Stones & Bones3: Mountains w/ boys

I’ve made it clear here on The Back Porch plenty of times how much I love mountains.  Not that they don’t scare the bejeebers out of me now and then, but I really do love them.  

I know, in part, it’s a sublime thing.  I mean, how can a body not be impressed by a rock standing 14,000 feet high that has a history of taking the life of the occasional hiker/climber who unforgivingly figures a better way down?  It happens.  This spring the Crestone Eagle carried word of discovery of the remains of a backpacker from the Southeast who never made it back to his car last fall.  Found his camp still set up after a winter of light snow in the high country.  Found what was left of him not too far off.  It didn’t go into details.  

So it is in large part because of the sublime that I want to share mountains, the Sangres at Crestone in particular, with my grandkids.  

I have a hard time explaining clearly just what it is about these Rockies that have captured my imagination.  Yes, it is the magnitude of the mountain range and the expanse of San Luis valley just beyond.  And, yes, the quiet retreat time available at Crestone touches something I need.  

But now I seem to have the need to share the place with those I love who I think would find something special there, too.  

First thought, after Cindy Lou, was grandboys.  Alex is 14, Noah 10.  What better time to set a guy loose on a mountain trail or climb a sand dune that seems to reach half way to the sky?  Or maybe ride horses.  Or take a raft trip down the wild and beautiful Arkansas River. 

After our July travel dates were set and lodging arranged, Alex decided he couldn’t go with us due to his passion for aircraft.  The Dayton Air Show was to take place while we would be in Colorado.  Dude had to make a tough choice.  

But Noah was in.  As was another young friend, 12 year-old, Adel.  Neither young man had been west of the Mississippi yet, so our car adventure would be multiple firsts for them, as well as a first for Cindy and my teaming up as vacation activity directors for kids.  We’ve camped with grandkids before, but nothing on this scale.   

I really wanted the boys to have bikes at Crestone.  When I was their age, my bike was a magic carpet that took me into neighborhoods far enough away from home that I had never walked them.  These places were new and exciting, and I really liked that feeling.  I hoped bikes would somehow add to Adel and Noah’s experiences, so onto the Escape bike rack they went.  They trailed us nicely for our 2,600 mile round trip. 

We hauled Adel’s violin, baseball gloves, frisbees, a soccer ball, and a bag full of crafts to keep kids interested in a quiet place.  In my heart, though, I hoped the guys would cut loose from us and go out and find their own adventure.  Such was, and is, at the very center of my wanting (needing?) to share mountains with boys.  

The picture above distills an essence of this Sangres trip for me.  Adel is sitting with his water bottle with Noah at his back holding his walking stick.  Both have just spent a couple hours ascending the trail to North Crestone Lake. 

We knew we would not reach the lake on this day, but that we would discover as much of the trail as we could.  Noah had just decided not too far back on the trail that he had had enough walking for the day.  After a break we would start to head back down. 

Just about then, the fourth ‘boy’ in our party, my Los Angeles friend Bruce, who had been the hike’s rabbit up ahead on the trail, came back for us to advise of a very rewarding mountain panorama just ahead from our current position.  Ahead Noah and I pushed.  The view, as you can see, was amazing.  

So I guess I’m saying that adventure and boys and mountains go together.  Surely in Crestone.  And it’s not that I don’t want to take granddaughters.  It’s just that I’d like to take kids who would most probably enjoy the physical kick in the butt that Nature provides.  I’m just not sure about grandgirls.  

Today’s Elder Idea:  If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder...he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.

from Rachel Carson’s The Sense of Wonder

photo:  ‘Mountains w/ boys’  Tom Schaefer (summer 2011)

Stones & bones2: Water

I consider myself a newbie to Crestone, having been there just three times for a total of five weeks over the last three years. 

Still, I have to say, the place scares me a little. 

It’s not the people.  The ones I’ve met are great.  I hear there is some animosity downtown where one market owner wants to see another driven out of business, but that could be anything.  All the folks I’ve met, and it hasn’t been many, have been just lovely. 

