The Field

(Belated) Pre-Valentine's adventures

I had to work on Valentine's, so we had to have most of our festivities on the 13th. It was sunny, so we went for a walk. Since we had the opportunity, I wanted to go someplace outside the neighborhood, but it wouldn't do to go to the mountains because it'd be too snowy. So I thought of one of the only alternatives I know -- that one place off of highway 128, where it's out of town and near the mountains, but still down on the grassland. It turned out to be the Greenbelt Plateau trail; I remembered it from several expeditions there when I was a kid or young teen with my dad and brother, often on bikes. It's just north of Rocky Flats, the defunct-Cold-War-nuclear-weapons-plant/future-National-Wildlife-Refuge, and runs parallel, and a little too closely, to highway 93. But the road noise didn't bother us much; it was mostly drowned out by the howling wind. We'd been chased off the trail by cold, relentless winds on several recent walks, so we weren't about to let this one turn us back, but darn if it didn't try. It never completely went away, but the trail turned down slope, offering a grand view of Boulder, and descended to a more sheltered hillside with more trees, and the wind eventually let up a bit.

We found ourselves next on the Community Ditch trail, which followed what I can only assume was the Community Ditch. What the community does in this ditch remains unknown. It was obviously a popular place, and it was easy to imagine people tramping off the trails, squashing vegetation and creating dozens of new trails. In response, there seemed to be a little sign every fifty feet reminding you to please stay on the trail and not trample all the nature we've worked so hard to preserve here, thank you very much. I was hoping we'd make it to the big lake I'd seen on the trail maps, Marshall Lake, which I'd never been to before. I was hoping my love and I might have a romantic walk around it. As we drew near, the trail widened and was flanked by bright new wooden fence work (another measure to keep folks on the trail). The trail went up a small hill, and the lake began to come into view at last. Then the trail ended in a dead end. An old sign declared No Trespassing by order of the irrigation company that presumably created the lake. A newer looking sign declared No Trespassing by order of the Louisville Rod and Gun Club. A few trucks were parked down by the lake, where some men were no doubt having fun playing with their rods. Should you be able to own a lake like that? What harm would there be in just letting average people stroll around it? We were forced to turn back in defeat.

There was a mature cottonwood that seemed to be growing up straight from solid sandstone, and ponderosa pines that were growing in a cross-section created by the ditch, their roots stretching visibly down the layers of exposed rock. Whitney asked me if I had yet begun to think about my inevitable blog post about our walk. Of course I had. I thought about the debate over access versus preservation. There was an article in the paper a few days prior about how the majority of lands protected by conservation easements in Colorado don't allow any public access, and I thought, well, that's fine -- at least land is being protected, giving us the benefit of great views and less troublesome development. Besides, almost everywhere else is open to people, and the mere knowledge that some places will remain wild and free of development is itself comforting. Furthermore, not allowing humans into certain protected lands may very well be in accordance with conservation goals if they are meant to protect sensitive animals and plants from all of the molestation that recreating humans can bring. But being able to see Marshall Lake and yet not get close to it was annoying. And it can be argued that experiencing a place gives it more value in your mind than just seeing it or knowing that it's there, and that allowing people to recreate in a place makes them value open land more, and could likewise promote conservation efforts. I don't think people should be allowed everywhere... but a lot of places, certainly. Including Marshall Lake.

I lost my ear muffs. The grassland felt expansive, and you could almost believe you weren't surrounded by a major metropolitan area. To really appreciate a prairie, you need a lot of it -- its beauty comes through in its open, airy quality, when hills roll on and on and big blue sky meets grass all along the horizon. It makes you feel like you could run forever. A single misplaced structure on any of those horizons can really ruin that feeling and make shrinking prairies start to look like bare lots waiting to be built upon. Most of the world's prairies are long gone. I hope the little stretch that remains between the Front Range and Denver's suburbs survives.

