a warm day without wind, which is a rarity so high up. Even and especially this time of year. I relished the quiet and mild as I watched a group of three marmots sun themselves on a rock just below my vantage point. Sniffing the air, I wondered how many more times I'd be out here before the snow and avalanche danger barred my way for the next several months. I don't have an answer, so I cherish the time I've got.

It's not like there'll be nothing to do once the snow starts flying. Just the other day, Sabina and I came across several new-to-us ruins along some obscured side trails of the 730. This, of course, is just another facet of the magic of this place; wander the same roads for years, and make a different turn and there's something else to discover. Were I a romantic, I'd say it's like falling in love all over again. I don't have a romantic bone in my body, but it certainly reminds me that this is the place I need to be.