Month: January 2021

Snow was a given growing up in Iowa. We seemed to have more snow then and we tolerated it as it was just a fact of life. Snow meant more work on the farm with clearing feed troughs and keeping the animals dry. The fun kid thing about snow was when we had a blizzard and got to stay home from school—Snow Days!

I did not have a choice about snow growing up but today, I choose to live where snow is possible every month of the year. I do not love driving in it, but otherwise I relish snowfall.  Absence sometimes makes the heart grow fonder as I spent 29 years living in parts of the US (TX and NC) that received little snow. A fond recollection in NC, however, was going to the beach in January after an unusual overnight snow. Instead of the ocean water lapping to the sand, it splashed to the shoreline and slowly crumbled the snow into the salt water.

On average Estes Park gets 75 inches of snow a year and significant snow 9 months of the year. Except for a few dirty piles, however, the snow doesn’t stick around much. The solar power of the sun melts it quickly OR the wind blows it away. The mountains retain their snow for months and in minutes I can leave my house and play in snow. Yet, I do not have to live in feet of snow.

I am overjoyed to open the blinds in the early morning and see fresh snow on the ground. It makes me want to go immediately and explore what critters have left tracks on their early morning ambles. I love Carol Rifka Brunt’s quote: “There’s just something beautiful about walking on snow that nobody else has walked on. It makes you believe you’re special.”  

My colleague, Jerry Apps, wrote about farm life growing up in the 1930’s. He poetically described the quiet of winter on a farm. One statement he made, however, reminded me of the Monet exhibit I saw a year ago. Apps suggested that everything in the winter appears black and white. As I reflected on the Monet exhibit, I now understand that Monet saw numerous shades of white when he painted dozens of winter scenes such as the photo above.

Snow is clearly not monochromatic. Nothing accentuates the various white shades of winter as much as when a burst of color comes through—a red rose hip peeking out from the side of the trail, the stark blue sky, juniper bushes with their blue-gray berries, the silver glisten of snow melt running down a rock, a rainbow twinkle of sunshine on a snowdrift, and even snowfall on elk duds (see above photo).

I also appreciate snowflake shapes and patterns. In grade school we took colored construction paper outside to collect (momentarily) snowflakes. No two snowflakes were alike. My co-volunteer, Jon Olsen, is teaching me about the different types of snow as we work at Bear Lake every Saturday and analyze the snowflakes that land on our brown volunteer fleece jackets– hexagonal, stellar plates and dendrites, needles, columns, and rimed crystals also known as graupel.

After years of deprivation, I am romanticizing snow. Yet, I feel a thrill in watching snow fall and experiencing the magic of snow as I wander through the winter.

I wrote my first book when I was 7 years old. I even illustrated it. It was a story about Gus, the lost arrow, that was eventually found. Although an outlandish idea, my love for writing and communicating with words has been a life-long passion.

Writing about writing may be a futile effort–one should just write, right? Perhaps, however, some insights may be helpful to others.

1. Writing is done in different ways for various purposes and aimed at diverse audiences. I enjoyed my academic writing and felt challenged to make writing factual and at the same time, understandable. The first time I was told my academic writing was accessible, I did not think it was a compliment. I thought it meant that I did not sound intellectual enough. Now I believe communicating clearly is paramount. I am comfortable with professional approaches that are also personal in nature. Writing a blog for general audiences is a new challenge to explore.
2. Anais Nin said, “We write to taste life twice: in the moment and in retrospect.” As I get older and reflect on life, I am aware of events that have given it meaning. Writing allows me to ponder the people, animals, places, and ideas that have nurtured my soul.
3. Keeping a journal every day gets ideas down without attached judgment. Journaling has been a part of life since I first read The Diary of Anne Frank as an elementary student. Writing personal thoughts is therapeutic and gives an outlet for ideas. I have not gone back to read 95% of my journals but I know where to go if I want to taste life twice. 
4. Recent political events have punctuated the idea that words have consequences. Writers use words and each word has meaning. I learned from my colleague, Dan Dustin, in graduate school almost 45 years ago. I did not understand how he could ponder over the right word choice for hours. Now I understand how important the precise word is in expressing ideas.
5. Another guideline I learned years ago in my creative non-fiction writing group was “show them, don’t just tell them.” I drove my students crazy in editing their work because I did not allow hyperbolic words in their papers such as “very.” In the writing, show me why I should interpret something as “very.”
6. In launching this blog and stepping out of academic writing, I have lacked confidence. I take heart in what Margaret Atwood said, “If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.” My work isn’t perfect, but I do my best.
7. Being an avid and reflective reader influences how I write. I love reading and noting how other authors have used words to make stories that resonate with me. I pay attention and learn from the way words are used and how sentences are composed. I focus on crafting my voice in similar ways.
8. Writing means re-writing. It requires discipline. I used to tell my students that they should never consider a manuscript/paper done until it had been re-written at least a half dozen times. My friend, Sherryl Kleiman, talked about “spew” drafts as the first round–just get the ideas out there. Then edit over and over. The final product may look different from the spew and should organize those idea kernels. Economy and the right words are the focus of re-writing.
9. The challenge with writing is making the familiar interesting and the unusual familiar for readers. I greatly admire Mae Sarton. She wrote about everyday things in her life and made them exceptional. Her accounts of her home and her life with her plants and cats resonated with me. I hope that the ideas I find interesting will also provide reflection for some readers.
10. Finally, I am learning that writing regularly is the best way to grow and get better at writing. Writing about ideas, no matter how weird, allows me to explore, relive, and reflect on this beautiful and crazy world. Writing sustains my wandering and wondering mind.

