Living with genus Vespa

It is dark and windy, and I walk in an oak grove on a ridge between pewter cold lakes. The Turtle Mountains' woodland in North Dakota is thick with ash, quaking aspen, maple, elm and birch. But oaks, gnarly and spreading, stand out with their brown canopies of October foliage. I look for them: in this colorful forest of bright leaves they are monochromatic and solid, old and set in their ways. I search the branches with my lens and catch a glimpse of a grey swaying hive. Hornets' nest!

Too early in the season to get it down? Well, the nights are already freezing and we are near the Canadian border, so it should be fine. Too high to reach? The hive dangles maybe 17 feet above the clearing, and we have our camper. And John is tall and long limbed, so -- maybe?  Too early in our trip to burden ourselves with a large and delicate object, intricately constructed from saliva and dry wood shavings? Should it travel on our bed for another two months, for there is no other flat space large enough to accommodate its magnificence?

We already have three handsome hornet nests hanging in our house and this lovely hive would feel right at home. So just in case we could get it down and transport it safely I later mention it to John. We go and look, and yes, he wants it, too. But now I have second thoughts, so we call for a lunch break to think it over. The place in the nearby St.John is called N-8 Cafe -- for the owner's son, Nate -- and the soup of the day is listed as 'if available.' We ask, and it is. I check the life cycle of the genus Vespa on line, and there it is, as clear as a great fall day: the last workers in the hive die off in early November, good three weeks from now. No go. No hive. Not now. 

But on our way back to the forest John turns the camper straight into the clearing and parks it under the swaying object of my desire.

"Remember," I say, "it is too early. We cannot do it. It is their home." "I know," he says. "I do not want to take it down. I will just check if they are still there."

My wifely realism sounds a note of alarm. Why climb the camper roof in this sharp wind and struggle with the oak's porcupine of branches just to check? But his logic trumps mine, for what woman in love would say 'no' to this declaration of devotion: "I want to please you. And if it is empty, I want you to have it'."

In no time John climbs the camper and reaches the hive. He touches it, shakes it, listens to it, and then fishes out his Swiss army knife and gently detaches the hive from the stiff embrace of many branchlets the hornets used as its lofty foundation. Grateful, I intercept the offering which is as silent as any late in the season hive should be. Everybody left; the workers died off, and the queen is already burrowed somewhere in a soft rotten stump to survive the winter. If she lives, she will emerge as the world warms up and find a new location for a family home. This nest will not be recycled: soaked by cold rains and torn to pieces by winds it will disintegrate to smaller and smaller shreds, another Andy Goldsworthy-like opus of impermanence, devoted purely to procreation and the passage of time. 

The hive settles on our bed in the cold dark camper. Tomorrow we will return to N-8 Cafe, ask for a really large cardboard box, and mail it home. We will ask our friends Katherine and Richard who live there now to open the box and admire the hive, as we know they will. 

We walk around, photograph and smell the pewter ponds framed with golden aspens. Then night comes and we climb into our camper. John is downloading our pictures. I am starting a cauliflower soup, and the little space is now pleasantly light and warm. I open the refrigerator and there, on top of it, there are two dark and winged shapes sitting on our white pee bucket. Warmed by the cooking stove, alive and present. They look like miniature medieval warriors with horned helmets. 

Yes. It was too early. And we destroyed their home. Never mind they would soon die: they were not ready, and we did it.

The hornets are not even aggressive, just a bit dopey and disoriented, and I release them into the dark forest. Then I take the hive out and place it gently on the ground. Tomorrow we will hang it on another tree, a futile gesture of restitution which has no happy ending. I climb on our bed with a strong flashlight to search. I find no one else. But later I locate another one right by my foot, resting like a tiny domestic dog. This one has to leave, too, and we hope there will be no more.  

The morning brings light and warmth, and we go out to paddle in our Julia. The canoe slides across the blue Pelican Lake like a dry leaf, and we eat our lunch -- served on the paddle -- and drink our clear water from a big square bottle. We return early and unpack. The sun makes us lazy and warms the camper and ... oh no. Two more genus Vespa are already sitting on our water bottle in the sink. Where were they hiding? How many more? Are we surrounded? Should we surrender? Beg for forgiveness? Sprout wings and try to live their wild lives in order to appreciate what huge effort is needed to survive if you are a hornet? We search the camper again -- nothing -- but we sleep poorly.