That night, after an aborted attempt to eat at a Moroccan restaurant that had sadly apparently gone out of business, we at the Leaf, a boulder restaurant that might very well convert you to vegetarianism if you aren't already. It was beyond delicious. Flavors came in combinations that were new, unexpected, hearty and exciting. It was not a meal, it was an experience, like visiting a National Park, or a big museum, or a major theme park, but in my mouth. Somehow, they took blackened figs, and parmesan cheese, and bread, and true love's first kiss, and put it on a plate. Tempura plantains, sweet potatoes, and tofu. Jamaican jerk tempeh on forbidden black rice. Apple and cranberry pie with vanilla ice cream and creme brule (sp?). We wanted more and more, I ate myself painfully full, and then spent the next several days thinking about that meal, and how nothing else I've eaten compares to that. I'm pretty sure the ingredients also included children's laughter, unicorn tears, and hope for the future. It was that good. We fell asleep soon after returning home. She got me a 13 month Xbox Live subscription and I got her season 2 of Buffy, and we got each other the same card. That was a good Valentine's.

A hawk, goth kids, and plastic bags

So last Monday (January 28) I cleaned up in the field for the first time since September.  The necessary elements came together – mild weather, not too much snow on the ground, not having to work, and being able to muster the will to do it – so I hit the trails.  I couldn’t find my big heavy-duty trash bags, so I made due with our smaller, flimsy kitchen bags.  It was breezy, so I knew whatever trash I picked up would probably be replaced in short order, but it still needed to be done.  I made my usual circuit, starting on the hill and turning past the Countryside rec center park and down toward the baseball fields, which I’m now informed the hoa is adopting, so hopefully that area won’t be as trashy in the future.  It tends to be pretty bad, with drink cans and bottles, sunflower seed bags and the like.  I ended up spending some time in the copse of Russian Olive saplings behind one of the ball fields, where there was an annoying amount of cardboard boxes and plastic bags wrapped around the trees.  So many plastic shopping bags.  I lost count of how many I picked up and pulled out of trees and bushes – several dozen at least, this day.  If you still use these, you need to stop.  They are a scourge on the environment that must be wiped out at the source – don’t get them in the first place.  Refuse bags if you’re purchasing few enough items that you can carry everything with your hands, and otherwise purchase some of the cheap reusable canvas shopping bags that are now readily available at most retailers and grocery stores.  Otherwise, your bags will end up here, in the creek, or there, wrapped around a tree, or there, floating in the lake or the ocean.  They’re ugly, overly durable, and they kill animals that mistakenly try to eat them.  They need to be outlawed, but until then, refuse to use them.  And then there are the plastic bags that newspapers come in.  I get a lot of those, too.  As much as I enjoy reading the paper, I’ve recently decided to agree with my fiancé they’re just too wasteful.  A new plastic bag and a new tree every day of the year… maybe we should just get our news online and on TV.

I continued on the main path, at the base of the hill, and filled the first bag and half of the second before coming to the trail junction.  A hawk flew over the field, over the prairie dog town, the place you’re most likely to see a raptor or other predator here.  I dropped off the first bag at my sign and continued around on the main trail.  School was out, and I passed a cute couple of goth kids.  There was a boy and a girl, possibly high school freshmen but more likely sixth graders (the clothes and the makeup made it kind of hard to tell).  They both wore mostly black, the boy had a dog collar and the girl wore some interesting black makeup designs and a fluffy, fox-like tail that hung down to her knees.  The boy was attempting to impress her by trying to climb a tree.  If it were any more precious, I would have had to stop and declare with rising intonation, “Ahhh!”

A utility/telecom crew of some sort did some work on the side of the hill above Mayfair park last year, and in addition to flattening all the vegetation there they also left behind a twenty foot long section of PVC pipe, along with a smaller six-foot section and another small enough to put in my bag.  Several years ago when they repaved 106 Avenue and installed one of those black plastic construction fences along the border of the field, they left it behind in a similar manner.  This is city owned Open Space… why are they allowed to do that?  I dragged the shorter section of pipe down to Mayfair park and then continued, and filled up the third bag from the creek near the little bridge, where I retrieved another section of plastic piping.  This one was, about six inches in diameter, four or five feet long and made of corrugated black plastic, was apparently intended as part of a storm drain into the creek, but it eroded out and was loose in the creek bed.  I found what appeared to be a still functional micro RC plane lost in the bushes.  I deposited it on the sign that tells you to clean up after your dog and dragged the pipe and the third bag up to the drop spot.

