Birdwatching

The weather in Estes today is a bit bleak. Very foggy and rainy, but I won't complain because we really need the moisture. Unfortunate timing for the Jazz Fest this weekend, though, but I'm sure folks will still make the best of it.

In the meantime, however, the last few days have been great for bird watching! We've had lots of visitors at the feeders and in the yard this week. We have a hummingbird or two coming up to the feeders, but of course every time they are near, my camera is nowhere to be found! Alas. Here's a few of the other visitors I did manage to capture.

Juvenile western meadowlarks

White-breasted nuthatch

Downy Woodpecker

A golden eagle

How Sherlock birdwatches.....

Finally Adjusting

Pretty good morning when there are elk in your driveway, huh?

I think I am finally adjusting to the change from life in a big city to life in Estes Park. I know it's been over four months, but this has been an exceptionally hard transition for me. Most of it has to do with the fact that I left a job I really loved and was unable to find another one until very recently. I was idle for the better part of four months and that's essentially a recipe for disaster for me. That, coupled with the fact that we live in a fairly remote location, added to the rough winter, left me feeling like I was stuck in a box for a long time. Every time I went down the valley and visited Fort Collins, I missed it a lot, and I started having some doubts about living here for a long time, which put me between a rock and a hard place knowing that we're here for the long haul.

Now that I have a job and I'm out of the house more regularly, things are getting better. Spring is on its way and I don't feel so isolated and stuck in my house all day. I can open up the windows and listen to the birds and hear the world outside. The last time I visited Fort Collins, I didn't miss it quite as much. I think I am finally becoming okay with living here in Estes Park.

I am still feeling slightly wobbly with my new job, although everyone seems to be telling me the opposite regarding my performance. I am having a difficult time making myself feel confident with my job, maybe because I feel so much pressure to be great. Most of that is myself, I know. I have high standards for myself. I don't want to let anyone down. I still seem to wake myself up every night over-thinking details from my last shift which keeps me up most of the night. I am ready to feel confident and be able to sleep through the night knowing I did a good job at work. Coupled with all of this doubt, I know, is the fact that Cameron and I haven't quite been able to coordinate our work schedules yet, with the result that I am working when he is off and vice versa, which has been another frustrating transition. I haven't yet been able to get a good rhythm down as far as balancing work life and home life, so because of that I also haven't done any writing in several weeks which is starting to get to me too. With any luck, soon this transition will start to feel more complete and everything will begin to fall into place. I know that with summer coming on I will be even more busy than I am now, so it is critical to get into a confident swing.

In any event, the weather is finally turning here and Estes is looking beautiful. We are still waiting for everything to bloom--but spring is definitely on its way to the Rocky Mountains. 

Visitors at the Conklin House

It's alive!

I do apologize for the lack of posts of late. Simply put, there has not been that much going on up here in Estes to work up a post. I've also been dealing with some personal struggling in terms of how bleak this winter has been, which only added to the non-postage. Happily, things are now on the upswing. Spring is on its way--we're supposed to reach the high 50s today--and Daylight Savings, which is my favorite day of the year, is next Sunday. Won't be long after that until we really start reaping the benefits of this paradise we live in.

With any luck, soon we will also be rid of the wind that has been plaguing us for a while now. Since Christmas we've had some terrible winds which the locals all say is worse than the norm. There have been several nights when we've had winds up to 80mph sustained, not gusting, all night long. While Cameron loves the "white noise", it makes it impossible for me to sleep and I've had to start sleeping with my iPod headphones stuffed in my ears to try and drown it out. It would be an understatement to say that I am very excited for that weather pattern to go away for good.

Another reason for the upswing, I've found gainful employment. Hooray! Starting today, I'll be waiting tables at Mama Rose's, an Italian restaurant downtown. I'm excited, if not terribly nervous, for the adventure. I'm hoping that it will be a challenge to keep me going.

