Storm Mountain Stories

photo taken by J Volckens

A Walk in Autumn Woods
By Pat Maslowski

King Midas passed this way
striding down the mountain,
his robes inflaming grasses,
his hands mesmerizing trees.

In tourmaline, amber, and garnet
the land has burst afire
bronzing grasses, gilding leaves,
gold gleaming wherever he gazed.

He walked this place dreaming
of beauty, as the departing sun
swiftly, too swiftly stripped
the aspens of their gold.

Bereft, they lean bone-white
into a blue and cooling sky
while the faint fluting of Pan
sounds in the wind like grief.

A Strategy for Those Senior Moments
By Pat Maslowski
"What was that meal Clyde and my mother used to cook for us at the cabin? It was chicken, had wine and mushrooms as I remember, a French name?"
My husband frowns, scrunching his brow to jump start memory. No answer.
Later, "Who's that cowboy poet who reads his poetry and essays on NPR? He has a huge handlebar mustache." "I haven't a clue," my husband says.
He asks me, "Who's the writer on NPR with the accent who teaches at the university in Baton Rouge and lives in and writes about New Orleans?" It's my turn. I squint, press my lips together, flatten my nose to nudge my brain's hard drive into a memory search.
I've noticed that sometimes when I can't remember the specific name of someone or a title or the exact words of a quote, a few hours later and even sometimes as long as a few days, the answer pops into my mind like a receipt out of a cash register. It's just there. All the face gyrations and ruminating such as it begins with c, and it rhymes with fescue or I remember the last time we saw it, ate it, talked about it, none of these things brings up a result.
When the memory shows up, there's the relief that it's been there all along just like boxes of old photographs I haven't looked at in years.
Sometimes my husband and I, as in Judith Viorst's poem, "Why Marriage Was Invented," replay her methods for remembering
"I say it rhymes with 'skirt'
and starts with an 'R.'
He says it ends with 'a' and
not with 'f.'
and just before we've finally parked the car,
We reach 'Roberta' simultaneously."
Or like the three old crones in a Greek hero's journey sharing an eye, we arrive at what we were trying to remember.
Though, once, when driving through Denver, lost on a side street, we both peered at the city map which was just too far for my near sightedness and just too close for his far sightedness, we needed to borrow that eye the crones shared. What we really need is a third memory in play.
"Why don't you Google cowboy poet? My husband says, just put quotes around the two words. But, I'm puzzling over another memory lapse, what was the name of the hero who confronted the three crones, and what were they called?
I go to Google and type in "Greek Hero and Medusa's Head" and come up with the name Perseus and the three monsters, known as Gorgons or Graeae because they were born with gray hair, which seems unfortunate. I remember when I read that Perseus stole the eye that they shared and wouldn't give it back until they gave him a cap for invisibility, a mirrored shield, a sickle, and winged sandals. These magical items allowed Perseus to cut off the head of Medusa, turn Atlas to stone, kill the sea monster and win the hand of Andromeda.
When I Google Perseus, a Greek and Roman mythology website appears, and I can read about a multitude of gods and goddesses and heroes. At another website I can even read the story of Perseus illustrated by Mark Fiore, the cartoonist.
When I type in, "cowboy poet," Baxtor Black's name pops up. He has his own website. On another website, three of his poems are displayed, and I recognize the mock heroic tone and humor of the Old West in "Buckskin Mare.
"He was damn sure death warmed over, human
dust upon the shelf...
He appeared like he'd be lonesome at a party for himself, ...
And the Judith Viorst's poem in her book, "I'm Too Young to Be Seventy and Other Delusions" can be found at Amazon.com where I can search the book for the whole poem beginning with the table of contents.
"New Orleans writer" yields, yes, it begins with c and rhymes with fescue, Andre Codrescu.
I've read that a hundred years ago, people in small towns might know 25 stories in a lifetime. Today we can know 25 stories in a day. No wonder the memory on our hard drives comes up so slowly.
However, with the Internet we have more magic available to us than Perseus did, and we don't even have to steal an eye to get it.
Oh, and I almost forgot, for the chicken dish with mushrooms and wine, I went to the Internet and typed in Food Network, then typed chicken and mushrooms and wine French to find Coc au vin.

