Touch my neck. You know what’s there? Sweat! It’s amazing.
Running through Amish farm country in Rebersburg, PA
A runner and cyclist who has been living in Evergreen for almost three years now, I had almost forgotten about the concept of sweat. Even on the warmest summer days, I rarely break a sweat in this dry, temperate environment. I had almost forgotten about that greasy, sticky feeling.
But I’m away from Colorado for a week and a half, making a circuit as I attend a wedding, an ordination, with a trip to Vermont in the middle to check on a couple rental properties I own and manage. Today I ran five miles on a 70 degree, sunny day in Rebersburg, Pennsylvania, where my sister Julie is the new pastor of a couple of churches. From her parsonage located smack dab in the middle of Amish farm country, I did a bucolic jaunt through farmland, inhaling the pungent scent of cow manure and dodging the horse and buggies.
A few days ago I loped along the lakes in Central Vermont, on an unseasonable 85-degree day.
Last weekend I ran out and back on the Boardwalk of Atlantic City, enjoying the screeching of the seagulls and occasional sight of a graceful pelican.
Three very different runs, with one thing very much in common: sweat. (Also, I was way faster there. I am superwoman at sea level!)
On one of those late winter days when the air was unseasonably warm but the ground was still covered with snow, Lexie and I decided to take a walk in the Lair. Lair o’ the Bear, my favorite name for a park. We parked by the road at the western end and strolled down to the trailhead. Lexie was wearing shorts, a light jacket and snow boots. It was one of those Colorado types of days.
The Swimming Hole
Suddenly Lexie stopped and gasped.
“Mom!” she exclaimed excitedly. “This is the swimming hole!”
Lexie, 11, and her sister Kyra, 14, had gone to a Bear Creek swimming hole several times last summer with a friend and her mother, who had never been able to describe exactly how to find it.
But sure enough, and the very edge of the park, Bear Creek widened and had a slightly deeper, calm pool. It was flanked by large boulders for sitting on, trees for lolling beneath, and the water was still halfway covered with snow and ice. That didn’t deter a bunch of kids who had discarded their shoes and were splashing around in it while their parents watched, amused. On the third week of March! It was about 65 degrees, but that creek had to be closer to 40 degrees.
Dunafon Castle
“You want to go in?” I asked Lexie. Fortunately, she declined, and we walked on down the trail, alongside cliffs, through deeper woods where the trail was snow-covered and slippery, and suddenly we came upon a wrought-iron fence along the left side of the trail. There was a gate that prevented us from crossing a stone bridge to the left, and across the creek was a small, exquisite stone castle, Dunafon Castle. You might have seen the crest on a flag while driving down Route 74 north of the Lair o’ the Bear entrance.
We stood at the padlocked gate and took in the castle, with its gazebo, sweeping grounds, and fountains, and shared dreams about fantastical other lives, other places, about magic and princesses and unicorns. A workman came around the bend with a couple of huge dogs to abruptly end our trip of fantasy, and we giggled as the canines frolicked with each other enthusiastically.
The whole walk was only about a mile and a half by the time we got back to the car. But it took us back several centuries, off on flights of fancy, and even back to last summer!
Yesterday I got an urgent text message in my cellphone through Reverse 911 that 100 homes were being evacuated near Pleasant Park Road in Conifer because of a wildfire.
View of the plume from a Kittredge hilltop
A fire? In CONIFER?? This is the sort of story I’m supposed to watch on 9News, riveted by the orange flames licking the edges of some distant canyon, not a few miles down Rte. 73 near the homes of a number of my friends. My husband and I ran outside and watched, openmouthed, as a giant plume of smoke billowed across the sparkling blue sky.
A few minutes later I discovered there was a second fire along Grapevine Road in Idledale, perhaps two miles away as the crow flies from our Kittredge house. I had driven right past that spot just two days earlier. Suddenly I felt incredibly vulnerable.
Natural Disasters
Everywhere that I have ever lived, there has been some sort of natural disaster to be wary of. Back east, where I lived two blocks from the Long Island Sound, we worried about floods, windstorms, and the torrential downpours that edged hurricanes. When I lived in Puerto Rico, a block from the ocean, we were also afraid of hurricanes, and a volcano erupted on the island of Montserrat. My husband lived in Tornado Alley for a while. I have felt the earth shake under my feet during an earthquake.