The following night John is climbing into our bed when he spies a small elongated shape on the comforter cover. At first, his ingrained instinct is to see the ordinary and insist it must be a dark fluff from our thick socks. He wants to swipe it away but he confesses some frontal lobe neurology suggested he turned the light on first. Another hornet.

By now, I sleep with an EpiPen under my pillow. I know: our hornets are not hostile and warrior-like. They are tired, confused and lost, and I do not expect them to attack us. But if they are still in our bed and we roll on one or two, they would have to be saints to resist stinging us. And I am glad our EpiPen is a 2-pack variety: one for me, one for John.

Maybe the uncertainty and unknowing we still feel -- and will feel again tonight when we crawl into our bed -- is a fair price to pay for getting what we wanted when the seasons had not quite turned over and tumbled into winter.  Maybe it is good to feel a bit uneasy. 

©Yva Momatiuk

On the rocks

During the last few days we have been paddling in the Boundary Waters in Minnesota and even nipped to Ontario for more lakes. But eventually the bad drizzly foggy and otherwise nasty weather pushes us south. 

Crossing the American Narrows on our way back to the US we run a maze of old railroad tracks, confusing industrial bridges spanning who knows what, and changing lanes which twist like dry spaghetti. The rain is still coming down in a cold nagging drizzle, the way it did all last week in Canada, and we are hoping for better paddling weather here. But this place does not look promising.  

"Have you ever seen a stranger border crossing?" asks John. The U.S. customs' officer does not look too good, either: pockmarked and somber, he offers none of the usual "welcome home" stuff. He takes our passports and asks about any fruit or vegetables we may have with us. John tells him we just ate our last two apples. 

"Any onions?" the guy asks, and his expression darkens.

Onions? Onions? How does he know? Yes, we do have one onion. Maybe, like John, I should offer the greatest possible information and tell him that being a crazy mushroom picker I carry onions and sour cream wherever I go. But this guy may be looking for a deeper meaning accessible only to him. Onion rockets? Onion bombs?

"What kind of onion?" he asks. This is getting slippery. "Red. It is a red onion. One," I stress. He startles a bit, as if this revelation confirmed his nasty suspicions, and waves us into a side bay. Two agricultural inspectors, both women, approach our truck. 

"So, you've got some onions?" one asks, knowingly. "What kind?

"Red onion," we reply in unison. "One. One onion."

She wants John to dig it out. He obliges and she eyes it critically. "Oh, it is red. That's OK," she says. "You can go." 

We wait until her co-worker opens a heavy barrier separating us from the free people who are allowed to keep all kinds of onions. The free people of International Falls, Minnesota. We roll into town and can tell by boarded up storefronts and front yards decorated mostly with old cars and appliances this place is down on its good luck. Large murals cover whatever they can. 

We need to look for the usual four: food, gas, water and propane. And: flu shots. A community pharmacy clerk calls the town's health department for us ("no, they are not from here, just traveling") and sends us to K-Mart. But what K-Mart! We are seated in two comfy chairs behind a red curtain, get help with filling out forms, and are allowed to select the arm (left) which we like to have stabbed. All done, we ask where we should go for lunch and two pharmacists deliver in unison: "Sandy's Home Cooking!" 

The home cooking place is a warm and crowded codgery. This is our name for back country cafes where old codgers sporting stretched suspenders and backs wrecked by decades of farming congregate daily for their refills of truly terrible coffee and some corner-of the-mouth gossip. There is a FREE WI-FI sign but not a single laptop, tablet or a smart phone anywhere in sight: are we in some foreign country? Here you talk. And eat stuff which is definitely bad for you but seems to put heat in your body and keep it there. 

Our warmth persists much of the dismal day, so when it suddenly stops drizzling and we find a rapids-free sweep of the Little Indian Sioux River meandering among tall reeds, we put in. Julia goes in the river first, then our gear, and we are off, upstream. Finally! 

Not really. Soaring over tall birches, pines and cedars, a flapping wing of rain overtakes us in no time. The rain comes down so fast we get drenched before we yank our rain gear from their dry sacks. For some idiotic reason, we try to flee and paddle like mad upstream to escape the deluge. I have to watch for barely submerged rocks but all I see are fat droplets whipping the river into an array of watery stalagmites, which raise and collapse like miniature pistons. Mesmerized, I want to photograph them, but we come to what appears to represent our senses, and turn back. John hoists Julia on the roof of the camper with seats still attached to speed things up. We throw our soaked gear in. And then it stops raining. Yes. And I do not even have a single picture of beautiful rain stalagmites. Subdued, we pull into a small forestry campground beneath a massive elephant rock. 