Traveling is in my blood. I fell in love with mountains when 8 years old and my family undertook a rare family car vacation to visit relatives in Colorado. I was 10 years old the first time I rode on an airplane. My mom and I flew to Chicago to see my Aunt and Uncle. I did get a little motion sickness, as did my mom, but we nibbled on saltine crackers. The feeling of speed and anticipation was exhilarating as the twin propeller airplane raced down the Cedar Rapids runway.

My love for travel adventure came from my parents. We seldom took vacations (being farmers was a 24/7 year-round job), but my parents relished the opportunities they made for the family including a cross country train trip to visit my grandparents in Arizona when I was in junior high and a much longer flight to California to visit relatives when I was in high school.

My parents also reenforced travel as important with the Sunday afternoon outings the family took to hear the Iowa Mountaineers presentations in Iowa City. Lest you laugh at the idea of Iowa Mountaineers, it was a group that encouraged trips around the world for a variety of activities. My parents loved these vicarious experiences.

The opportunity that changed my life, aside from the initial flight, was my first international trip where I spent six months in Turkey. Almost 50 years ago, I was part of the International 4-H Youth Exchange (IFYE) program to build international understanding among rural people. I lived with 20 families across the country. Living conditions ranged from sleeping in a bedroom that I shared with the family’s children across from a low partition that separated us from the sleeping farm animals, contrasted to a mansion on the Aegean Sea where I had my own personal servant for the 10 days I was there.

The Turkish cultural experience profoundly altered my view of the world and established an interest in other cultures—the food, music, religion, politics, and other everyday aspects that I had not considered. Although I grew up in a low/middle income farm family, I had not realized that most Americans had such material wealth compared to others in the world. I was forever transformed regarding what I needed to have a comfortable life, verses what I thought I wanted or had been socialized to desire as constituting “the good life.”

I have had opportunities to travel all over the world in my professional career as well as for fun. I am one of the few and highly privileged members of the Seven Continents Club. I did not know there was such a thing until I traveled to Antarctica with some individuals who were seeking that “membership.” Although being a member had not been my goal, I humbly accept that distinction.

Covid-19 has hampered my travel style. I look forward to future domestic and international journeys. Although the hiatus in traveling has resulted in yearning to see new places and meet new people, I have also been re-assessing the carbon footprint I leave in traveling. I miss the choices I have for wandering. At the same time, I recognize that one of the best things about traveling is simply coming and being home.

I am hard-pressed to name a mountain mammal that is my favorite, but I do love pikas and marmots. When hiking and wandering in the high subalpine or alpine areas and I hear a shrill whistle or shriek, I know I am in the territory of either or both marmots and pikas. I love seeing animals in their natural habitats and both species are super cute. Equally interesting to me, however, is how they provide a metaphor for ways to think about living one’s life. They provide contrasts that are different but correspondingly compelling to ponder.

American pikas are members of the rabbit family. They are sometimes referred to as Arctic Rabbits. The pika is small, 6-8 inches long, with tiny ears and a little tail. They do not hibernate but spend their entire lives high in the alpine among the tundra meadows, rocks, and snow. They can be seen in alpine areas scurrying around in both the summer and the winter. In the summer they are busy harvesting “hay” that they store in huge piles to help them through the winter. They are sometimes called “nature’s farmers.”

Marmots are ground-living rodents within the same family as beavers, groundhogs, and chipmunks. They also live in the subalpine and alpine areas. Marmots inhabit open rocky country in mountainous regions. They live in burrows usually in colonies. Marmots hibernate during the winter and mate immediately thereafter. They feed chiefly on grasses and other green plants and spend their summer days feeding frenetically or sunning themselves lazily. They can vary in length from 15 – 25 inches excluding their 5 – 12- inch bushy tails that swish up and down and back and forth as they move.

Marmots and pikas often live side by side and benefit from their similar systems of high squeals to warn each other of possible predators. Other than their mutual protection of one another, however, they could not be more different. Pikas are vigorous spending their summers storing food since they will have to have enough provisions to live under the snow in the rocks all winter. They will be quieter in winter, but visible and audible all year around.

Marmots, on the other hand, spend their summers storing up food by eating as much as they can and getting as fat as they can so they can survive in their 8-month winter hibernation. They are a true hibernator. They will go into deep sleep in late September and not wake up until early May when they have their young and start the eating and sunbathing cycle over again.

I relate most to the pikas. I like to be active. I like to have things to do. I like to be out and about in the winter. I relish eating but I really do not enjoy sleeping and would likely make a terrible marmot, even though I think they are really cute. I admire the pikas and their farming habits. I love to hear them in the winter as they evoke their warning calls while the marmots are well underground sound asleep, oblivious to everything.

I worry about the pikas since they must store enough food to last the winter and hope that they get enough snow to insulate themselves to a steady 32-degree temperature underground. They are an indicator species of climate change. They show evidence of being a harbinger of dramatic things to come if climate change continues to create warmer winters with less snowfall. I fear for the fate of both the marmots and the pikas as well as our species if we do not do something immediately about the changing environment. It may affect these critters first, but can we be far behind?