It’s more just the physical place:  The topography.  The vegetation.  Or lack thereof.  The wildness just beyond the next mile of light suburban development.  

I heard someone who lives there say life at Crestone is austere.  That would mean he thinks life there is either severe or strict in manner, attitude, or appearance or having no comforts or luxuries; harsh.  Or maybe definition #3 is a little more his flavor: having an extremely plain and simple style or appearance; unadorned. 

For me, Crestone’s austerity manifests itself in the magnitude of things.  There’s just so much of everything there.

The mountains:  Four 14k peaks just to the east in the Sangre de Cristo range.  Trails and mountain experiences abound.  Enough said.  

  

The desert:  Thousands of empty dry acres west making up the Baca Grants and just beyond, the Baca National Wildlife Reserve.  No more than ten miles due south is Great Sand Dune National Park and Preserve.  The desert is a presence here. 

The summer sky:  A moving and morphing painting of open blue, scudding puffballs, and by afternoon, localized thunderheads dropping their wet loads, visible from your perch in the foothills, from cloud top to water hitting the earth.  Amazing scope.  And just about every mid to late summer afternoon.

The spirit:  A respected zen teacher professed this place one of the best in the world for personal retreat because of the natural energy converging via of water, sky, earth, and spirit.  The Carmelites have come here to offer quiet desert cabins as places of reflection in the presence of mountains.  People seem to think this a place where spirit has a better chance of connecting with souls.    

For me, the Crestone area is a living and breathing dichotomy that, while still a puzzle to me, energizes me in ways that make my heart sing.  

I’ve referred to the mountains as green, and they are.  But the land just at their skirt is sandy and rocky and dry and for all intents and purposes a desert.  Prickly pear cactus does very well there.  Remember, too, that the swelling desert just beyond the mountains is the body of the San Luis, that large expanse of alpine valley known for both its abundance of wildlife and its record setting potato production. 

It’s all just a little strange for a guy who has grown up in the presence of trees and summer thunderstorms.  

Maybe it is some buried reverence for water deep inside that I don’t understand.  

I’ll say this:  something there is about interacting with a mountain stream, tumbling true and cold from some alpine lake full of snowmelt.   

Just being on the mountain in the presence of its water is enough.  Being at a wider spot in the stream, down lower after multiple rivulets have combined into one larger flow that is enough to be named:  Willow Creek, South Crestone Creek, Spanish Creek.  Listen to the spirit in the voice of the water babbling.  

It was along the North Crestone Creek that our Crestone adventure began a couple Saturdays ago.  Cindy and I knew we wouldn’t walk far, but we wanted to get the boys up a mountain trail for an authentic experience.  The trail turned out to be a gravel road, but you get the idea.  

We ascended for 45 minutes or so, finding a great open spot just along the North Crestone Creek probably a mile or so uptrail from the national forest campground.  Packs were dropped, Cindy’s camera came out, trail snacks were consumed, and boys became mystified boulder hoppers.   

And the beginning of a very fine time was had by all. 

Today’s elder idea:  The Sangre de Cristo mountains is among the youngest in Colorado.  With nine peaks above 14,000 feet, this rugged mountain chain is one of the longest and straightest continuous mountain ranges in the world.  The Sangre de Cristos stretch for over 75 miles, rarely dipping below 10,000 feet, and are home to more than 60 alpine lakes, 400 miles of streams, and nearly 400 miles of trails.  

from a National Geographic map

Photo:  Cindy Lou Cooke  c. 2011

Stones & bones1

First off, let me apologize to those faithful readers who have been looking for updates on our family’s July Crestone trip.  Phew!  It sure is easier to write when one is traveling by himself or with his partner.  More quiet reflection is possible.  When traveling with two boys, however, the equation changes.  It’s been a while since I’ve traveled so intensely with kids.  Their interest and care take precedence over reflective blogging!  

Know, though, that Cindy Lou and I as well as Noah and Adel had a great time.  I don’t really want to play the trip back for you one day/event at a time, so let me reflect a bit on what moves me most after the fact. 

