Arboretum Diary

"A spade: Fac et spera.
 A pick: Me, too. I always say to myself: work in hope.
 Flowers: Is it going to be a sunny day?
 A sunflower: If I want it to be." – Renard, from "The Garden"










6/16


A single spiderwort standing along the narrow trail at the top of the west knoll prairie can hear only so much. It's three ears are soft and sensitive and knows everything purple but not the oak grub. The bedstraw is close and quiet, the forget me not is in hiding, also alone, and the alumroot, stick straight, tough to the roots, seemingly aloof. A prairie-full of spiderwort, however, knows and hears

everything.  They duck in to hear one another, slightly twisting their spider-like stems. Their three ears welcome the soft chatter among the grass and aspens.  The sounds of your thoughts bound in among them and they send them back soft and purple, then they rise up to the sky like wisps of prairie smoke.

Montane Brewery Ltd.

"If I hadn't been drinking champagne at noon on Friday, I would have been over at the honey house with Manny Chapman, my beekeeping mentor and owner of Queen Bee Honey, and possibly, just possibly, I might have saved him from what must have been a very painful death. Instead, oblivious to his pending demise and feeling slightly tipsy, I popped open bottle number three and filled more flutes." – Hannah Reed, from Buzz Off, a Queen Bee Mystery







They all told me way back, guys like Harley himself, the one this story is about in the first place, and Molly and Wayne and all his crew, that if you head up the side of the mountain too early in morning and without as much to wear or drink, especially in spring when it always looks better than it is, you literally start to freeze up without knowing it. Your muscles tighten and your heart starts to wonder where all the oxygen is at, the mind gets a little faint, maybe a little silly or cocky and when you are tempted by the lure of the wild creek rushing down the narrow valley, more than one has walked right off into the sound itself. I had almost said buzz off, my mind was at work for my own wild schemes of settling a little spot along that trail for a nano brewery.  "A whato what," said Harley, usually game for virtually anything, but he happened to be from around here in the Gore Range Mountains of the Eagle Nest. "I think some of the valley transplants have gotten to ya. There are so many schemes in town nobody knows what's next. Have you noticed there aren't any micro breweries in town. Think that's for a reason?" We were on bikes, far east along the Gore Valley Trail, stopped and looking out

at the famous grass roofed house near the interstate. "So you can plant grass on your roof and maybe even recruit a few mountain goats from up at the top of Bighorn Creek Trail to settle up there, but I can't open a nano at 10,000 feet?" How could anybody know, besides myself, that to use the flora and fauna of the landscape for my small batch brewery had been in the works for years.  There were more private plots of land up there in mountains than most knew. I had found a willing taker, Mam Sherman, as she liked to call herself, who was pleased to lease me her husband's cabin he built 46 years ago to the day.  "The-e-e-e day." she said, when I first met her.  "He didn't build that old thing for us, I can assure you, we never got up in there overnight any more than I can count on one hand. It was so folks could get up on these mountains, find out what they were missing back in Kansas City and Minneapolis.  If you can haul it up, you can use the cabin." Mam Sherman was about as tall as I was, lean but strong, and even though she said she was in her early 70's, based on the smooth skin of her short flowery face, she didn't look much over 55. "Consider it done," I told her. We'll treat the lake, use the water. grow our own hops, use the wildflowers. Mam Sherman's face didn't give it all a second thought.  Her husband mush have been a similar loon. Harley, on the other hand, simply shook his head left and right until I showed him tall thin 12 oz can with mountain art. "Oh, well, where do we begin."

Arboretum Diary

"Living down in the country again. A wonderful conjunction of all that goes to make those sometime miracle-hours after sunset – so near and yet so far. Perfect, or nearly perfect days, I notice, are not so very uncommon..." – Whitman, from "Hours for the Soul"










6-14


Hours of the soul are by the lushness of recent rain, and the full maturity of so many prairie plants and flowers, as only a week has passed since last through this path, and the entire world of green has risen and taken hold where only a month ago a prairie burn had flattened the landscape, left it charred, short and homogenous.  The morning by the luck of sunlight on such days is the truest of gifts. As one person might send a long a card with a token of gratitude inside it, say, a locket, or a

letter, the morning here at the arboretum, as a short and shifty breeze scuttles along the bluestem and shakes things the leaves of the oaks as if by the slightest of nudges, is a gift only if we allow it to be that.  To walk along the narrow paths that are now virtually swept by the prairie grasses, the soft sweep over the legs are gift.  Add another by the hiding forget me nots, near the soft creek, in a near squat close to ground to the purple spiderwort – is it white wintergreen? – and wild blue phlox.

Mating dragonflies rise up from out of the crowded lot of green to dive and duck as if to inspect all new comers then off again as fast.  At the moment when the sight and sound and smell and temperature come together there is only the lost machinery of mind that tries to hold an old grip but then the pollinating bumblebee skips across the white puffs of flowers unknown. Back in Colorado the subalpine world was all of craggy rock or elfin trees, aspen and Douglas fir, the Indian paintbrush,

as one walked out onto balded points reaching into air toward a valley showering a creek. Here at the arboretum is a study in low lands that stem and fruit from earth's bubbling springs.  The mind's eye, then, becomes a counter of contrasts between the elevations at mountains and marsh and everything in between.  The air we breath the simplest gift, what swings wild in the transparency the mystery to seek.

Snapshots from Eagle's Nest Colorado

6/9


To take the path less travelled in the case of Gore Creek vs. Deluge Creek turns out to be plenty worthwhile.  The Gore Creek trail is understandably one of the most used trails in the Vail valley, as it is easy access and shows the origin of the fierce namesake river that defines the valley and city.

