Love does make the world go round

Last Friday we set out for Steamboat Springs in northwestern Colorado, bound for Colorado Art Ranch's third "Artposium," a weekend devoted to exploring what art has to say about some subject important to life in rural Colorado. In this case, the issue was land conservation, and the weekend's doings took place at The Nature Conservancy's Carpenter Ranch twenty miles down the Yampa River west of Steamboat, in the shadow of the towering stacks of the coal-fired Hayden Power Plant.

I wrote right up to the time we left, putting my computer to sleep with just enough time to whip up a picnic lunch, including steamed asparagus spears, sweet and fresh from the garden, and then hop into the car. It took me the half of the drive to decompress. As we headed out of Kremmling, passing through stunted sagebrush shrublands on the gradual climb up Muddy Creek toward Rabbit Ears Pass, I looked around for spring wildflowers.

I was scanning the high desert when I noticed what looked like clumps of wet snow on the bare, crumbly soil between the twisted sagebrush. Only it was a warm afternoon, in the mid-seventies; what I was seeing couldn't be snow. Then I realized: phlox! It was Hood's phlox, a mat-plant that covers itself with starry white blossoms in spring if winter snows wet the soil.

I pointed the "snowflake" phlox flowers out to Richard as we whizzed along; he pulled over and we got out to look. Wandering among the sagebrush, we spotted other wildflowers not visible at 60 miles per hour: clusters of ball-cactus with pink flowers, a ground-hugging locoweed with ivory blossoms tinged with purple, and a desert-parsley with lacy green leaves and tiny sulfur yellow flowers. All were flagrantly advertising their availability to passing pollinators, whether flying or crawling, all gambling their energy on reproduction. I stopped to photograph a particularly nice pairing of phlox and ball-cactus and as I was composing the shot above, a steady chorus insinuated itself into my awareness from the wet meadows across the highway.

It was peepers, western chorus frogs, calling for mates from the shallow ponds created where the winding creek, full with snow melt, had overflowed its banks. I stood up to listen, and grinned.

"It's spring," I said to Richard. "The peepers are calling for mates, and the wildflowers are hollering for pollinators. Everybody's focused on reproduction."

As we drove up and over Rabbit Ears Pass, where the high country was still deep in snow, Richard reminded me that a quarter-century ago, I had first shown him his first glacier lilies somewhere along this very highway. We dropped down the west side of the pass, and I spotted bright yellow flowers on a hillside.

"Glacier lilies!" I said.

Richard braked, whipped a u-turn in the highway, and drove back. We parked and dashed across the road, hand in hand. Sure enough, there on the road-bank were unmistakable glacier lilies, sunshine yellow atop grass-green stalks above wide lily leaves. I stopped to photograph one clump. Crawling all over the flowers with their reflexed petals and yellow anthers dripping rich pollen grains were small beetles. The insects were alternately gathering pollen--thus fertilizing the flowers--and copulating. The whole landscape, it seemed, was in the mood for love.

What does art have to bring to land conservation? Just this: like the snowflake blossoms of the Hood's phlox, the western chorus frogs, and the pollen-gathering beetles on the glacier lilies, it reminds us to stop and pay attention. It shows us the same old world in a new light. And sometimes it shows us that love, whether for one wildflower or a whole landscape, does indeed make the world go round--or at least parts of it.

Gardeners: optimistic by definition

"It's easier to deal with crises like this in the spring," a friend said today after hearing about my husband Richard's cancer. "It's such an optimistic time."

I puzzled over her remark all day. This evening, I stepped out into the kitchen garden. The wind was blowing hard up the valley, the air temperature was plummeting, and the storms that might have brought us moisture had passed without dropping the rain or snow we sorely need. It's been an extraordinarily spring dry so far. Today marks seven weeks since our last measurable precipitation--and two weeks since the doctor scoping Richard's bladder said cheerfully, "And that's a big carcinoma."

There's nothing optimistic about this spring, I thought with distinct grumpiness.

Then I looked at the asparagus bed--and counted six fat new spears poking up through the dry soil.


Not only is our valley sliding into drought, the season has been bitterly cold too. Last week the nighttime temperatures dipped to 22 degrees F--twice.