It started to cool off around 4 when the sun went behind the clouds and the hawk went hunting.  Perched in a sapling near the prairie dog town, it swooped down and hit the ground in the field.  I watched while it secured its prize, and then took off, mouse in talon, for a dead standing cottonwood in the center of the field that hawks favor.  I finished dragging the smaller PVC pipe over to the drop point and, surprised at how much I can get done when I get started at midday rather than near sundown, I hit the 106^th trail and sidewalk.  My strategy for cleaning the creek here is to walk all the way down to the end and then clean up as I walk back toward the drop point, rather than cleaning up on the way and having to haul a full bag all the way back (the entire pattern of my cleaning route is designed to minimize the amount of time I spend with heavy, full bags of trash slung over my shoulder).  But it didn’t avail me this time, since all the trash was waiting for me at the far end, at the mouth of the creek.  The combination of wind, flowing water, and cattails here has obviously been piling up the trash for some time.  It was apparent that there was too much to fit in my final bag (I only brought 4, since I usually only use 1-3).  Luckily an entire trash can was in the creek, so I stuffed some of the larger items in there and set it on the curb.  It probably belonged to one of the residents on the other side of the street and had blown away in recent winds.  I hoped they would claim it and not mind the new trash content.  There were still boxes with ripped Christmas wrapping paper lying about.  I had to pick only the most unsightly items because of the limited space in my bag, and that end of the creek still looked in a shambles when I left. 

Volunteer litter clean up is an interesting job in that it both combats and feeds cynicism.  It’s a rule that when you bend down to pick up one piece of trash, you’ll notice another nearby, and another and another.  You can break your back cleaning up a small area, and almost feel like you’ve accomplished something, only to look up and see a sea of litter stretching before you.  Is this a park or a public landfill?  It’s easy to lose hope for humanity when you see its detritus cluttering the landscape and when you realize that a large part of what you’re picking up – pop cans, Sunny D bottles, Capri Sun pouches, pop and water bottles, candy wrappers, and so on – are being dropped on the ground by kids, kids who don’t care and whose parents don’t care enough to teach them any ethics on the subject.  I grumble and think misanthropic thoughts as I shift a heavy bag from one tired arm to the other.  There’s always more.  I’ll never win this battle. 

On the other hand, uncovering a pretty spot feels good, and lots of passersby openly admire your effort, and that feels good, and the work itself is good, and there’s plants and raptors and cute goth kids, and you know that most of the trash isn’t being maliciously littered, but rather collects here passively, in the low point of the neighborhood, by the action of wind and water on an imperfect system of resource use and waste collection – too many trash cans left outside without lids, not enough recycling.  These things, and even people’s level of consciousness about their own actions, can be changed and improved, and I hope they will be.  Maybe I can’t win, but I think some battles are only lost if you stop fighting.  It was still light when I headed for home, which is a better way to end it than in the dark.  I’ll have to try to get more early starts in the future.

