A is for April

I'm not doing the A-Z challenge. 

I'm just excited that spring is here!

We Tripantu

It's summer time!

We are experiencing some of the highest temperatures on record here in Colorado and while that makes for lovely early morning /late afternoon hikes... 

Even the higher elevation  does not offer much, if any, relief. 

Still, long evenings at the top of a favorite spot, (we spent the 21st in camping chairs with a light dinner and champagne to bring in the solstice) watching till the skies are too dark to see anything but the city lights in the distance, are soul bendingly lovely. 

Photo courtesy of 91.5 KUNC

So, the rising temperatures are not dampening our enthusiasm for the long summer days and evenings that lie ahead. But they are creating havoc in the high country... 

 Bark Beetle damage has made swathes of forest into little more than tinder. In New Mexico, a recent fire devastated over 460 square miles of forest while here in Colorado firefighters are battling a fire just 60 miles from Denver. As of this morning, over 82,000 acres have burned and at least 141 houses have gone up in flames.

We could use a little rain.

pieces of sunlight

Framed by cobalt blue
it's brilliant yellow beams to the earth.
a quiet breath causes it to shift then shimmy

breaking off 
as silent 
bits of
gold

make their way
to the ground for my feet to tread on
pieces of sunlight...

Season: Best/Worst

For all those who know and love me they will know which picture portrays my favorite and which my least favorite season... 

and if you look around my blog you quickly figure out which location I wish I live in and which I actually live in. 

Union Busting

August 1, Mo and I took a day trip to southern Colorado to see the town where his mother had been born and lived in her early years. On our way back, we took the opportunity to see a little ghost town and to view a bit of Americana- albeit the progressive and lesser known Americana. 

A secret garden...

Sometimes it feels as though I have found a secret place that has been, if not untouched, unspoilt by humans. The sounds are all of nature: bees humming, birds coohooing, trees whispering and a breaking limb as a lithe creature steps gingerly through the undergrowth...

The past...

August 1st, (Colorado Day!) Mo and I went on a quest to find the town where his mother was born. As luck would have it, we stumbled upon the tiny town in southern Colorado called Trinchera.  Once there he brilliantly headed to the post office whose post mistress then directed him to her sister who had ties to the local historical society. Fortune hung on a bit longer and she pointed him toward a small rock home that lay some distance from the town that fit the description that had been given him by his mother years earlier... 

Wild flower

"Diff'rence 'tween a weed 'n a flow'r is which side of the fence it's on." Back bowed, she grips the porch's wooden support to ease her heavy frame down the step, white hair waving in the wind. 

Ode to Fall

Delicately dancing in, the fall began with colors splashed about like a child had spilled bits of paint.

 

One can almost imagine the imp dancing about, a bucket in one hand and paint brush in another. While bending over to quietly paint a leaf at the top of the tree, turning to and fro, angling this way and that, the bucket wobbles and bobbles, tips and tilts, and with each jolt a dollop of paint slops over the edge of the pot and onto the nearest leaf so that soona leaf here, a limb there, reds and ambers, gold, mustard and maize begin to appear amidst the lush green growth that have been with us for for the breath of a time called spring and summer.

 

 The days are yet temperate and we take advantage of the lingering sunlight for lengthy walks.