Shoveling Snow in Colorado
By Pat Maslowski
The sun spoils you in Colorado. After a spring snow storm, when the snows rain down so furiously the lands seems sheeted, grayed out, piles of feathery snow reach two and three feet so you can't open your door. Usually, the next day, the sky's an Opaline blue, the snow glistens with millions of sequins, and by afternoon, you're slushing your way out to the road.
Colorado's like that, except for the past six years when we've had maybe one or two snow storms from November through March and the air has been cold, windy, and dry. With winters like that you forget about snow shoveling. The small amounts of snow harden, freeze, and gradually wear away, and it doesn't matter if you have a curving driveway the length of a football field.
We wished for moisture, rain, snow, fog, anything but the cold dry winds that further dried out the soil. Last spring the few wildflowers we had withered in a couple of days. If we could just get a real winter this year, I said to my husband, even though I don't particularly like winter, I'll take it. If it will just snow and snow, the land might begin to recover.
The Pueblo peoples who farmed the Southwest knew that you had to have both snow in winter and rain in spring if you were going to be able to grow maize and vegetables. Without both, drought was a reality, we learned at a lecture at the Estes Park Museum. Well in 2006, we'd had neither snow in winter nor spring rains.
Then three weeks ago, the storm was predicted to bring 8 to 18 inches of snow the weather people said. Yeah, yeah...in Colorado, the wind patterns can shift, delay, or race over the mountains, depending on the high or low pressure systems. Where we are, we usually just wait, alert to changes in what is happening outside. It's not uncommon to have a prediction of a huge storm and have it miss us entirely.
So, in this last storm, the third in three weeks, we were again shoveling out our deeply drifted driveway. We had thought after the first storm the brilliant sun would begin to melt the two feet we had accumulated, but the storm turned around and came back, dumping another two feet, and it wasn't melting. Arctic arid had followed the storm, and a hard crust had formed on top of the drifts.
We had only one small neoprene snow shovel between us. I used a garden shovel, but the snow stuck to it and every new shovelful contained the previous shovelful attached to the blade, doubling the effort.
As we made our slow way up the driveway, switching shovels between the real shovel and the garden shovel, I said, this is nuts and tossed the metal shovel into the shed. We'll just take turns. So we did. For a while, my husband would shovel the heaped snow, just enough to pass under the Jeep, then he'd lean on the handle of the shovel, panting for breath, and I would take my turn with the shovel. Gradually as we made our way up the driveway, sometimes using the Jeep to push up as far as it could before it got stuck, then we'd move in front of the Jeep shoveling ahead of it. We really need to get another shovel, I said, and then I thought about it.
We're 64 years old, shoveling out our driveway for the third time in three weeks. No. This is just right. We each take turns, one resting while the other shovels, and not over exerting. One shovel between us makes a lot of sense. Plus, another snow storm is predicted for this coming weekend, and we'll probably be shoveling the driveway all over again. But, the wildflowers, should we get spring rains, will be glorious.

OUR AWFUL ROAD

By Pat Maslowski - Who has not at some time, when the gravel flies and the tires skate, cursed the road? It seems but a few days, maybe a week, is all it takes and we're back to jouncing and skittering atop the wash boarding and potholes of our unique road. How many times do we gasp at someone coming around a blind curve in the middle of the road as we head down, saying aloud in our cars, “Too fast!” Yet, it's understandable, the desire to get home after work, the urgency to fix dinner, attend to children, dogs, horses, the cat, and the relief at leaving the cities, the highway, and the traffic. Unspoken, but predominant, almost a mantra, 'home, home, home', but the road slows us. You have to gauge the width, the potholes, the degree of wash boarding, the cars behind and ahead, and who might be coming at you. We have to pay attention, and we do, though sometimes through gritted teeth. “It smells so good up here,” my son Dan remarked when he and his family came up for the Fourth of July parade and picnic. “It's so quiet,” he added. I thought to myself, there's a reason for this. It's the road. That bouncy, too narrow, dippy, shallow, wash boarded, skippy, skittery, awful road. How easy it would be if it were paved, in thick asphalt, center line marked, smooth as neoprene. How simple to climb and take the curves, fingers lightly steering as the car flows up the road. But, the traffic would double, triple, quadruple overnight. Property values would climb. Speed would increase, and there'd be traffic 24 hours a day. It would be so easy to get home. No more gritted teeth and cursing. But also, no more the sweet scented air of pine, willow, wild rose, rabbit brush, and sage; the quiet that comes from lack of traffic and crowds; the sense of space and vista gone now that expensive and desirable property brings houses ever closer and clustered. We'd have ease and convenience, a nice subdivision, no doubt, just like all the others we pass in our urgency to get home.

MOOSE SIGHTING!!

