Spring, as I’ve said before, is a slow unfolding up here in the mountains of central Colorado: the season isn’t to be rushed. But eventually the days lengthen and long-dormant plants emerge. Among the first of these are rough cinquefoil, dark clustered leaves scattered like green pawprints through the dead grass, the silver-brown thatch of…
For the past few years, a wintertime fancy has crept over me in fall. As the leaves of the scrub oak tan themselves to the color of unoiled leather, I begin to think of the looping rhythm of my days shortening along with the duration of the sun’s light, spiraling gradually toward interiority. I think…
In the usual pattern of spring weather, the promontory on our northeastern horizon gleams white like an alpine stereotype. The broad hulk of Pikes Peak is fronted by layered foothills and crags, which cascade down toward a grassy pool called High Park, from whose western shore extends a line of dune-like rocky wrinkles speckled with…
From a distance, not much has changed. Almost-mid-May from the house looks pretty much like just-past-mid-March. The difference, as it so often is, is in the details. The expanses of grass, passive and still eight weeks ago, are now host to fluttering, creeping, scurrying. The birds are back, the bugs are getting busy, and the…
The winter started out cold—fiercely so, in fact. Icy air preserved the scanty accumulation from small snowstorms for weeks, solidifying it to slick veneers anywhere it was packed down—on roads, on the pathway I follow to and from the barn. The thin snow cover lingered for weeks under the oblique winter angle of the sun.…
On a snowy day, the metaphorical alignment of undisturbed snow with the blank page is all but irresistible: that expanse of unmarred whiteness, awaiting signs of meaningful passage. I don’t necessarily mean to compare writers to rodents, but it has lately come to my attention that signs resulting from the movements of mice in and…
Weather here defies pattern-seeking. High elevation and dynamic terrain make fickleness, with a propensity for the extreme, the norm. Sure, there are thunderstorms in summer, but their duration, ferocity, and direction of approach keep me guessing. The same can be said of wind, except it will kick up whenever the heck it wants to. Snow…
Spring snows don’t last long. The sun has a better angle for its rays—and more hours in the day—to use against the accumulated white. The air temperatures are higher. And the ground is no longer frozen but is itself a heat source, a broad expanse of thermal mass slushing the snow steadily from below. Blizzard…
I know spring has arrived when the bluebirds stay put for snowstorms, toughing it out through the white and wet instead of moving down to lower elevations to avoid the cold. Three different storms dropped snow in the first three weeks of April, and I felt for winter-weary friends in the East as the weather…
We moved to this property in 2001, and settled into the new house in mid-March, 2003, which means that I’ve been looking at the view from this home for eleven years now. A few months ago, I did some mental tallying and realized that I’ve now lived in this house longer than I’ve lived in…