Carmel Mawle

Cutting a Trail

November 8, 2022 admin

On Tuesday, we got a notice that the Asgard was blocked with fallen trees. We had adopted this trail a few years ago, cleared and marked the path and built several bridges. It’s fun work. We thought, at the time, that we might make it a weekly project and adopt a few more. The gods of nature and impermanence must have had a good chuckle over that.

Craig was evacuated by helicopter at the beginning of the season. He was in wildfire training when the chest pain came on, surrounded by medics. They knew exactly what to do, and not a second was wasted. I’ll be forever grateful for that.

Our life changed after his heart attack, but it was more than just cardio rehab. Our family needed more of my time. We began renovating the new cabin and mitigating the property around it. Craig started a new job that required more travel. And, if I’m being completely honest, I found the local politics disheartening.

We considered pulling out of the trail adoption program all together, but my friend and Greenbelt Management Committee co-chair convinced me to give it some time, assuring us that the trail was in good shape. I’m glad we did.

With snow in the forecast for Thursday, we took a long lunch on Tuesday and headed out. There were 8 or 9 trees down that Craig cut with his chainsaw. Together we rolled them aside and pulled the slash off the trail to redirect hikers. It was a beautiful day – the kind that reminds you what’s important. I’m grateful for my co-chair, Rachel’s, sage advice, and the reminder that life is always changing.

While we can do the work, we will. Happily.

Love

November 5, 2022 admin

“Love is a river. Drink from it.”

~Jalaluddin Rumi

Mountain Stewardship

November 1, 2022 admin

This land nourishes us. It provides shelter, feeds our bodies, our senses, our minds, our spirits. I believe we owe something in return. As mountain residents, we have a stewardship responsibility to this land, for the ecological welfare of our individual acreage, as well as the 563 acres of community Green Belts.

We are only now beginning to understand the impact of 150 years of wildfire suppression. This massive overgrowth of trees restricts light to the understory, reducing plant, insect and wildlife diversity. As the planet warms, these dense forests become more susceptible to drought and disease which, in turn, increases the risk and severity of wildfires. Unlike the clearcutting of past eras, current forestry science calls for restoring our forests to something closer to their pre-suppression state. It’s beautiful landscaping that takes into consideration the contours, soil and moisture, old growth, and micro climates of the land.

With the Cameron Peak Fire still fresh in our memories, we follow these new guidelines, working to mitigate fire risk through the cultivation of a healthy forest. Here, we’re fortunate that Crystal Lakes provides a Slash Depot for residents to bring their dead and dying trees. When snow conditions are adequate, the volunteer fire department will supervise the burning of this fuel. This year alone, Craig and I took down approximately 40 dead and diseased trees, and brought over 20 cubic yards to the Slash Depot.

We’re grateful for the proximity of the Roosevelt National Forest, with miles of beautiful hiking trails a short walk from our front door. But, if you look behind the cabin in the photo below, you’ll see the remnants of the pine beetle infestation on the slope behind us. Much of that terrain is difficult and costly to mitigate. National foresters are working to procure the funding and technology to make that mitigation possible.

Beetle kill still evident on the slope behind the cabin we’re renovating.

On our property, the beetle kill had mostly been removed by the previous owners, but we still had trees in distress. The primary culprits were rust, a fungal infection, and mistletoe, an insidious parasite that disguises itself as needles. We removed trees with severe infections, then pruned and thinned areas where the infection might be controlled with some diligence. We left the aspen grove with more light and room to flourish. Next year, we’ll check the remaining conifers, prune infected branches and hope for the best.

In the distance, the Cameron Peak burn scar visible from just around the corner from our cabin.

Happy Halloween!

October 31, 2022 admin

“Shadows of a thousands years rise again unseen, voices whisper in the trees, ‘Tonight is Halloween!'”

~Dexter Kozen

There’s no snow in the forecast here until Thursday, and the weather is even milder in town. Good news for Trick or Treaters! Growing up in Alaska, our Halloween costumes were purchased extra-large to fit over our snow pants and parkas. When darkness fell, about 6:00pm, the procession of children waddled up the snowbanks, bags in hand, fingers and toes turning into icicles inside our mittens and mukluks. At the mercy of our parents and their flashlights, the evening never lasted long — though we protested we weren’t cold at all.

