The sound of mountain water

This is the fraser river just as is flows south into downtown Fraser. I love the sound of mountain water.

Yes, it's really spring in the Rocky Mountains

An overnight Spring Snow Storm has blanketed the valley. It’s really beautiful now that the sun has come out. There is about four inches around my house. On this morning’s walk with the dogs I realized that it’s okay there is snow; we need the moisture.



Yesterday I ordered new bike clothes: Jerseys and Bike Shorts, and am eager to get out on road and mountain bike. Yesterday I rode around Pole Creek Golf Club for this week’s column. It’s a gorgeous course and although I don’t golf, I enjoyed riding around the meadows, and seeing a part of the county I’ve never seen. The willows were beautiful around Pole Creek. It reminded me of a Marjorie Cranston painting of willows and how dramatically colorful they can be. I never noticed all the different shades of orange and red they really were until after I saw her painting.

Here’s what this morning looks like:

Hopefully it will all melt by the end of the day and create some good flowing creeks and streams for the dogs to play in and get all muddy.

May 10, 2010 Rocks

Hiking with Views of the Continental Divide

I wrote in one of my outdoor columns this month that I'm inspired by the Continental Divide. The last two mornings I've been hiking straight up the mountain behind my house to a spot where I can look down into the Fraser Canyon and up to the Continental Divide.

Here is Abbey looking down at the train coming through at the exact time we arrived at the spot. If she was a few years younger I bet she would've run straight down to it.
It was a beautiful morning and I sat at watch the Fraser River flow; I could hear it too.

Daisy loves running around up here; all the wonderful scents of critters. This early there is no one around and Daisy just runs and runs. I love watching her.

She is such a good looking dog.

I also love just watching the sun rise over the mountains in the morning; and that this is in my backyard.

Bernard DeVoto

Bernard DeVoto writes in his essay Footnotes on the West that art, literature, and life are all bound to the seasons. True. True.


DeVoto is not as well known as other writers who write passionately about conservation, The West, and public lands. I read Stegner’s biography, The UnEasy Chair fifteen years ago when I was reading everything Stegner wrote, but didn’t really remember much of it.


I read an old article in the August 08, 1994 issue of High Country News about DeVoto and how the FBI investigated him most of his adult life because he was so outspoken in the 30s and 40s; specifically writing an essay about “government spying, Red-baiting, blacklisting and Communist witch hunts that swept across America after World War II.”


So now I’m reading DeVoto’s West – History, Conservation, and the Public Good which is a compilation of some of his essays edited by Edward K. Muller. This is a good book. It’s interesting to think about how his writings in mainstream newspapers and magazine in the east really changed public opinion about how to manage western lands. He convinced many politians that western public lands need to be managed by the federal government to ensure the they were not sold to public interests. We would, for sure, have a different west, if not for his voice.

Snow still in April

We walk through the woods and trails; the fresh, late spring storm has blanketed the trails again. Suddenly Abbey, the nine year old dog, is acting like a two year old puppy. She follows a smell back and forth, then I see the grey-white hare, jumping along; it must be old, too, because Daisy would’ve caught it for the speed.

I call Abbey back and her hind legs are shaking. She has that sad puppy-dog look that Labradors have and then sits. She never sits on a walk. She starts licking her front leg over and over. After nine years with this dog, I know what this means – she going to puke.

And she does.

I don’t mind this snow at the end of April. I wish it was warmer so I could bike but I don’t have any upcoming triathlons or bike races so I’m okay with it all. It’s actually quite beautiful out.

Thoughts on attending the AWP Writers Conference in Denver – April 2010

I attended the three day conference, going to every panel that had anything to do with landscape, place, western writing.

landscape, place, western writing – These words mean everything to me. As an easterner, wanting to write about the west that I love, I need to know and understand what it means to live and be western. I learned so much about things I needed to know.

I wonder when this need, this desire, to know about the west started.

I awake in the middle of the night: It started in 8th grade social studies class. The class was assigned Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: Mr. Stevens social studies class at Rye Junior High. It was 1984, the year I moved from Plattsburgh, New York to Rye, New Hampshire.

In New York I was not a good student. I cared more about my friends and boys. I didn’t do homework and didn’t care about school. Months before leaving, I brought home a kitten and thought I could hide it from my parents. The first night I had the kitten, it was more important to go to a high school football game with my friends than to try to keep the kitten hidden in my closet.

That night is now in the family story archive and still makes me cringe when family members bring it up. I got all C’s on my report card and a C- in Mr. Burdeau’s social studies class.

Moving was a chance to start over. I decided that I wanted to be smart, and learn, and go to college. I got to prove myself when I got the first reading assignment - Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.

I was completely enthralled by Mr. Stevens and history; western history, Native American History. I got an A-. I couldn’t stop reading about the Native Americans, about mountain men, and the pioneers. That is how it started.

Every morning and afternoon I walked one mile to the conference in downtown Denver. The first morning I walked defensively, the way a woman, alone, is taught to walk in a city. Be aware of people. Be aware of your surroundings. Be on guard. After nine hours of listening to writers talk about writing, I walked back to my hotel differently. I thought about the writers, academia, of publishing books. I dreamed of being a presenter and encouraging other writers, like the writers did for me today.

I walked past the South Platte River, past the rail yards, and noticed a bird flying down from the bridge to the river. I couldn’t identify the bird and wished that I could. I fell asleep that night as the trains rumbled in the distance thinking about the writing life.

The next morning I walked the same path, past the sun blaring through iron fencing, and Coors Field. The Burlington Northern Santa Fe trains causing the bridge to vibrate. I thought about everything. I wondered what will happen when I’m away from this landscape, and the west. I wondered what my life would be like without the aridity, mountains, and trains. I realized, that morning, in the city, I am in love with this land and with the stories from this place.

I am drawn to people who live in hard-to-live places. I want to know the stories of their failures and successes. I want to write the stories of survival and loss and these stories will take place in a landscape of sagebrush and tumbleweed.

That day, I also learned that who I am and where I live means everything.

In a panel celebrating the writing contributions of William Kittredge, Rick Bass said to us, and him:

“You’ve never forgotten where you come from”

“You’ve make a generation think harder, deeper of what it means to be a westerner.”

I learned to write authentic stuff of where you are.

It was three great days.