And still the asparagus spears are pushing up from their octopus-like skirts of roots a foot deep, headed unerringly toward light and the chance to produce more food and make new life as surely as their kind have done every spring for millions of years.

As I turned to head back into the house, I passed the tomato bed. One of the plants cocooned inside the insulating tepee-shaped walls-o-water caught my eye--a costoluto, for you heritage tomato fans. It boasted half a dozen tiny flower buds, readying itself for the warmer weather and the buzz-pollinating bumblebees it is sure will come.


I shook my head in wonder. That's optimism, I thought.

And then, as if a light had switched on in my brain, I understood my friend's comment. Spring is an optimistic time: here in the temperate latitudes of the northern hemisphere, life awakens from its frozen slumber, and pushed by instincts far more experienced than mine, sprints into the lengthening days, aiming for light and renewal.

I'm a gardener: I should understand optimism. I'm the one who presses tiny tomato seeds into damp soil of seedling pots in early March, when here at 7,000 feet elevation in the Southern Rockies, the days are still short and dark, and the nights long and frozen. I'm the one who watches the rows of pots each day for the first sign of green, exulting when the pairs of slender cotyledons push their way out of the seed. I plant in the belief that spring will come. And it does.

It occurs to me that I can rely on that same optimism that leads me to plant tomatoes in late winter to cope with Richard's cancer. Only in this case, it's not a seed I want to sprout, but a carcinoma I hope will be destroyed. I'm after stopping that growth, not encouraging it. But that's gardening too: cutting off a diseased limb to save the tree it grows from.

The optimism my friend meant, I think, is about believing in the continuing cycle of life. It's not hard to apply that to Richard and his bladder cancer. He's blessed with caring people dealing with him and they're upbeat about his prognosis. So I'll just press my seeds of hope and rejuvenation in the soil of the universe, in the belief that spring will flower for him, time and again.

Chasing spring and picking up roadkill

Two weeks ago, Richard and I set off on what turned into a 4,400-mile drive, chasing spring across the Great Basin to the Pacific Coast. The first four days were a birthday gift to my 78-year-old mother, who asked for "spring" as her gift. So we planned a tour around the red-rock country of far western Colorado, the low elevations where spring has already arrived - a catered tour, mind you, complete with picnic meals I made myself and history and natural history interpretation, informed by my research for Colorado Scenic Byways: Taking the Other Road, due out this fall.

After dropping my folks in Grand Junction to catch their train back to Denver, Richard and I set out on our own tour, taking Highway 50 across the inland West. We
ended up only going as far as Moab the first night, following the scenic road along the Colorado River from Cisco instead of the interstate. We discovered spring wildflowers in the red sand desert along Onion Creek. (That's a crescent pod milkvetch with pink flowers that positively shimmer in the evening light.)

The next morning we discovered Arches Book Company - we already knew its sister store across the street, Back of Beyond Books, which has one of the best selections on the slickrock country in existence. We met store owner Andy Nettell, who also happens to be president of Mountains and Plains Booksellers Association, a trade group dear to my heart because they nurture local authors and local books.

Then it was time to get serious about heading west, first on I-70 across the San Rafael Swell, one of the most dramatic and wonderfully lonely features of the Colorado Plateau, and then on Highway 50 across the Great Basin Desert. We chased snow showers and dust devils, ogled mountain ranges rising like waves out of the shrub desert basins, spotted abandoned mines and desert marshes, and saw elk resting, golden eagles soaring, and pronghorn racing their shadows.

The mountain ranges were still white-crested with snow, and the basins were just beginning to green up. The night skies were dazzling, littered with stars, and the air was crisp and so fresh that breathing it was like a cleanse.

It was a breath-taking trip, a pause in what has been a crazy year-and-some of work for me, a time to think beyond next week's deadline. And a reminder of why I write: to give voice to those whose lives and voices we have forgotten how to hear.

Coming over a rocky summit between two lonely basins, Richard spotted a hawk lying on the roadside, just off the pavement. He thought its head moved, so he pulled a quick U-turn and drove back. And there on the gravel shoulder, inches from the roar of passing traffic was a gorgeous adult red-tailed hawk.