Morning is overcast. I read the campground's bulletin board and learn that Boundary Waters bears can recognize camping food coolers left unattended in cars. And they rip into vehicles to get to them. Smart bears. 

A man approaches our campsite and asks if he can cross it to get to the top of the elephant rock. He cradles in his arms a plastic bag filled with what looks like a fine grey gravel. His face is solemn and I suddenly know why he is here. 

"Is this what I think it is?" I ask, and he says yes: these are his mother's ashes. She loved this lake, these rocks, and used to come here often to hunt grouse. A crack shot, she liked to teach others how to do it well. Worked for Honeywell, supervising four engineers involved in the Gemini program and the Apollo. Met all the astronauts. Later in life she suffered congestive heart disease and had to move to a nursing home. But last time he called her she told him she could not talk because she was too busy: she was cooking dinner for all home residents. He managed to tell her he was clearing her house which needed to be sold, and she asked what he did with her bottles of bourbon. She had more than 40 of them stashed all over the place, and he already gave them to her friends. Ah, she said, that's good, but did you find an unopened vodka bottle? Yes, I did, and I put it in the freezer. Great, she said, just bring it over when you come on Sunday. And two hours later the home called because she died. So he will scatter her ashes on the rocks and go for a 35-mile hike. Three days.

I walk over and put my arms around him. "Thank you, Ma'am," he says simply, and I sense this is it. There will be no more words, just his short climb to the top of the elephant rock and the ritual of parting with what can still be touched of the woman who gave him life. She was a crack shot, and loved her bourbon, and this lake, and her life, too. We do not meet him again but late in the evening we climb the rock and see a grey layer of fine ashes scattered on a sloping ledge overlooking the darkening lake. 

"Goodnight, Mother," says John. 

His mother, too. And my own. Goodnight, Mothers. 

©Yva Momatiuk

Black Lake, bear lake

"These your hunting dogs?"

"Yeah." 

"What are you after?"

"Bears. The season just opened."

The dogs' owner just came out of the woods. He is tall and rangy and gray all over: gray jeans, jacket, baseball cap, hair, skin. Not fast or willing with words. I do not try to pet his dogs who peer from their kennel box mounted on the pickup tray. Their noses, black truffles tuned to the staggering multitude of smell molecules, twitch. 

Good for bears?  I used to hunt with my father as a kid, and still remember a joke about a hunter who bought a bear dog from a stranger. But right after it smelled a bear, the dog panicked and got between the hunter's legs, shivering all over. Furious, the hunter found the seller and yelled:  "What did you sell me? This here is no bear dog. They scare him shitless!"  "I am surprised," the man said. "I tried him on ducks, and he hated water. I tried him on hares, and he just sat down. So I figured he must be good for bears..."

I pull Gray Guy's tongue and learn how he hunts: he uses bait. Bait? Yes. What kind? "Anything they like: corn, grain, pancakes..." and I think: this is like nailing someone who came to dinner you set out with great care. Later I check Wisconsin bear hunting regulations and yes, you can shoot your bruin diners here, providing your bait is not "located within 50 yards of any trail, road, or campsite used by the public, or within 100 yards of a roadway having a posted speed limit of 45 miles per hour or more." I am guessing that if the posted road speed is lower than 45 mph, it is OK to bait bears right along such road and nail them in plain sight of a passing school bus. But I hope I am wrong.

We decide we better go and play on nearby Black Lake. Northern Wisconsin offers many, and they are often sandy-bottomed and surrounded with mushroom bearing forests. Sweet, kind lakes.

Playing on Black Lake involves a deliberate paddle to some interesting spot, and then staying put and looking for pictures. Hours pass, and we are still trying to photograph an array of floating vegetation, shaped like arrows, ribbons and wrinkled bonnets. And just like in our early digital days when we had only one camera body and had to be really polite in order to have our turn, we try to be on our best behavior. Stuck in one small canoe we became instant Siamese twins: one moves, and another loses the whole hard won composition of a watery close up. In addition, the slightest breeze drags our boat around and makes the whole exercise strangely futile, and at times infuriating. You ALMOST have it, and then the canoe drifts right over your floating subject, the blinding water reflection you tried to avoid comes right in, and you have to start all over again but what you saw will never happen the same way twice. We know that if we really want our subjects to hold still we should climb the nearby bank, wait for the wind to drop, and forget all this watery business. But this is not why we are here.