***

When we got to Crestone, I hate to admit, I was damn depressed.  

We had been on the road four long days, and all travelers were pretty worn out, even though we were energized by just having watched rafters on the Arkansas River and finally arriving at the lofty and green Sangre de Cristo mountains. 

Fact was our first afternoon in Crestone was mighty hot.  Must have been in the low- to mid-90s, I’d guess.  The straw bale house in which we stayed was reasonably cool, but with the temp where it was, it was still hot.  And, I must add, the place had no air conditioning and not even a fan.  All I could think of was that if the afternoon heat continued like that for all of our nine day visit, we would all be fricking miserable.  

So it was that after an initial unpacking of the car, and feeling uncomfortably hot, I found myself parked on the adult bed on the loft in tears.  Cindy comforted me and told me all would be okay, but I had very vivid images of how hot the mid-section of America had been on the first leg of our 3,000 mile round-trip.  If we had to put up with anything like that without in-house cooling, everybody’s behavior wouldn’t be pretty.  (On our night #2 stop in Salina, Kansas, the heat index had to have been 110+ degrees.  Felt like we got out of the air conditioned car and stepped into a roaster.  No kidding.)  In addition, good friend Bruce was coming in from Los Angeles, and he made it perfectly clear he'd rather do Colorado in October when everything cooled off.  Having him trek in from California for a hot and uncomfortable stay disheartened me even more. 

You see, this Colorado trip was all my idea.  Yes, Cindy Lou was in favor, but if the truth be told, she would prefer vacationing on a nice breezy beach someplace where she could lay out in the sun and read a book.  Crestone sure as hell wasn’t feeling like that on afternoon #1.  

Still, the boys seemed to be in good shape.  We had hauled two twenty inch bikes ‘cross country, and they jumped on and took off up the road first chance they got.  It was what I hoped they would do.  I expected the bikes would give them both a certain sense of independence on this trip.    

And, after all, that was one of the main reasons for expanding our Crestone expedition to boys.  I mean, I love the Colorado Rockies.  I have for as long as I can remember.  I hadn’t gotten there for too many years, though, when I discovered Paul Winter Consort’s Crestone album in 2008 -- which is currently playing in my writing space.  I determined that winter I had to get back.    

It was great to find the Nada Hermitage in summer 2009 for a two week Crestone stay with Cindy Lou.  It was even better for me to return there fall 2010 for a solo two week writing sabbatical.  Amazing stuff with first snow flying on the peaks and all.

But a trip from Ohio to Colorado was an adventure above all.  I have had such a good time in the process over the years that I so wanted to share it with grandkids.  This was our first try at taking them to mountains.  It had to be a good time.

Well, by afternoon’s end I was feeling a bit better.  The afternoon cooled as soon as the sun began to set.  By night’s end, the air was in the very delicious 50s.  Oh, so nice to sleep in that!  

I also decided that even though we needed a few days to adapt our lungs to the thinner air at 8000 feet, we had to get the boys mountain hiking on day 2.  Cindy agreed.  

We wouldn’t try to do too much.  We’d just head up the North Crestone Lake trail as far as we could.  Turned out we had just the right amount of lunch and found a lovely spot just off the trail to eat it and get our feet wet in that delightful stream descending down the mountain.  

All would be great, as Cindy promised.  Tears again.  More later.  

Today’s elder idea:  This year, it is not clear, just what ends here or what’s begun....  

Michael Martin Murphy

‘Swans Against the Sun’

Watching the world

Last Monday when Cindy Lou and I left the Cincinnati Zoo with granddaughter Ellie about 2 in the afternoon, the thermometer in the car read 107 degrees.  I knew it was hot, but that number still surprised me.  By that evening at grandson Noah’s last baseball game of the season, it was still really hot and as all you Ohioans know, damned humid to boot.  And, I might add, I thought it was child abuse to have those little men play baseball in such oppressive conditions, but all stayed hydrated and everybody seemed to get through it okay.  His team lost, BTW.