When we moved to Colorado, we thought we had found a home that didn’t seem to be a victim of Mother Nature’s irrational outbursts. No tornadoes, no earthquakes, certainly no hurricanes. But how wrong we were. Mother Nature is so erratic here – flooding us one season, parching us the next. (And of course, last year we did have a deviant earthquake.) We are at the mercy of the rain, the snow, the mercury – seesawing between abundance and famine. Those 330 days of sunshine a year that attracted us are also a curse!
As the fire rages in Conifer, a number of my friends have fled their homes, and many others live in the fire’s path. Friends and family from back east, who have seen our fire on the national news, call and email asking if we are OK.
A Fire Plan
Our family spent dinnertime tonight creating a fire plan. We prioritized what needed to be done if the Reverse 911 call came in about a fire in OUR neighborhood. Get US out safely, of course. Also the cats, important papers, hard drives, Grandpa’s violin, Great-Grandfather’s Revolutionary war epaulets, family photos, what else?
Our lovely cedar-and-stone house sits at the edge of 40 acres of beautiful ponderosa pines. There’s some comfort in the fire hydrant that sits at the edge of the front yard, but less comfort in the pine boughs you can reach from the back deck. Forget about “defensible space” — we chose this house because of the woods. We love the smell of the pine in the air, especially on windy days. But today, as I look at those pine trees, I see a threat.
So I’ll call my insurance company tomorrow, make sure I’m covered in case of fire, post the Family Fire Plan on the bulletin board — and pray I never need to use it. And then I’ll go help make sandwiches to help feed the firefighters in Conifer, and pray they get those flames stamped out soon.
I drove by Evergreen Lake this morning and saw it: the first crack. A big long crack along the lake, running from the mouth of the creek almost to the dam. The first omen of approaching spring.
A February walk on the lake with my friend, Linda Kirkpatrick
Just a week and a half ago I was walking all over the lake with my daughter after ice skating at the Lake House. We saw several clusters of fisherman huddling together in the cold over a tiny hole in the ice, hoping for a catch. A few were inside little tents.
We examined a big snow fish sculpture and a castle. We pretended we were on the North Pole, far from anyone. We listened to the distant laughter of skaters. We reveled in the whiteness that surrounded us.
But today, the lake was deserted. No fishermen. The sculptures melting into shapeless blobs. The skating rink empty.
A blue jay couple flitted around the trees near my car, alerting me to what the future has in store.
That is, I hate the transitions between seasons. When I am in a season, I am thoroughly and completely committed. I live, eat and breathe that season. It’s winter? I want to ski, snowshoe, feel the snow crackle under my feet, and embrace the cold! It’s spring? I expect warmer weather, birds singing, crisp hikes up Three Sisters. Summer? Cycling, fishing on Evergreen Lake, sunny skies, wine on the deck. Fall? Golden aspen trees, crisp evenings, football games.
But Colorado, with its bipolar weather, pokes holes in that theory. First of all, it’s never really winter, is it? It might be minus 5 for a few days, but then, overnight, the mercury can shoot up to 60 degrees, and what am I supposed to do with that? I can never pack away my warm weather clothes, or my cold weather clothes, because Colorado might change its mind and morph into another season, and I need to be ready
Take today, for instance. 65 degrees, halleluiah! Of course, last Saturday I was hitting all the terrain parks at Winter Park on skis with my husband and daughter. But OK, I can make the adjustment. 65 degrees. I grabbed my road bike, donned riding shorts and a long-sleeved shirt and headed out Upper Bear Creek. And I FROZE. The cold air from the ice and snow still embracing the creek alongside the road reached out into the air all around me and bit. Hard. When I got home, I was shivering, despite the 65 degrees on the sign outside Evergreen National Bank
Come on, nature — give me some predictability! I need to know what to expect!
But the truth is that one of my favorite things about living in Colorado is that we are not held in the tight fist of winter from December through March, like we were back east. There’s always hope that a cold snap will be broken up by a couple of spring-like days. The variety, the surprise, make living in Evergreen so great. So I will try to embrace the transitions! I will enjoy the warmth of this warm winter week, secure in the knowledge that next week we may be back in sub-freezing temps, and perhaps Spring Break will be snowy!