So last Monday (January 28) I cleaned up in the field for the first time since September.  The necessary elements came together – mild weather, not too much snow on the ground, not having to work, and being able to muster the will to do it – so I hit the trails.  I couldn’t find my big heavy-duty trash bags, so I made due with our smaller, flimsy kitchen bags.  It was breezy, so I knew whatever trash I picked up would probably be replaced in short order, but it still needed to be done.  I made my usual circuit, starting on the hill and turning past the Countryside rec center park and down toward the baseball fields, which I’m now informed the hoa is adopting, so hopefully that area won’t be as trashy in the future.  It tends to be pretty bad, with drink cans and bottles, sunflower seed bags and the like.  I ended up spending some time in the copse of Russian Olive saplings behind one of the ball fields, where there was an annoying amount of cardboard boxes and plastic bags wrapped around the trees.  So many plastic shopping bags.  I lost count of how many I picked up and pulled out of trees and bushes – several dozen at least, this day.  If you still use these, you need to stop.  They are a scourge on the environment that must be wiped out at the source – don’t get them in the first place.  Refuse bags if you’re purchasing few enough items that you can carry everything with your hands, and otherwise purchase some of the cheap reusable canvas shopping bags that are now readily available at most retailers and grocery stores.  Otherwise, your bags will end up here, in the creek, or there, wrapped around a tree, or there, floating in the lake or the ocean.  They’re ugly, overly durable, and they kill animals that mistakenly try to eat them.  They need to be outlawed, but until then, refuse to use them.  And then there are the plastic bags that newspapers come in.  I get a lot of those, too.  As much as I enjoy reading the paper, I’ve recently decided to agree with my fiancé they’re just too wasteful.  A new plastic bag and a new tree every day of the year… maybe we should just get our news online and on TV.

I continued on the main path, at the base of the hill, and filled the first bag and half of the second before coming to the trail junction.  A hawk flew over the field, over the prairie dog town, the place you’re most likely to see a raptor or other predator here.  I dropped off the first bag at my sign and continued around on the main trail.  School was out, and I passed a cute couple of goth kids.  There was a boy and a girl, possibly high school freshmen but more likely sixth graders (the clothes and the makeup made it kind of hard to tell).  They both wore mostly black, the boy had a dog collar and the girl wore some interesting black makeup designs and a fluffy, fox-like tail that hung down to her knees.  The boy was attempting to impress her by trying to climb a tree.  If it were any more precious, I would have had to stop and declare with rising intonation, “Ahhh!”

A utility/telecom crew of some sort did some work on the side of the hill above Mayfair park last year, and in addition to flattening all the vegetation there they also left behind a twenty foot long section of PVC pipe, along with a smaller six-foot section and another small enough to put in my bag.  Several years ago when they repaved 106 Avenue and installed one of those black plastic construction fences along the border of the field, they left it behind in a similar manner.  This is city owned Open Space… why are they allowed to do that?  I dragged the shorter section of pipe down to Mayfair park and then continued, and filled up the third bag from the creek near the little bridge, where I retrieved another section of plastic piping.  This one was, about six inches in diameter, four or five feet long and made of corrugated black plastic, was apparently intended as part of a storm drain into the creek, but it eroded out and was loose in the creek bed.  I found what appeared to be a still functional micro RC plane lost in the bushes.  I deposited it on the sign that tells you to clean up after your dog and dragged the pipe and the third bag up to the drop spot.

It started to cool off around 4 when the sun went behind the clouds and the hawk went hunting.  Perched in a sapling near the prairie dog town, it swooped down and hit the ground in the field.  I watched while it secured its prize, and then took off, mouse in talon, for a dead standing cottonwood in the center of the field that hawks favor.  I finished dragging the smaller PVC pipe over to the drop point and, surprised at how much I can get done when I get started at midday rather than near sundown, I hit the 106^th trail and sidewalk.  My strategy for cleaning the creek here is to walk all the way down to the end and then clean up as I walk back toward the drop point, rather than cleaning up on the way and having to haul a full bag all the way back (the entire pattern of my cleaning route is designed to minimize the amount of time I spend with heavy, full bags of trash slung over my shoulder).  But it didn’t avail me this time, since all the trash was waiting for me at the far end, at the mouth of the creek.  The combination of wind, flowing water, and cattails here has obviously been piling up the trash for some time.  It was apparent that there was too much to fit in my final bag (I only brought 4, since I usually only use 1-3).  Luckily an entire trash can was in the creek, so I stuffed some of the larger items in there and set it on the curb.  It probably belonged to one of the residents on the other side of the street and had blown away in recent winds.  I hoped they would claim it and not mind the new trash content.  There were still boxes with ripped Christmas wrapping paper lying about.  I had to pick only the most unsightly items because of the limited space in my bag, and that end of the creek still looked in a shambles when I left. 