So it was no surprise that by 9 o’clock that night, all heaven broke loose when the skies lit up with electricity.  Thunder boomed for over an hour and the skies opened up with much needed rain.  All of the intense heat over the last couple of days translated into natural pyrotechnics  that I must admit, drew me out of the house to world watch.  I spent that flashy and booming hour on both front and back porches just witnessing the wonder and power of a Midwest summer thunderstorm.   

I try not to worry too much about being outside with lightning in the area.  Though I’ve seen lots of lightning in my life, I’ve never been really close to a strike.  Earlier this summer, while soaking up a storm from under the back porch canopy, I could have sworn I felt the heat from a bright white lightning strike a mile or so away.  Did I really feel the heat?  Can’t say.  All I know is that it was full of power.  

I realize we have all been cautioned countless times to be careful of lightning.  On another of Noah’s ball game nights, play was delayed for 30 minutes because lightning was merely seen on the horizon.  Football games and golf outings all are impacted when lightning is in the area.  Caution is certainly a better idea that valor when it comes to electrical storms.  

Still, I do so enjoy being out on covered porches when summer storms move through the area.  I feel the same way about going out to walk in snow storms, too, actually.  Something there is about witnessing the power of weather that makes watching the world go by mighty engaging.  

And, I might add, the family is off to Colorado next week.  Back to Crestone, it is, this time with two young men completing our company.  More on that in the next blogs.  

One thing is for sure:  during our nine days out there in the high desert we should witness some good rain activity out across the vast San Luis valley from our perch at a b&b on the skirts of the Sangre de Christo mountain.

Oh, my.  I am ever looking forward to sharing what the Rockies offer to two young men who have never been west of the Mississippi.  Should be a hoot.  Stay tuned....

Today’s elder idea:  The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

Mark Twain

image:  scavenged from Yahoo images (used without permission)

Yard birds

I’ve loved birds ever since I watched over a nest of robin eggs  hatching from a precarious spot just outside my attic bedroom window when I was a kid.  Back then maybe I could relate to wee creatures coming into the world and having to deal with the rigors of life.  I remember it wasn’t always easy for me. 

I can remember one time, too -- after watching a Woody Woodpecker cartoon on afternoon tv -- trying to capture a bird in the side yard by pouring salt on its tail.  It did seem a bit ridiculous, but it was on the Woody show after all and, well, I figured it was worth a try.  Didn’t work, though.

There are a few species of birds I seem to have a richer relationship with than others.  Whenever I spot a great blue heron either flying or standing in a local river bed, I figure I’ve earned a little good luck for the day.  

In the spring, I know we’ve survived the winter when I hear the descending spiral ‘flute’ of the Swainson’s thrush as it sings on its way to more northern woodlands.  I hear this lovely song for a couple of weeks before their migration is over in this part of the flyway.

For me lately, though, I’d have to pick the Carolina wren as my favorite ‘yard bird.‘  Such a great little critter with such a big voice!  

We’ve had a few birdhouses posted at our Wild Grace homestead for years now, but they don’t get nesting customers every year.  Male Carolina wrens, I have learned, build a number of nests and then let the female pick the one she feels best about.  We’ve seen a few wren nests about, one even in a small open drawer in the garage.  All have been made beautifully out of lacy leaves and mosses, but few have been populated.  

Well, this spring, Ms. Carolina picked the bird box just off our front porch.  It was fun watching mom and dad haul in food and haul out the bad stuff.  One of the two would sing loudly as the other approached the box.  Maybe the song got the little ones’ digestive juices going in anticipation.  Maybe the folks were just plain proud of their kids.  Don’t know, but it was fun to watch and listen. 

Around Memorial Day when we thought the young wrens were about ready to fledge, I noticed a young face at the bird box opening looking out.  It shifted from time to time, seemingly just trying to figure out what was expected next.  We sat on the porch for some time watching and waiting for that moment of truth, but we missed it.  That evening I took a peek inside the box and saw three beautiful little heads still there, each with that bright white eye bar.  By the next evening, the box was empty of little ones. 