We are here because -- feeling I am sinking up to my nostrils in some thick disability muck -- I cancelled my second hip replacement surgery in July and pushed it out of my way and into December so we could just -- go. And because John  experienced a stroke of genius and decided that if I cannot walk well I can still paddle. He also found two used canoes on Craigslist, both excellent and wonderfully cheap, and we bought them. The traditional Canadian 14-footer will be used in the Catskills, while Julia -- named after her previous owner -- the folding wonder resembling an elongated umbrella when fully opened, came with us. Neatly packed, she fits on the side of our Toyota Tundra truck and becomes utterly invisible. Once assembled, she can travel on top of our rig, lashed down by John who scales the camper's roof with the fluid ease which makes my jaw drop. We are reluctant to subject Julia to high speed interstate travel, but once we reach a bunch of lakes laced together by rivers we slow down and she, sitting on our roof like a 17-foot long green lizard, is quite safe.

And we are also here because this fall we want to paddle our way West, stopping for days or even weeks in some wet places. Photograph. Cook. Walk. Reintroduce ourselves to wilderness from a new watery perspective, which calls for a novel set of precautions. Beaver lodge ahead? Watch out for masterfully sharpened willow sticks parked under the surface by the workaholic rodents: they think winter food, and we think punctures in our tender canoe skin. A nice put-in spot we used this morning? Never too speedy to embrace modern gizmos, we still do not have a GPS, and come evening we better find the spot in the approaching gloom, or we will shiver all night curled up in Julia instead of sleeping in our camper bed. The morning breeze building into a steady wind, with white caps to follow? Paddle toward the nearest lee shore, before our canoe begins to drift and bounce on a heaving lake like a dry leaf.

But we are lucky again and locate the spot and the camper. 

When we camp on the ground in high desert, I do a rattlesnake walk before we crawl into our joined sleeping bags. But out in the forests of Wisconsin there are no rattlers, only uneven terrain to park our truck. And since I want to sleep with my head elevated just so, I often have to do a rock walk and look for the right stone I will slide under one of our truck's wheels. John will drive the rig on top of it. 

And as I look for the best rock I see my MA in architecture is still useful. For it to be functional, I need the rock of the right size. And the right shape, so the tire would climb it easily. And I need to avoid sharp corners which may puncture the rubber. And it should not be so big that I bust my lower back and end up with my sleepy head as elevated as I want -- but in pain. And I like the rock to be beautiful, too. Dunno why -- it just feels good to have this way. 

©Yva Momatiuk

In Nucla

Some years ago, Peter Hessler's article published in the New Yorker magazine and titled: "DR. DON The life of a small-town druggist," blew us off our intended western Colorado highway and into a side road leading to a small town we have not seen before. 

But not seeing is not the same as not knowing. Back in the 70s, I lived on a remote ranch in central Wyoming, where golden eagles and coyotes were routinely considered vermin and often shot, "long haired lads" from the East were not to be trusted, and the only Democrat in the area, Billy McIntosh, whose sprawling ranch abutted the Rattlesnake Range, used to throw his metal tractor seat in the back of his pickup and head for some remote ridge where, often shod in floppy home slippers, he would paint the gorgeous scenery of sagebrush lining the ravines like silver smoke and rocks resembling reddish elephants. He did not care what other folks would say: he just did it.

So after reading the Hessler's story and encouraged by a particularly dramatic evening sky over the Uncompahgre Plateau, we thought we would nip to Nucla, Colorado. We will try to see the only Democrat in this overwhelmingly Republican community, someone who over his many years as a druggist became the town's man to-go-to with an array of his community's needs. A quick assessment of an inflamed appendix? Festive fireworks? A school's sports team needing a coach? An ear to listen to a multitude of pains and sorrows? And it did not seem to matter how anybody voted, and why: the community's well being was the most important goal, regardless of all the rest.