Deluge is less travelled. It is a narrowly cut trail, no wider than the width of a hiker's walking gate and as pictures of previous years shows, the trail is often over run on either side by wildflowers; it is steep for the first two two miles, rising up through hardscrabble, not to mention the fact that it looks

something like a wild life playground...so close to the trail that your eyes have to be adjusted to a more immediate possible encounter from anything from deer, marmot, moose or bear.  And yet this side of the Gore valley is more verdant, sprawling by wider stretches of wildflower meadow, fir and aspen, as well as lodgepole pine.  Once up above the 2-mile mark, the trail evens out some, and one is

left with a view below that transports to visions of subalpine scenes of the Alps.  Like Gore, Deluge leads to a lake eventually, just over 11,000 feet up, where written descriptions have described seeing a mountain lion off in the distance near the lake, and where, one climbing party says, a band of mountain goats that chased the climbers off the ridge and back onto the trail.  In other words...this is a trail that gets the hiker about as close to walking up the raw side of a mountain as possible. The fact that there is less foot traffic here means that there is less disruption in the patterns of the wild and that it is important to stay in tune to each coming rocky peak around the bend. This seems to be a sure way that the trail becomes well imprinted on the imagination and one that is not easily forgettable.

Snapshots from Eagles Nest Colorado

6/8


As you get up into the mountains, along Booth Falls, Gore Creek, Deluge Creek and Bighorn Creek trail, all of them have one fascinating thing in common -- the spring melt is in full force. The larger of the creeks, fed by their parental alpine lake above, hold way more volume then normal and much of the surrounding banksides tend to get crushed and gouged.  Just as fascinating though are the little

mountainside creeks that pass over rocks and create miniature river valleys through the lush green foliage. Water is never far from the mind along the Gore Creek Trail, the signature river for the

valley, as it gains steam off the mountain and curls down through the entirety of the city of Vail, beautiful, rolling, and quite wild.  Elevation on this hike gains over 3,000 feet; like Booth Falls, as you walk, and watch the beautiful varying zones of the Rockies take shape before your very eyes on

the climbing trail -- steppes, montane, subalpine, and the alpine that seems to always linger at the far distance of the view a bit like an unknowable dream.  A thousand nature writers have done a far more thorough job of describing this fascination of where elevation meets green meet water, but it is certainly well worthwhile to do my part in waxing at the marvels of these vast and ever-changing canvases that truly do look like the creation of paintbrush.  At points, the art and the functions of the mountains come together in indescribably spots of magic, as random dashes of wildflowers split out

from cracks of boulders the size of apartments; a tangled spruce or lonely Douglas, stand at the top of the hillock which then as quickly transforms to the bright clean stands of alder, then the trail weaves

back into ponderosa or, higher up, the Engelmann spruce, a creek shining through like a broad brushstroke of motion.

Snapshots from Eagle's Nest Colorado

6/7

Early enough start to Booth Falls Trail that there were no other cars yet in parking lot, only the tips of the south-facing mountain range were lit. This meant that steep hike sidling up along cataract after cataract of rushing creek would be relatively dark, loud by water, quiet by foot traffic.  Vail is at 8,400

feet elevation and the destination elevation, if an option, is 3,000 feet higher.  The montane stages become sensitively apparent as you walk along the trail that meanders through various stages of heavy pine, craggy boulder, and many rockfalls along the north slope.  Side trails often cut through the pine forest for overlooks of the spring-fed creek as it twists and carves like an avalanche down

Booth.  Subalpine regions rise up the treeline where thick patches of snow still litter well shaded portions.  The creek and its roar become your companion; veer too far upslope and as you lose the noise, you find that your isolation is a bit more eery than before.  Long open climbs lead up to cliff outcroppings and if not under the tower of the pines, you can see what appears to be the tops of the range, quiet and still.  At the falls, the violence of the water shows itself – the water has no pattern, but merely battering off side by side promontory.  Over on the other side, the sun has begun to reveal

the more cheery quality of the south slope aspens and even open meadows.  I went ahead and continued to hike past the falls, some two hours in-mountain, and very quickly the elevation transition had allowed for more and more unmelted snow until the trail began to hug tightly to a steep and rocky north slope which became total snow.  Some footprints shown across the surface, but holes also appeared, especially at the base of pine trees, still a foot or so deep. It was at the tree line up into the alpine elevation the trail would no doubt lead through hardscrabble rock, following the creek, to Booth Lake some hour and half up at the top.

On the Yahara

"At sunrise, the pure clear sound of the meadowlark. An hour later, some notes, few and simple, yet delicious and perfect, from the bush – sparrow – towards noon the reedy trill of the robin." – Whitman, from Specimen Days










6/1


Late afternoon hours, summer sky on us, the city moves into its parks, filling in the quiet spots under the monument oaks.  Children, hand by small hand, lurch at the span between the red monkey bars and gasp out when they lose grip and mother is there for soft landing on the bark.  Green slide a long line of legs and rising arms as a basketball bounces in the near distance, the chain link notifies success.  As we walk along the narrow trail that skirts Lake Monona, the creatures of the shores dash off or, as with the watchful mallards, hug close to their chosen patch of grass as easy lookout for ducklings.  They barely move their heads; sun washes over the emerald fluorescence of the male's head as mother coordinates warmth and feeding.  We stand briefly at the horseshoe pit, still crusty from winter, unused yet, and toss a bright blue ball to the rods and one skips off the tip and arcs directly in the shaded water.  It rotates slowly to the crossing waves, a small planet. A lime green kayak in the distance slips across horizon line as if planted there in a painting.