Farewell to Grand Lake

I came to Grand Lake at the height of the aspen gold rush.  I watched them survive a winter storm, then weaken in shades of brown as the time to leave has nearly come.  They will soon drop those lovely yellow leaves, and I will leave tomorrow for a long drive home.

The same aspens after the storm

Aspens as they were when I arrived

Here are three pictures, taken from the same place, near my cabin, showing the aspens as they were when I arrived, then after the storm, and now in their fading.  

The fading aspens as we all must leave

Thank you all for following these blog posts and for all your comments.

To be Used Later

     Sharon Hawley

The violent surface of a mountain stream

scampering over rocks

water slant and screaming through the trees

eternal moan and wail

streaming down the cold granite

becoming winter

while cliffs rise black above

When I am old and full of sleep

and nodding by the fire

let this scene revive:

only trees of sterner stuff

survive here   

Eerie Morning on Granby Lake

I always start early, not by discipline, but by a clock inside me that rings at first light or before.  Yesterday’s adventure started early and avoided the National Park with its armed guards.  I drove to Araaho National Forest and the Indian Peaks Wilderness east of Monarch Lake.   

My morning drive was along Road 6.  The wonders that I photographed along that road, as it follows Granby Lake, will consume this blog post.  The wilderness adventure, which was long and interesting, will have to wait. 

First, let me explain that all of these pictures are untouched, except for cropping, and that I took them with a hand-held Sony NEX-5R.  Pictures which oppose each other, left and right, were taken from the same place with different camera settings.  

All of the pictures were taken facing easterly with the sun just peaking over the mountains, which rise behind the lake.  It is hard to make out the mountains, obscured as they are sometimes by mist, rising and swirling from the lake. 

I felt this explanation necessary so you don’t think I am fooling you in some way.

What is the difference between abstract art and art that simulates reality?  We call it abstract if it uses a visual language to create independently from references in the “real” world.  Photography, like other art, can only simulate; it cannot reproduce, reality.  And here I ask you how photography is different from abstract art.  These images could have been created on a computer or with a brush, but they were witnessed by a camera.

So much of common imagery is merely that, I think.  Common because we recognize it and have names for it.  That which forms in an artist’s mind is unnamed, uncommon, and waits for recognition.

The Park Closure

Everyone in Grand Lake talked of a two-day closure of Rocky Mountain National Park.  Even if the government shutdown lasts for weeks, the park service has always been kind to local residents and visitors alike.  They will allow people to drive through the park to the town Estes Park, so hard hit by the flood and having Trail Ridge road as its last best access.  And they will not stop visitors from hiking in the park; hikers just have to realize that all services are temporarily suspended and they hike at their own risk.  That was the talk two days ago.  

On the first day of closure, October 1, I hiked the East Shore Trail, from East Shore Trailhead near Grand Lake and returned without incident, reporting wonders from within the national park, which many of you saw, in part, here on the blog. 

Encouraged by a fine day in the closed park, I hiked on October 2 from the East Inlet Trailhead just outside of Grand Lake to Adams Falls and on to Lone Pine Lake, eleven miles in all and returned by the same route. 

With just a quarter mile to go I met a man in a brown uniform with a badge and a national park service insignia.  He asked me where I had come from, as he fingered the gun on his belt.  “From up the trail,” I said. 

He told me that I had broken the law and that he could either give me a citation or arrest me.  I explained that the closure was due to congress’ inability to pass a budget and not due to any environmental impact or danger to hikers.  He said I could go this time, but if he ever saw me in the park again while the closure is in effect, I could go to jail.  

I have not gone in by any means since.  The road through the park is closed, and all trailheads are now marked with signs that prohibit entry.  Everybody in Grand Lake, visitors and residents, are angry.

A Winter Storm

This morning at the cabin

The cabin I rented for ten nights

I drove a thousand miles and eight thousand feet above the ordinary to be here.  Like one born to be blown delicately in the breeze, an aspen leaf, I accepted risks as they seemed—mishap on a high and rocky trail, sudden thunderstorm, an early winter snow—as I flutter a short time, then after fallen yellow glow, leave the stem with all the rest, naked for winter as a slender white aspen.  

I did not expect the road closed, except perhaps for weather, nor officers posted at the trailheads issuing tickets to trespassers.  One of the risks that I did fear came last night in nearly a foot of snow, which may have closed the road through the park for the season.  