The bird lay on its belly, the wings that span four feet in the air folded at awkward angles, flapping loosely in the backwash of passing vehicles. The hawk was alive, but immobile, its spine broken. It stared at us out of the fierce dark golden eyes, able to blink and move its feathered head, but nothing else. There was nothing we could do but move it away from the road.

We got a blanket from the car and Richard wrapped the hawk in it, and then he carried that hawk - so light for such a great bird! - off the roadside. He laid the broken bird in the thin shade of a sagebrush. And then we stood for a long moment, tears running down both our faces, saying goodbye to the hawk that was beyond help.

I've picked up roadkill for decades. I believe in stopping to move the broken bodies out of harm's way as a sign of respect. It allows them to decay in peace and thus feed other lives in the doing. It's been my ritual of atonement for the harm we humans do with our thoughtless lives.

But never in all of that time, with all of the bodies I've handled, have I felt so helpless as I did leaving that red-tailed hawk, broken by a collision with a speeding vehicle, and still so fierce, so vital. I don't grieve leaving the hawk there to die - moving it into the desert to dream its dreams in peace was the kindest thing to do. I grieve how it died, the completely unnecessary loss of its unique and individual life.

I hope that the hawk we laid gently in the shade of the sagebrush away from the traffic that killed it passed peacefully into dreams of free flight under the spring sun. In my dreams, the world has room for red-tailed hawks like that bird to fly free - without ending up immobile on the side of the highway, wings crumpled and flapping loosely, backs broken.

Tonight, I can't write past that hawk. Perhaps in another day's entry, I'll continue the journey we began.

Earth Hour - Lights Out for a Brighter Future

This Saturday, March 29th, Richard and I will be staying with my parents at Gateway Canyons Resort in western Colorado's remote red-rock canyon country. My mom's sole wish for her birthday this year was "spring." So we're taking my folks on a four-day spring-finding expedition to the slickrock desert.

At eight o'clock Saturday night, we'll turn off the lights and appliances in our cabin in observance of Earth Hour, a global effort to dramatize the need to take action to slow global climate change. There in tiny Gateway, we'll join millions of people around the globe in sixty minutes of saving energy.


Why join this symbolic effort? Because it forces us all to pay attention to the energy we use. When we turn off the lights in our cabin, no one will likely notice. But when all of Sydney, Australia, went dark last year on the first Earth Hour, when the lights winked out at the Opera House, the Harbor Bridge, and buildings across the city, it was visible from space. (Check out the video at Earth Hour.)

Switching off the nonessential lights and appliances for an hour isn't much of a sacrifice, but it is useful in showing us just how much energy we use, and how much of that we actually need. It's an opportunity to change habits and find ways to conserve, as our personal contribution to greening our footprint and lowering the amount of greenhouse gases each of us is responsible for adding to Earth's atmosphere. It's a way to begin to lighten our impact on the planet.

So spread the word, and join millions of people the world around this Saturday night in showing you want to make a difference. Turn out your lights and turn off your appliances from eight to nine o'clock. And turn on your global consciousness.

While you're at it, go outside and look at the stars. The moon won't have risen yet, so the Milky Way should shimmer like a silvery river running across the sky. Looking south, the bright star you see is Sirius, the closest star to Earth, in the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog. Looking at the night sky is a great way to refresh your sense of wonder, and remember how easy it is to love this living Earth and the galaxy it spins in.

Listen to my podcast this week for more on Earth Hour.

I'll be on the road until April 15, so won't be posting again until after I return. After the find-spring outing, Richard and I will drive US 50, America's loneliest road, to the Pacific Coast, where I'll be doing some research for my next article for Audubon magazine, on how we can "green" death. (Check out "Raising the Roof," my article on green roofs in the current issue.)

Spring spinach for localvores

It didn't snow today here at 7,000 feet in the southern Rockies, so after last night's silvery coat of frost burned off in the morning sun, we took the row covers off the spinach in our kitchen garden. The crinkly green leaves are just starting to lift off the warm surface of the soil, but they're not quite big enough to pick yet. After an unusually long and cold winter, I'm eager to get back to eating food grown from my own soil.