I love the hummingbirds that fight over the sweetwater on the back porch.  I love the stark black and yellow of American goldfinches who still visit the thistle feeder.  I rather enjoy watching robins splash around in the bird bath out back.  

But this year, I’m really appreciating the beauty of the Carolina wren family who graced us with staying at our place.  All the best out there, kids!  ;-)  

Today’s elder idea:   Tweedaddle, tweedaddle, tweedaddle, tweet

The morning message of carolina wrens as heard from our bedroom window.

Image: Carolina wren by Laura Meyers (2010) / http://www.laurameyers.com 

Used without permission.

Digital world

I entered the digital age back in 1985 or ’86, as I recall.  Up until that time, any correspondence I produced was on a typewriter and all photography was shot on film.  I even built black & white darkrooms in most houses I’ve owned and must humbly admit, some prints I souped back then still look pretty good.  My music, of course, was still on phonograph records, though Wikipedia tells me music on compact discs was available as early as 1982.   

I wouldn’t call myself a luddite, but I don’t embrace new technology all that quickly.  Truth is I’ve never had lots of money, and new technology, at least at its inception, is almost always pricy.  As mentioned on these pages previously, when I finished my masters degree in the mid-80s, I treated myself to a new electric typewriter when I could have bought myself an up-and-coming computer.   

Oh, but how things are different now.  The vinyl record collection still exists, but it is relegated to the furnace room stacked in boxes and selected few albums are played only on special occasions.  Music these days is all on my computer.   I still like to buy physical CDs for the liner notes, but most of my new music purchases are through iTunes or Amazon music. 

Photography, likewise, has gone completely digital for me.  The darkroom is now the train room on the lower level of the house, and I’ve done what I can to scan slides and negatives from the old days into usable digital images.  When I retired almost ten years ago, I made a big investment for a Nikon scanner thinking I could translate all of my best analog stuff into digital.  Unfortunately, such hasn’t worked out as well as I had hoped.  

The printed word was the first to go digital for me.  Good old AppleWorks was packaged on that first Apple IIe we bought for the kids, and boy did I enjoy learning how that program could allow me to create lovely classroom documents without having to fix things with WhiteOut.  Those were the days! 

But things have gotten much more complicated these days and I’m not happy about it.  

Steve Jobs professed years ago how the desktop computer would become the digital entertainment hub in every home.  Music, photography, data -- even movies -- would be accessible there for the whole family’s use. 

I’m here to tell you that day has come at our house.  Most times that’s just fine, but lately it has caused quite a headache.  

As all faithful readers of The Back Porch know, I’m a Mac guy.  Always have been.  Never regretted it.  Back last winter, though, I decided it was time to increase the size of my iMac’s hard drive, giving it more room to do what it needed to do.  My computer was about three years old and needed the upgrade.  

To make a long story short, the new, bigger drive failed within five months of installation.  All data was lost.  But never fear:  I had Time Machine on my system and all data was backed-up.  

Or so I thought.  

Through a comedy of errors, the new hard drive installed on my system was not loaded properly by the local technician.  While my data appears to be okay, the applications I rely on (word processing, photography, printing, and tons of others) appear to be lost.  It would seem applications don’t get backed up on the back-up drive.  All I can say is Why not?  

I write this today on my laptop computer because my desktop machine doesn’t know how to open word documents.  It doesn’t know what to do with most of my data, unfortunately, and I fret over what important stuff I rely on in my life that may be lost forever.  

I’ve been here before and it isn’t very comfortable.  In the past, I could berate myself for not backing up my data.  But I learned my lesson and do, in fact, back everything up both at home and at an on-line service.  

But I’m still not whole after a month of trying to fix things and I am not a happy camper.  

If I could, I’d drop the whole digital world thing and do my tasks another way.  But that would make me feel like I was a real luddite and to be honest, when things work, digital stuff is a whole lot of fun.  And darned useful. 

So I feel pretty stuck and cranky today.  Sure, I have my laptop to keep me going, but all of my original photos, poems, essays, and most of my blogs are locked inside the iMac on my desk and are inaccessible.  I head down to the Apple Store in Cincinnati tomorrow morning to see if some Genius there can fix me.  