I hiked back to where some of the pictures from those three sunny days had so entranced me.  Here you see before (left) and after (right) the storm, actually before and during the storm, because snow fell all day today and is still falling.

The storm is expected to end by noon tomorrow, so perhaps the next day I can get into the wilderness of Arapaho National Forest, where rangers are not turning hikers away.  

Whom the Bugle Calls

The town of Grand Lake from across the lake 

It sounded loud and distant

before the sun had risen 

A high meadow above town

into the woods toward whence it came

I walked in expectation 

orange sky foretells the dawn

cleft hoofprints dot the mud 

among dark trunks of dying lodgepoles

up a hill to a grassy knoll  

and there he stood, a lonely bull

calling into the dawn 

a lonely howl, a sniff of air

this elk without a mate

other bulls have many wives

he fears he’ll have to fight them

looking down he watches me

wonders if I’ll do 

then takes a breath

and blows another bugle sound

Moose, Geese, and Pine Beetles

Aspen leaves

The national parks closed at midnight.  A gate slammed shut across the only road into Rocky Mountain National Park and the only good road serving the poor people in Estes Park, trying to recover from serious flood damage.  All federal park rangers and forest service employees have been dismissed without pay, as U. S. congressmen enjoy the continuation of their salaries.  The picture above shows where a visitor to the park illegally sneaked past the gate by another way.  You might report her to your congressman for disobeying his edict.  

So it was that I settled in today with Canadian geese for a temporary rest after a long drive from Pasadena and a long flight from Canada—the geese and I at Shadow Mountain Lake, taking in the cool, sunny morning.  

This bull moose did not get the word that the park is closed.  I came in the season of the rut for elk and moose, when males fight and females observe like women at football games.  This bull is alone with his harem, but he knows that challengers will come.  I would like to watch as they fight over me—or her.  

Young lodgepole pines

Dead lodgepole pines

While aspen blaze brilliant yellow and orange, lodgepole pines do not celebrate the coming of winter, or any other season.  Their old are mostly dead and their middle-aged are mostly sick.  The young look on with sad expectation.  In the turns of nature and battles for survival, mountain pine beetles are winning, as yellow fever was winning, and the black death.  In time, these cycles often reverse to where lodgepole pines and humans sometimes move ahead.

Meanwhile the fading grasses come and go on schedule.  Here today, gone tomorrow, say the grasses, without regret.  Lodgepoles could learn from them:  Why should a lodgepole live forever?  Of course, humans are above all that. 

Osprey used to breed in the tops of big lodgpole pines, building their huge nests on strong upper limbs or broken tops.  But since the big old lodgepoles died, and the young trees are too small for osprey nests, the birds had to relocate.  That was until someone climbed this tree, cut the top and placed a flat nesting platform.  Ospreys have made it home and nest here May through September.

Loving the Aspens

From the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River, I traveled east over Monarch Pass to Salida, then north to Leadville, and east to Denver for a visit with friends.  Today I drove to my destination at Grand Lake on the south edge of Rocky Mountain National Park.

My timing was perfect for the long drive through Colorado.  Aspen trees, in their few days of brilliant glory before they close down for the winter, dotted the hillsides, punctuating the green conifers.  Sometimes an entire grove of flaming yellow nearly sent me off into a canyon.  I kept stopping, pulling over to take pictures and occasionally watching trees at the expense of safety.  But I arrived without mishap at Grand Lake, and am settled into a small cabin for ten days. 

I came here, as most of you know, because the east side of the Rockies was badly flooded a week before I left home.  Otherwise I would be in Estes Park on the other side of the mountains.  I diverted to the west side intending to hike the backcountry from trailheads along Trail Ridge Road, which connects Estes Park and Grand Lake. 

Estes Park, having lost its eastern access roads, relies on Trail Ridge Road.  But that makes no difference to congress, and tonight the road will be closed indefinitely due to shutdown of the federal government.  It seems I was shut out of the eastern approach to the high country, and am now shut out from the western side also, thanks to the utter failure of our elected lawmakers to do anything.  Others will suffer from this incompetence much more that I will.

Tomorrow I will hike one of the many trails that do not require driving on Trail Ridge Road.  Please do not send flowers, I will be fine.