I planted the spinach last fall just in time for them to sprout and grow a few tiny leaves before the weather got too cold and the days too short for them to do more than hang on under the insulation of the row covers. But now that the equinox is almost here, and the days are lengthening relatively fast, my spinach plants are perking up. I'll thin them this weekend, and by next week, I'll pick a few leaves for our lunch time salads. The localvore in me is getting impatient to taste my terroir again!

It's time to plant the sugar snap peas too, plus some other spring greens. Last year we discovered chervil with its lacy leaves and delicate licorice flavor - it's a wonderful addition to sandwiches and salads. This year I'm going to plant tat soi (also called bok choi), turnips (I'll pick them tiny to steam greens and all), and I'm trying gala mache, also called corn salad or lamb's lettuce as well.

As always, I rely on plantswoman and cook Renee Shepherd of Renee's Seeds for my gourmet kitchen garden seeds. She knows gardening, and she knows flavor and cooking, and the combination makes for unbeatable seed varieties and prodigious and yummy harvests. Thanks for satisfying this localvore's hunger, Renee!

Spring Resumes, Life Continues

Yesterday brought rain and then wet snow and then rain again. A low cloud ceiling shrank the world to just town and the very bottom edges of the mountainsides, and a heavy blanket of snow smothered all it touched: houses, cars, roads, sidewalks.


Today is a different world: sunny, sixty degrees and dry. The sodden blanket of snow has vanished as completely as if it had never existed, except in deep shade, and up on the peaks and mountainsides above town. Our tomato plants survived last night's low of 22 degrees thanks to the warm thermal mass of their wall-o-waters the insulation of a row cover thrown over the top to keep the snow out. (The water in the tubes of the wall-o-waters was 44 degrees this morning, amazing when the low last night was half that. Those protective plastic and water teepees saved the tomato plants!) The spinach is sprouting huge dark green leaves, the lettuce springing up, the tulips are blooming. And in the wild shortgrass prairie restoration that is our front yard, the pasque flowers, those heralds of spring in the grasslands, sprang back up this morning as soon as the snow blanket melted off. The native pincushion cactus that a friend gave me last year is crowned with three pale pink blossoms that look like exploding stars. (Thanks, Ellen!)

Spring in the Rockies reminds me that life, the most important miracle of all, continues no matter what. That's a blessing.

Spring in the Rockies

This morning dawned with rain shushing softly on the metal roof of our house; now the showers have turned to snow: big clumpy flakes falling straight down like a steady rain of wet, pure-white feathers. The snow is melting, not accumulating, which is a mixed blessing here in March. Snow lasts longer than liquid water, seeping into the soil instead of running off the surface. But any moisture is welcome after four weeks of hot, dry winds that have dried the soil surface to dust and evaporated the snowpack on the peaks - our summer water - like a blow torch.


The green and crinkly leaves of spinach in my kitchen garden are now dotted with white clumps of snow. The new leaves on the golden currant shrubs along Ditch Creek just below our yard, the first trace of spring green in the wild except for big sagebrush, which keeps its gray-green and pungent leaves all winter long, stand out brilliantly against the rain-darkened stems. I haven't been outside to look, but I bet that the mosses and lichens that dot the surface of the soil in our restored bunchgrass and wildflower grassland are plumping up and turning green. They respond within minutes to even the smallest amounts of water, "waking up" from dormancy to make food and go about their lives in the brief periods of moisture that infrequently grace this arid environment.

It's spring in the house too. The seed trays that I planted last weekend with six kinds of tomatoes, four kinds of basil, oriental eggplants, and baby butterhead lettuces (thank you Rene Shepherd of Rene's Garden Seeds!) are dotted with tiny green sprouts. The flat with the tomato and eggplant seeds sits on a heat mat, and that extra bit of gentle warmth 24/7 means that the seeds began sprouting just four days after I planted them, and will grow larger, sturdier root systems, a distinct advantage when I put them out in the garden and they have to deal with spring weather here at 7,000 feet elevation in the south-central Rockies: hot days, nights below freezing until at least mid-May, and those blow-torch-like chinook winds. Spring here is not the least-lamb-like, but it's always interesting!