The Great Turning

October 28, 2022 admin

“While the responseometer or our collective mobilization doesn’t yet show the high degree of universal engagement needed to address our planetary emergency, if you look for them, you can see impressive steps toward what is required. In every country, in all walks of life, people are turning up with an intention to play their part. They are turning away from behaviors and ways of doing things that cause harm. They are turning toward ways of doing and thinking and being that support the flourishing of life. This is the Great Turning — and you are likely part of it.”

~ From ACTIVE HOPE: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience & Creative Power, by Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone

Oil, Cement, and Music

October 25, 2022 admin

“In family life, love is the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds us closer together, and the music that brings harmony.” –Friedrich Nietzsche

The fawns have lost their spots. They are gangly teenagers, still following their moms, but with distinct minds of their own. It’s not uncommon to see a doe on one side of the road and her fawns grazing on the other side. They don’t realize how dangerous these roads are, but often their parents don’t, either. Drivers beware.

The moose calves almost look like yearlings. They are still smaller than their parents, but losing their baby faces. Their ears are more proportionate to the rest of their heads but, like the fawns, they are not yet wary of the world.

Like our wildlife neighbors, our own family is a blend of ages, ranging from age 4 to 85. We’re all growing and making mistakes. We create messes and beauty, and beautiful messes. We do our best, learning to love and forgive each other, to celebrate the milestones and accomplishments, to laugh and grieve together.

Love deepens through the many ways our lives intersect. It is, as Nietzsche said, the oil that eases friction, the cement that binds us closer together, and the music that brings harmony.

A Truing of Vision

October 22, 2022 admin

Good art is a truing of vision, in the way a saw is trued in the saw shop, to cut more cleanly. It is also a changing of vision. Entering a good poem, a person feels, tastes, hears, thinks, and sees in altered ways. Why ask art into a life at all, if not to be transformed and enlarged by its presence and mysterious means? Some hunger for more is in us — more range, more depth, more feeling: more associative freedom, more beauty. More perplexity and more friction of interest. More prismatic grief and unstunted delight, more longing, more darkness. More saturation and permeability in knowing our existence is also the existence of others. More capacity to be astonished. Art adds to the sum of the lives we would have, were it possible to live without it. And by changing selves, one by one, art changes also the outer world that selves create and share.

~Jane Herschfield, from TEN WINDOWS: How Great Poems Transform the World

Aspen Roots

October 18, 2022 admin

From my window, a trail winds through the meadow and down into the ravine where my favorite little aspen grove dwells. There are other trees there – junipers, firs and spruce, lodgepoles and Ponderosas – but the aspens own that ravine, their common roots winding from the 19^th century logging trail all the way to the road at the top of the property.

Decades ago, bulldozers plowed along old wagon trails and built the dirt roads we now use, but before their roots were cut, they would have connected with the groves that climbed Black Mountain to its peak and probably crossed right over into Wyoming.

The aspens have an elvish quality, silvery white bark and leaves that reflect the sunlight and scintillate in the slightest breeze. Despite their elegant appearance, they are legendary protectors of our forest home. With a higher moisture content, aspens provide a both natural break against wildfire and shelter for fleeing wildlife. Much of the fire mitigation work we do is designed to encourage the growth of these exquisite groves.

In the late 80s, a plane crashed into the mountain across the valley from us. The resulting fire leapt over the Panhandle Creek riparian system to “Moon Mountain” above our cabin. Today, aspen roots weave through those charred conifers. They are undeterred by rock outcroppings and steep slopes. On either side of the ravine, they thread through crevasses and crumbling granite to emerge in thin white spears, crowned in golden foliage.

Like Trees

October 15, 2022 admin

If we surrendered

to Earth’s intelligence

we could rise up rooted, like trees

~Rainier Maria Rilke

It is Done

October 13, 2022 admin

I clicked on the Writing for Peace website today (for old time’s sake) and was greeted with a notice that the account had been “suspended.” It was just a matter of time. I guess they hope that the shock of seeing the end termed that way will compel some people to keep it up longer. But, as I said in my final Writing for Peace post, it’s time to let it go.

I will be forever grateful to all the writers and artists who shared their work with us and to the young people who took the time to meet our challenge. We have heard from so many young writers about the ways their lives were changed, but the truth is they changed our lives, too.

A friend recently compared Writing for Peace with the metaphor of the stone dropped into a pond. Together, we made some waves. Thank you.