Hessler's first paragraph painted the backdrop of Nucla in strokes both bold and flowing:

In the southwestern corner of Colorado, where the Uncompahgre Plateau descends through spruce forest and scrubland toward the Utah border, there is a region of more than four thousand square miles which has no hospitals, no department stores, and only one pharmacy. The pharmacist is Don Colcord, who lives in the town of Nucla. More than a century ago, Nucla was founded by idealists who hoped their community would become the “center of Socialistic government for the world.” But these days it feels like the edge of the earth. Highway 97 dead-ends at the top of Main Street; the population is around seven hundred and falling. The nearest traffic light is an hour and a half away. When old ranching couples drive their pickups into Nucla, the wives leave the passenger’s side empty and sit in the middle of the front seat, close enough to touch their husbands. It’s as if something about the landscape—those endless hills, that vacant sky—makes a person appreciate the intimacy of a Ford F-150 cab.

Hessler painted, and we went to check out his picture. Or, rather, I went: when strangers are concerned, John prefers to see his crazy wife beat the path to someone's door and only when the passage is properly scouted and colored safe, he may join me. As usual, I had no idea what to say and what I really wanted once I said whatever may have served as an introduction. But winging it has always been my surest way to arrive to where I was going. 

Hessler continued: 

Don Colcord has owned Nucla’s Apothecary Shoppe for more than thirty years. In the past, such stores played a key role in American rural health care, and this region had three more pharmacies, but all of them have closed. Some people drive eighty miles just to visit the Apothecary Shoppe. It consists of a few rows of grocery shelves, a gift-card rack, a Pepsi fountain, and a diabetes section, which is decorated with the mounted heads of two mule deer and an antelope. Next to the game heads is the pharmacist’s counter. Customers don’t line up at a discreet distance, the way city folk do; in Nucla they crowd the counter and talk loudly about health problems.

I decided to bring my own health problem into the play as well, and when my turn came and the attention of all present focused on the stranger, I told Don I recently fell head first down a dry creek bed after its sandy bank collapsed under my feet. And as I fell, I hurt my shoulder which hit a rock. Could he recommend some ointment to lessen my pain?  

If he saw through my sore arm ploy (I did fall and I did get hurt, but had not much faith in ointments) Don Colcord did not bat his eyelid. Instead, he left his elevated counter, marched me down the aisle, as as he bent down to select a tube of an arnica ointment, I asked: "What did you think about Peter Hessler's story?" The penny did drop but Don recovered quickly. I soon realized he was happy but also embarrassed by the elevated status Hessler's story awarded him. We slid into other topics, including an approaching rain storm. Later that evening, already parked in the forest of skin-smooth Colorado aspens miles away from Nucla, we heard our incoming email ping: it was Don, warning us about flash floods predicted that night and expressing his concern for us.

A couple of years later we came and saw him again. And then our lives followed their own switchbacks, and John broke his leg on Haida Gwaii in British Columbia a few weeks ago. Accompanied by his leg in a huge orthopedic boot and a pair of crutches, we descended on Nucla and Don Colcord again on Election Day, November 8. A sunny, transparent morning. People out, walking, shopping, even voting. 

And a new sign in Don's shop window... to cheer the ailing?

There is no scouting for danger this time, as John boldly hobbles into Don's  apothecary

He sees me first, asks me if I am good for a hug (I am, always) and comes over for a warm embrace.  June, his customer, watches us and smiles, so I give her a hug, too, and ask what brought her here. Oh, she says, I tripped over my husband's camera case at night, and I fell. Wanna see it?  Of course: for reasons better not examined I like to inspect wounds, scars, swellings and other abrasions of once sound bodies, and June obliges and shows me her truly impressive multi-hued hurt.

A photographer's camera case!  I feel almost co-guilty of her injuries but she is cheerful and makes fun of it so freely I think I need to borrow her breezy matter-of-fact acceptance next time I trash my body. And she is not the only one wounded: here comes another victim, this time of a Halloween night a few days ago. Just hang around the apothecary and Don's customers, and you will witness a full array of pain possibilities.