Volunteer litter clean up is an interesting job in that it both combats and feeds cynicism.  It’s a rule that when you bend down to pick up one piece of trash, you’ll notice another nearby, and another and another.  You can break your back cleaning up a small area, and almost feel like you’ve accomplished something, only to look up and see a sea of litter stretching before you.  Is this a park or a public landfill?  It’s easy to lose hope for humanity when you see its detritus cluttering the landscape and when you realize that a large part of what you’re picking up – pop cans, Sunny D bottles, Capri Sun pouches, pop and water bottles, candy wrappers, and so on – are being dropped on the ground by kids, kids who don’t care and whose parents don’t care enough to teach them any ethics on the subject.  I grumble and think misanthropic thoughts as I shift a heavy bag from one tired arm to the other.  There’s always more.  I’ll never win this battle. 

On the other hand, uncovering a pretty spot feels good, and lots of passersby openly admire your effort, and that feels good, and the work itself is good, and there’s plants and raptors and cute goth kids, and you know that most of the trash isn’t being maliciously littered, but rather collects here passively, in the low point of the neighborhood, by the action of wind and water on an imperfect system of resource use and waste collection – too many trash cans left outside without lids, not enough recycling.  These things, and even people’s level of consciousness about their own actions, can be changed and improved, and I hope they will be.  Maybe I can’t win, but I think some battles are only lost if you stop fighting.  It was still light when I headed for home, which is a better way to end it than in the dark.  I’ll have to try to get more early starts in the future.

Deep Time and Ice Skating

It was a massive day with three destinations!  First, Red Rocks Park, where we visited the amphitheater and then hiked a 1.5 mile trading post loop trail around Frog, Sinking Ship, Gog, Magog, and all the other rocks whose names I can't recall.  It was a glorious day, sunny and mild, and the views of the plains were made dramatic by the striped red rocks jutting up at odd angles.  Even to someone who knows next to nothing about geology, it's obvious that there's a lot of geologic fun to be had in this area, with the weathered stones' many layers -- and their sharp angle -- hinting at ages past and the forces that have shaped the landscape.  It's a place to consider the concept of Deep Time.  Some of those layers now exposed remember before the age of grass and other flowering plants that now surround them, before even the conifers that cling to opportune cracks in the rock and further split it with their roots, to a time when forests of scaly, two-headed Lepidodendron trees mantled the flanks of the Ancestral Rockies, before water and wind and roots eroded them to dust.  We saw a few pretty blue birds at the bird feeders, which weren't necessarily "blue birds" per se; they might have been mountain blue birds, or western scrub jays.  They weren't the dark, iridescent blue of a Steller's jay, but a softer, sky blue. 

We had left the house about thirty minutes later than planned and had a lot of ground to cover, so we hurried on to Dinosaur Ridge.  I learned that this very site, only a few miles from home, was the place many of the coolest and most commonly known dinosaurs were discovered, including Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, and one of my personal favorites, Allosaurus.  We didn't have much time to spend, so we just hung out at the very cool visitor's center/gift shop with the big, imaginatively painted stegosaurs, and stopped at several points of interest along the road.  One spot, once a flat bed of mud, now a rock wall tilted at a high angle, displays dozens of fossilized dinosaur tracks, with foot-wide, three-toed tracks left by an Iguanodon or something similar, and smaller, bird-like tracks of a carnivorous dinosaur.  The Interior Seaway that once drowned much of North America left ripples on the sand of its shores, where tube-shaped trace fossils from the tunneling of worms and other small animals can also be seen, and at another site Apatosaur-like tracks can be viewed from the bottom, as bulges in the rock left when the heavy dinosaur stepped above, deforming the mud layers below.  In Deep Time, a mountain range rose and weathered away, a great sea rolled in and receded, and a new mountain range grew up.  This place has been a steamy jungle, a coastline, and now a shrubland on a ridge.  In this time scale, the lives of individual species -- forget individual organisms -- are too brief to be remembered, except for those lucky few who become rocks themselves.  And then humans came and built roads and a big amphitheater nearby.  Weird. 