But in the meantime, I wonder what I have lost by depending on electronics so much.  Right now it feels like I’ve suffered through a house fire where most of my important possessions have been lost.  

It doesn’t feel very comfortable from where I sit on the back porch today, I can assure you.

How’s the digital world working for you?  

Today’s elder idea:  Logic is an organized procedure for going wrong with confidence and certainty.

Charles F. Kettering

Prayer flags

One of the thought provoking things I brought back from Crestone, Colorado on that first trip in summer 2009 was a set of Tibetan prayer flags.  I don’t remember knowing about them prior, and I do love to bring something of places where I’ve been home with me as talisman.  And they’re colorful.  I mean, I did come face to face with them in Colorado, after all.  

From pictures I’ve seen since I acquired my set of prayer flags, looks like a body ought to have a whole string of ‘em, letting them cover lots of linear space.  I suppose if they are prayer flags, multiple flags would only multiply the prayers.  Can’t be a bad idea.  

My string of flags consisted of eight individual flags, a set of four duplicated.  Each had an Eastern-world line drawing printed with a message in a lovely script I couldn’t decipher.  At the bottom of one flag, in English, was written ‘Knowledge’; on another, ‘Prosperity’; on another, ‘Long Life’; on the last, another lovely wish that somehow escapes me.  

Part of the problem here is that I took down my prayer flags.  You may have noticed the past tense verbs in the paragraph above.  It was just that after hanging on the back porch for a couple of Ohio winters, the line broke and I figured at the time that what was left wasn’t long enough to tie another string to, so down from the canopy pipes they came.  

Did I throw the things away?  Maybe.  I just went searching for the injured litany of wishes in all the places where I keep back porch stuff with no luck.  

And now the big query:  Is one allowed to throw prayer flags away?  

Right now as I sit here on the back porch with my laptop glowing in the fading daylight, I wonder what I’ve done and what karma might come of it.  

I’m really not that concerned about it because, after all, flags are only fabric.  The beauty of the flags is the state of mind they engender in the people whose space they inhabit.  Even in their absence, my set of prayer flags have me thinking, so regardless of where they are, they have made me mindful of their purpose, and therein is their being.   

One of the things I learned about the flags when they came into my life was that as they weathered in their place and they began to fray, the loose threads would spread the prayer intentions to the four winds.  By the time the support string holding my prayers together failed, some threads had, indeed, departed the mother flag and had drifted off into Wild Grace.  It felt good to see them as they blessed my space.  

I do miss them.  

They were replaced, in a way, by a much smaller set received this week from an organization the Dali Lama is currently promoting.  In a fundraising letter I got from His Holiness a few days ago, a small, mailable set of prayer flags was included.  I did, in fact, unpackage the set and immediately set them free in the local air, hanging them on the canopy pipes at the other end of the porch.  

Which got me to thinking about the flags all over again.  Ergo, this blog entry. 

In the winter, the old set of prayer flags were open to the elements:  wind, snow, rain, whatever.  As I recall, it was the winter that took them down.  

But in summer, they -- as does this new set -- resided under the canopy, out of the sun and rain.  They got breezes okay, but not the tough, fading stuff of Nature.  

Is that how prayers should be handled:  protected from the elements?  

Sure got me to thinking...

In any case, when I return to Crestone this summer for a week with Cindy Lou, Noah, and our young friend Adel, you can count on my buying a handful of sets of prayer flags.  Just seems like the right thing to do.  They’ll be colorful reminders of a prayerful, sacred place that I like to be reminded of as often as I can.  

The Rockies are a good place to be.  Crestone especially.

Today’s elder idea:  

The Colorado rocky mountain high

I’ve seen it raining fire in the sky

You can talk to God and listen to his casual reply

Rocky mountain high

John Denver

‘Rocky Mountain High’ (1972)

image:  From goodfortune.co.nz via Yahoo image search.  Pretty cool, eh?