The small gathering is getting quite boisterous, with John on his crutches and his Haida Gwaii leg fractures' story adding a variety to injuries already reported. But I am on a secret political mission here. Did Don, who according to the Hessler's story is a sole Democrat in Nucla, already vote? Is he going to, and how?  There is no way to ask him privately -- he is working and quite busy -- so I tell him we expected him to do his community duty today at the local polling place.  He laughs and spreads his arms. "Me? Not this year. I already voted by mail some days ago, and am not going near that place. Because what candidates we have is just awful. “He,” and Don raises his arms to heaven and rolls his eyes. "And she? She just cannot tell the truth." I wait, but there is no more to say. He -- like so many Americans we meet -- does not like either candidate, and I sense the small group of customers by his counter may -- just may -- share his assessment. No one asks whom John and I may have voted for but I suspect they know: it is Hillary. We just look the part and so does our truck's license plate from the blue New York.

June, whose arm I photographed, tells me she and her husband have a wounded magpie named Maggie, whom she rescued from her cat's claws three years ago. The bird cannot fly and is missing one eye, but they love it. I ask to see it, and we emerge from the dim store into the sun-drenched Main Street to meet John, who already climbed back into our camper. June invites him, too, and they chat nose to nose. 

We follow June's car for a few blocks -- Nucla is small and modest, gaily festooned with fall colors and dying flowers hugging white and cream-colored clapboard walls -- and park by her house. She comes in, warns her husband, Estel: "We have company!" and then looks for John who enters from the back porch full of work clothes, tools and other objects she and Estel accumulated during their long and busy lives together.

How long? Fifty nine years, she says, and beams. They both grew on remote ranches in the area and went to town -- if lucky -- only once or twice a week.  She married him at 17. They ranched, then moved to town and Estel did a degree in engineering. Now retired. And here is Maggie the magpie.  First, on June's hand.

Then on her head, seemingly comfortable in the thick shock of June's hair. 

Then with her and Estel.

And, eventually, on John's hand.

We talk. It is a good talk, and Estel makes me some coffee and tells us about dinosaur tracks he and his buddies discovered while working in a nearby coal mine. And there is a searing pain, too: their son, a commercial pilot, died recently while flying his new plane too close to a tree near his friend's house, a prank turned deadly. We feel the pause, the tightening of throat muscles, the awful weight of it all, and let it last for as long as they want.  But they want Maggie again: she is the life they can embrace, she and the shy dog they took in recently. Estel holds the crippled bird now, tenderly.

Their votes? Estel answers: this is his business to explain, and June listens, suddenly quiet and serious, too. They agree: they voted for a successful businessman who may, just may, turn this country around. "The country is in a bad way and really hurting," Estel says, and he does not see any other chance because only the man he and June just voted for may do it and change things. May. "He" -- the man they voted for -- "is not disciplined, and says stupid things many times over, and if he would only stop saying them many more people would vote for him." 

As for the U.S. media, it could not be less responsible: this is how bad it is. "I trust Chinese news and Russian news far more than I trust CNN and Fox," Estel concludes, and we let the subject drop.

Not missing one beat Estel also tells us about his life's dream of visiting New Zealand, and we talk about John's native country and its national health system and other social and political markers which make the Land of the Long White Cloud sound like a different planet. There is no doubt that our enthusiasm for some of these markers reveal our voting preferences this year, but there is no war in this room, no screaming, shaming, reproaching. Just four people gathered in a small space illuminated by the autumn light seeping though the curtains.

Then we must go, but before we leave June embraces us and so does Estel. They are happy we could come. They want us to return.

"I will cook you a good supper," June says to me. "Hope your leg will heal well," Estel says to John. And we hug again.  And then back to Don's apothecary but he is busy and we have to wait: another customer, this time on the phone, in need.

Then the last picture, at least for another year -- or two -- or three. We may be back, and Don will be here, attending. Attending.

Travels with Kizzen

Here comes Wikipedia, hitting some primary nails on the head:

The Town of Crestone is a Statutory Town in Saguache County, Colorado, United States. The town population was 127 at the 2010 United States Census. It is a small village at the foot of the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Range, in the northern part of the San Luis Valley. Crestone was a small mining town, but little paying ore was discovered. The area, which includes the Baca Grande, a former ranch now subdivided and inhabited by close to 1,700 people, is a spiritual center with several world religions represented, including a Hindu temple, a Zen center, a co-ed Carmelite monastery, several Tibetan Buddhist centers, and miscellaneous New Age happenings.