Finally, we continued on the road up to the town of Evergreen and Evergreen Lake for ice skating, which was fun if a little scary at first.  And awkward.  And somewhat hard on the ankles.  The temperature dropped as the sky darkened and we skated by stadium lights on the shore.  Pushing each other around in the chair was the most fun.  Do we do strenuous outdoor activities in the dead of winter just to put our bodies and minds in the proper condition to receive hot chocolate with whipped cream afterwards, like some sort of purification before a sacrament?  Maybe not, but that is a definite plus.  I managed to get us home without falling asleep at the wheel, but only just.

The mystery and desolation of the office building

I've always been struck by how much of our civilization can at once appear to be new and well maintained and completely abandoned.  My fiancé and I went for a walk today down the hill along Walnut Creek, where there is a hodgepodge of open space, golf course, and office buildings that appear to have been dropped randomly on an otherwise untamed landscape.  It was cold, and the wind made it frigid.  The scarf my love made for me for Christmas performed admirably, but even its powers could not contend with the wind forever.  Nonetheless, it was a good walk, and we managed to get through half of it before the sun went down and the cold became unbearable.  We walked west on the path from the Westview recreation center past scenes of native grasses and golf course greens and the occasional cottonwood, with the sun in our eyes.  Despite the sun, it was a little hazy and the slightest wind was freezing, in true January style.  But for the occasional private plane overhead and cars in the distance, it was quiet, the plants dormant, the animals absent. 

Then we came to the end of the open space and the trail at Simms Street and crossed over to a place I've often driven past but never actually been.  To the left there was a stand of trees in shallow, frozen water with many small birds in them, the first sign of any animals we'd seen.  And to the right, an empty parking lot and an office building.  Two Subaru's parked near the front were the only sign of any human presence.  There was a pristine sidewalk between the parking lot and the overly manicured bluegrass that surrounded the facility.  I could easily believe that we were the first to ever bother walking on it.  Also adjacent to the sidewalk were several small buildings of mysterious purpose.  My mate and I both have often wondered just what goes on inside office buildings, but never wanted to find out firsthand.  Just then, the distinct feeling was that nothing went on inside this building.  These places are like ruins, built long ago by a strange people possessed of unknowable motives.  Built, and then mysteriously deserted, left to be watered by automatic sprinklers and guarded by silent robotic security cameras.  Just as confounding as and no more lively than an ancient monolith, kept in impeccable condition for reasons beyond comprehension.  There were obviously people here once, but why did they build this place, and why did they just as soon abandon it?  We knew that on any given weekday you would likely find the parking lot full of cars, yet even then I'd wager you could scan the landscape and not see a single human.  The place could have been dropped on the ground by a passing spaceship. 

We made our way around the building, picking our way over the unnecessary lawn, which obviously served only to attract geese and store their feces.  Behind the building were -- guess what -- stone monoliths!  They presided over an eerily empty park-like area for employees.  Beyond it the road ended in a useless little circle.  A barbed wire fence formed the boundary of the premises.  We found a spot where the fence's bottom wire was missing, and slipped under.  The creek and an expanse of short-cropped grass stretched ahead, toward grassy hills and the mountains.  Ahead and to the right was a building of even more mysterious purpose, which sits shrouded from view by a screen of pine trees planted when it was constructed several years ago.  We probably weren't technically supposed to be walking back there, but we didn't see any no trespassing signs.  We walked across the field and rejoined the creek, which now had a two-track road running parallel to it that appeared to still be in use.  On the creek were more animal signs -- tracks in the snow.  The tracks were a few inches across and had five toes -- a raccoon, or a badger perhaps, I'm not sure.  The road there made a handsome trail, offering great views of the rolling grassland and mountains as it ran along the creek and passed through a stand of cottonwoods before turning up a hill.  I wish it were an official trail open to the public.  By the time we reached the bend where the road left the creek the sun was down and the cold was getting more bothersome, but I felt obligated to follow it as far as the top of the small hill, so we briefly went up for a look.  Nice view.  There were coyote, or maybe fox tracks in the hard patches of snow persisting on the road. 