Friday evening June 2 - My wife and I were walking on Storm Mountain Drive, towards Aspen drive. A cow moose and calf were standing in the road. She was very defensive. We moved over to a cabin and sat on the steps and let her and the calf mosey by. They walked on down Storm Mountain drive towards Storm mountain. Sorry we didn't get pictures, didn't take the camera with us. Any way, want you to be aware that the moose and calf are up there and has anyone else seen her? Max Hastings, 160 Aspen Drive

OUR COMMUNITY

A community is made of so many things- a particular place, landmarks, plants, animals, sky, sun, scents, water, and people. Their relationships are the stories about these things. Communities have so many stories. Newcomers, as my husband and I are, learn as we go. But like Eve's musing in Mark Twain's Diaries of Adam and Eve, "We [are] starting at the very bottom of things-at the very beginning; we [have] to learn the ABC of things." We begin with being here, our first impressions, interactions, and then patterns and attitudes. We discover ourselves in community as we learn about place and each other.

For instance, as a newcomer to Cedar Park, I wondered how the winds blew here. In the small mountain community I lived in previously, the winds roared east from the Divide, cutting a frigid swath through our yard, bludgeoning the timbers of our house. I remember walking west in that icy wind, hunched over, pushed backwards, as it tried to rip off my jacket. I was reminded of that old fable about the contest between the wind and the sun as to who was the more powerful. The illustration on my school book showed a puff-faced cloud blowing towards a hunched-over figure, his coat billowing behind him, his arms wrapped tightly in front, and his hat flying off in the distance. These were the winds I knew where I lived before.

The wind here in Cedar Park seems to come from all directions, a swirl of air like a windmill, and it sweeps everything under our deck out east into the meadow and forest. The wind sounds like white water to me, and there's a comfort in hearing the blow and wave and rush as if in a way it protects us, is a kind of boundary between us and the city.

People are where the stories come from. What's our impression of the denizens of Storm Mountain: Cedar Park and Cedar Springs? The myth of the West, of resourcefulness, independence, and space that goes on forever is still with us. We learn by observation and meeting each other. For instance, we have a neighbor across the road from us. We wave and he waves. We've never been in his house, nor he in ours. We met last year when we went to drop off our slash in the meadow near the T. What do we know about each other? We both love the quiet. We both walk down to the cul de sac for exercise. We don't leave our porch lights on at night, preferring the distant light of stars. We both like our privacy. We're good neighbors.

Then there are the stories that will be told for years, that shape us, that bring us together in a bond that will never be forgotten. The stories of the Bobcat Fire fall into this category. So many people came to know each other in that frightening time. Neighbors helped neighbors. Some lost everything. The bravery of the firefighters and the volunteers, the people that helped, that gave of themselves and their resources, the moments of fear and decision, these are stories that will be retold.

There are the stories of the old timers, the people who were here before all the rest of us. I hear of landmarks such as Seam Rock, and I wonder how it got that name. Someone told me of people who were hang gliding from off the top of the mountain. There are so many people here who have done interesting things in their lives, who have found this place satisfying, beautiful, heart's desire. I'd like to know their stories.

We are a story telling people, finding in them, our knowledge, our comfort, our identity, and our history. So, the goal of some of us is to tell stories of each other, of our experiences, of what we know of this community called Storm Mountain.

- Pat Maslowski

Memories from a Storm Mountain Diary

1993: The grandkids and I loaded in the car for a trip to town to buy 2 baby lambs. The grandkids were still in diapers. I had the great idea of putting diapers on the lambs to keep the car clean on the trip home.

June 7/8, 1993: Guard rail installed on access road.

June 17, 2000: Yesterday was the first day back at the cabin since the horrible Bobcat fire. This morning woke up and its snowing.

Aug 16, 2000: 2-1/2" rain in 2 hours. The access road washed out where Larimer County was putting in a culvert. Ashes from the 10,000 acre forest fire washed into the Big Thompson river. Some called this the "Day the River Ran Black".

Oct 13, 2000 (Friday): Full moon. 10 neighbors on ATV's came by in masks and costumes. Since I wasn't prepared with candy treats they got cookies. No names are being used to protect the "guilty".

Sept 23, 2001: Support party for Max, owner of the Stage Stop restaurant. Since the World Trade Center attach, Max had been harassed because he looks middle Eastern. Huge turnout!

Jan 7, 2002: Cabin in Cedar Park burned due to a chimney fire.

Jan 13, 2002: House in Cedar Springs burned due to a pan left on the stove.

- Shirley Miller

What's in your diary? Please take a few minutes to write down your best or funniest stories from the past and mail them to SMERT. We'll put them on the website.

Mailing Address

S.M.E.R.T.
PO Box 73
Drake, CO 80515
Phone: (970) 593-1091

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