It also includes Janet and Kizzen, our friends who live on a narrow unpaved lane in a one bedroom log cabin, warmed in November by a large wood stove, many wise books and two significant dogs. They publish the Crestone Eagle, a highly progressive yet not divisive community newspaper which asks pertinent questions, such as: Why do elk bugle? and: Colorado: Red, purple—now blue? They also lend their talents to local projects which require perseverance, ingenuity and hope.

Hope? Indeed: in spite of every damaging political news splitting our country into hostile chunks breathing fear and loathing, they seem to believe that our better angels will eventually raise on their pointy toes and pull us above all we fear and loath. Good luck, good luck....

The pointy toes idea brings me to John's still mending leg, clad in a striped merino wool sock with a large letter R stitched on his big toe. This is to make sure he knows which leg was actually broken. And since he still cannot walk and Janet has a pile of chores to chase, Kizzen loads me and her golden lab into her SUV and we drive to mail some stuff from the PO in the village. We will be black soon, we say.

How soon is soon? Kizzen decides I need to see the new health food store -- enormous, with tons of items -- but Crestone is small, so where do the customers come from? do they bugle as they arrive? It turns out the back of the store shelters a cafe, already full of locals (it is 11 am) and a small band of musicians showering the place with tunes and tunelets.

We leave and follow the main drag, passing a grand municipal building which also shelters a food bank and since Kizzen is one of the mighty pillars of the community, we stop often, roll down our windows and greet whoever needs to be greeted (remember these better angels? they dwell here in large and unruly numbers...)

So much humanity at 11:15 am!  I am not used to it, so I turn my eyes to the lichen eyes on a nearby aspen trunk and feel safer: the trunk and I do not talk but just meet on these western slopes of the Sangre de Cristo Range and this is good. I am not fully domesticated these days and need my tree friends to hold me up and tell me what to do.

But Kizzen is not adverse to trees, either, and shows me the tree house her 12-year old son built many years ago with a little help of his friends. The structure is no longer sound but if I were to find a new adventurous dwelling I may consider renovating it for our private use. Yes, the Big Right Foot could join me here if he wishes.  The dog sitting by Kizzen is Peggy Sue, and she can open any closed doors in Kizzen's and Janet's cabin.

Back to the main drag and its joys of murals.

I am trying to pry deeper into the life of this community and ask Kizzen about a local cemetery. She says; ah yes!  and drives me across a lovely sage and juniper valley. We turn into a small gravel road and here it is: the only outdoor human cremation facility in the United States which -- I learn -- will perform a funeral pyre for anyone, regardless of their religion. The funeral pyre is a simple concrete-brick-hearth with a steel grate, and a body is usually wrapped in a simple cloth, surrounded by juniper logs and covered with branches. Then anything may happen -- music? words? tears? -- and the pyre goes ablaze. Kizzen says that during the dead of winter --  with deep Colorado frost and cold cold winds blowing from the icy ridges -- many mourners come close to the fire and turn their backs to warm their living bodies.

  

I learn that Kizzen's close friends were cremated here as well. Some recently, and her eyes tear up. I feel my own tears coming up, too: a companionable grief, a shared sadness.  But to her and to me this is a great place to bid farewell to people we loved, away from everything but the mountain range now wrapped in fog and the desert breathing in and out. Small copper plaques are the only markers measuring the passage of time, and Kizzen touches them one by one. I see a Polish name, and below a Danish one. They are world travelers even now, in this great Colorado valley

And the desert plant life? it folds its feathery wings before first snow comes.

Lured by a nearby stream, I walk into the forest and discover an aspen trunk blazing with lichens, something I have not seen anywhere else. Not even on aspen rich slopes of Boulder Mountain in Utah, or in the Rockies. Usually, lichens live on rocks and leave aspens alone, but here they climb the trunks as if to get higher and have a better view of all things.

 And at the end of the road I see another white and golden stupa, surrounded by prayer flags and sheltered by the sea of boiling clouds. The space. The sky. Oh...

Kizzen is happy here. We traveled together for hours now and listened to the running water and our silent memories, and even bought some bread in the ashram.  She says we have been gone for a long time and they -- Janet and John -- may be wondering what happened to us.  I say: "Tell them the post office lines were long today," and we drive home.

Janet meets us in front of the cabin and asks: "What happened to you two? We were getting concerned" and Kizzen, as cool as a ripe cucumber after a cold rain, says: "The post office lines were awfully long today" and we leave it at that.

©Yva Momatiuk