We hurried back, trudging through the biting wind.  It was painfully cold.  From the back, the office building vaguely resembled a ziggurat, adding to its air of mystery and desolation.  I think I've always had a sense of this quality, but I first identified it outside the Standley Lake water treatment plant a few years ago.  It can be seen in office buildings, railroad tracks, industrial sites, the empty streets of a suburban neighborhood (especially new ones) and in the deserted and artificial environs of many a video game.  I've never known what to make of it.

Musing on seasons

I don't remember the last time the contrast between two seasons so stark.  On Saturday I ate ice cream outside with my girlfriend in the warm sun, beneath a deep blue sky with pretty clouds that I would have liked to stare at and find shapes in -- a perfect summer afternoon, if only I didn't have to spend the evening at work!  Sunday, the first day of fall, was chilly, gray, and damp.  I kind of wish the sans always did this, so that the solstices and equinoxes would actually mark the transition of seasons like they're supposed to.  Fall doesn't usually really come until October, and March is such a messy month that I don't think any season can properly lay claim to it.  Winter obviously comes well before the middle of December, and Summer well before the middle of June.  I'm tempted to think the solstices should mark the middle of winter and summer, rather than their beginnings.  Then again, the changing of seasons differs from place to place, so there isn't really a universal date of their beginning and end.  So why do we say that's what the solstices and equinoxes are?

Total Luner Eclipse

I got a clear view!  Pictures from my backyard...

2:11 AM:  Beforehand, the moon is too bright for my camera to handle -- it completely washes out into a pure white disk.

3:08 AM:  A small cloud passes as the top left corner of the moon begins to darken.

3:32 AM:  More than half of the moon has already fallen into shadow.

3:45 AM:  Only the southern tip of the moon shines.

3:51 AM:  Still glowing within the penumbra, the moon darkens further as the umbra begins to creep across its surface.

4:20 AM:  Umbra.  Shadow.  The moon smolders like a dying ember, providing no light.  The stars, formerly drowned out by the moon's brilliance, now shine as on any moonless night.

4:37 AM.

4:55 AM:  The umbra shifts to the southeastern side and the northwestern region becomes lighter, now in the penumbra.

5:35 AM:  The moon returns!  And just as the sky begins to lighten.  Good news, villagers -- the moon has not been swallowed up forever by a horrible moon-eating demon, and the sun returns as well.  I guess we all prayed hard enough -- this time.

I took these on my 6 megapixel Panasonic Lumix camera, which despite its limitations performed well enough.  Tripods work wonders.

5:38 AM.   

Changes?

My love has gone home again, but this time she will return soon, and permanently.  We've found an apartment (probably) and are preparing to leave our old lives behind in order to be together.  Hers is the bigger transition, since she's moving 800 miles while I'm going about one and a half, but still I'm feeling contemplative about the enormity of us finally striking out on our own.  So I went for a walk today around sunset.  Earlier I spied a couple of teenage boys taking potshots, probably at the prairie dogs, with a bb gun.  As it happens, there was an article in the Denver Post today about increasing poaching of urban wildlife.  Otherwise it was peaceful -- it rained earlier today but then warmed up and dried out.  The work crew is finished repaving the path near Mayfair park and has gone (the old bridge remains, incidentally).  Their biggest contribution in my mind is all the Russian olives they removed from around the creek there, opening up the landscape and giving the cottonwood stand some breathing room.  But those Russian olives, weeds that they are, are already sprouting little bushes of new shoots from the roots, so I raced nightfall to weed them.  Clearing some from around a cottonwood sapling, I felt I was giving it a better chance.  I also provided a blood meal to a few needy mosquitoes (I'm such a saint).  Hopefully they were promptly eaten by one of the many bats I saw wheeling about the darkening sky on my way home.

If we do move to the Walnut creek area, I may be compelled to adopt a new "the field" -- the Walnut Creek open space area.  We'll see!

Late July cleanup/Russian olive kill

So I hastily cleaned up on Tuesday, trying to beat the setting sun, which hung over the mountains as a big orange disk that you could almost look at directly for some reason.  I've seen the sun in that muted orange "wow, so that's what the sun looks like when it's not blinding as long as you just glance at it for a second" color when rising, and when setting over the ocean, but I don't recall seeing it that way over the mountains before.  I picked up a bag of trash and cut down a few Russian olive saplings.  Today (the 2nd) I went out to finish the job, hauling the Russian olives I didn't haul before to the drop point because I was too tired/it was too dark.  It took quite a while, since they were over at the far end of the hill near the baseball fields, and I had to make about four trips.  I have decided not to cut any more Russian olives until winter, when they are not heavy with seed and leaves, and will be easier to cut and carry without the leaves in my face.  I've also been having the disturbing thought that the seeds might be dropping off as I carry the trees I've cut, which could result in multiple new RO's popping up to replace the one cut down in an ironic twist of my good intentions.  Best to remove them during times of year when they don't have seeds.

The big news from down in the Mayfair park area is that a crew is down there repaving the paved portion of the trail, and it looks like they may replace the bridge over the creek as well.  I actually like the old, ugly bridge and will be sad to see it go.  However, they've also removed the whole stand of Russian olives from the bridge area!  Those trees were bigger than I probably could have handled, and there were probably several dozen in all.  It's really opened up the landscape there, making it more airy and giving a better view of the little cottonwood stand that was buried in them.  I hope they remove many more of them while they're at it.  It would be even better if they'd replant with natives, like cottonwood trees.

Last month saw two more expeditions to Mt. Audubon, the last of which was finally successful despite rather dreadful weather, and an educational wildflower hike.  I haven't posted anything, probably because I need to upload appropriate photos to go along with those entries, and who has the time, really?

Yet another aluminum artifact, and a new toy

Cleaned up 2 bags of trash, 1 large item, and removed 5 Russian olive saplings today.  The field didn't seem too dirty, unless the tall grass and weeds are just covering it all.  I found a 23 year old coke can, dated by the writing "Treasure Tops '84" it had in a few places, apparently referring to some such contest.  It hardly surprises me anymore to find trash that's been lying on the ground for greater than 20 years -- the stuff just doesn't go away on its own. 

I also serendipitously found a nearly new 10" folding saw, which proved to be deadly effective against Russian olive saplings.  I cut down one that would have been too big to take by my trusty bend-and-snap method, and it was so much easier that I cut down two more little saplings while I was at it, and it was tempting to stay out and cut the darn things down all night.  But one's arms get tired, hauling trash and cutting tree-weeds, and it was getting dark. 

But I now have the weapon I've been looking for.  So don't fear the reaper, Russian olives.  Just fear me.  Bwa ha ha!

Mt. Audubon

My dad and I went to the Brainard Lake Recreation Area on Saturday, and despite an exceptionally late start, made it more than half the way up Mt. Audubon in the Indian Peaks Wilderness area.  It was beautiful, and we had the trail all to ourselves.  The lateness of the day and rainy weather earlier in the day had probably driven everyone off of the mountian.  The amount of snow on the trail was exceptional.  Drifts taller than me still covered much of the trail, even at the lower elevations.  Actually, that's where most of it was -- it had already melted off of the exposed tundra farther up, but remained in the shade of the forest lower down.  I can look west any time and see that there's still snow on the mountians, but... it was still shocking to see such quantities of it in the middle of June! 

We got a few small drops of rain, but the weather mostly held for us and it wasn't until we were well up on the tundra that I had to don a thin sweatshirt, which kept me warm the rest of the trip.  Unfortunately, we knew the light wouldn't hold out, and had to turn around at 7:00.  This is as high up the mountain as we got, looking up and looking down:

I think this is a limber pine.  These trees were beautiful, with their smooth bark, tufts of needles, and cones all clustered at the top, and they provided a nice contrast with the sub alpine fir and Engleman spruce.