We've had an influx of wildlife around the house of late! The elk have been coming to the field next to our house quite often. We've also heard a couple of coyotes around the house at night, and a few weeks ago we spotted a bobcat in the back yard about 50 yards from the door. Recently we've also heard a pair of Great Horned Owls in one of the trees around the back. Looks like a lot of the wildlife is coming back out from their winter slumbers.

In the meantime, here's a few goings-on that we've had in the last couple of months.

Snowshoeing in RMNP

Elk hanging around town

Elk hanging around our house!

Our new cat, Sherlock

I'm also rehearsing with the Oratorio Society of Estes Park, which will have performances in the end of April. We are performing Beethoven's Mass in C Minor. Very exciting! It's a new challenge for me that I have never done before and I decided on a whim to join back in January. 

Hopefully, I will be more regular with posts as spring comes on.

Awakened by Mountain Lions on Christmas Night

It was two in the morning 

when I woke from a dreaming sleep

to the sound of mountain lions

screaming in the night.

They were close, so much that I worried

they had caught the scent

of the turkey carcass in the garbage

even though we'd taken such care

to double wrap the bag.

They went on crying

from somewhere behind the house

and we lay there together listening

to the eerie sounds on Christmas night.

A coyote joined in then, barking,

and we figured there was a deer, or

some dead animal to be fought over

in the field next to the house,

the one owned by the horse ranch next door.

I rose out of bed to see if I could spot them,

but the night was too dark to see.

In the kitchen I found the cat had

gotten into the streudel and knocked it

to the floor, perhaps feeling

inadequate to his pre-historic ancestors

fighting outside the windows in the cold inky night.

After a minute the cries and barking faded

and I thought about who had made off victorious

with whatever had encouraged the fight

and who had been left cold and hungry

as the winds started to descend

into the valley.

I returned to bed in silence

but was bothered by the sound of the dog

who had snuck a piece of streudel off the floor

and was crunching away on his snack

from down at the foot of the bed.

Preparing for Christmas

The last few days have been quite pleasant up here in Estes. Daily temperatures have been in the mid-high 30s and with the exception of today there's been nearly no wind. Delightful! Most of the snow from the last fall has melted, except on the north-facing areas of town where the sun doesn't hit.

On Saturday, we experienced a full lunar eclipse. We are lucky to have seen the majority of it, as it appears that most of the other residents of town were too low in the valley to see much of it. We weren't able to see totality before it slipped behind the mountains, but we saw almost all of the first phase. It started at roughly 6:05 in the morning, and by the time it disappeared it was just before 7. I am lucky that my parents happened to be visiting for the weekend and it helped get me out of bed in time to see it!

Although the weather here has been peaceful lately, it's been a little tumultuous over the edge of Long's Peak. If I could figure out how to do a time-lapse video of it, I would. The changes in atmosphere around it at any given time are stunning. Here's two photos taken just about 15 hours apart of the old boy:

On the wildlife front, we have deer and elk prints literally beneath our bedroom window. Perhaps I need to set up a security camera of some sort, if only to see what time of day they are coming by, because we have yet to see any of them. Although to be honest, I think the idea of waking in the early hours of the morning to an elk outside the window might be a bit frightening. Just about an hour ago, I was sitting in my office on the computer and something dog-sized and white ran right by the window. I have a feeling it was the neighborhood coyote, but it could have been a bobcat. On a not-so-nice point, I found what I believe was a Black Widow spider in a pile of boxes I had set aside for recycling this morning. This was not so exciting for me, because I am terrified of spiders. I dumped the lethargic bugger out onto the snow and promptly squished it. I had assumed that because of the cold, the spiders had gone dormant for the season, but I guess not. Yuck!

Tomorrow is my Christmas cookie-making day. One of our neighbors recently brought us a hefty stockpile of elk meat (shot in our yard, coincidentally) so I have a pile of cookies planned to thank him for the gift. Christmas is quickly on its way and Estes looks lovely with all its Christmas livery on. With any luck, I'll be able to get some photos of the downtown area with its nighttime lights on. In the meantime, here's a photo of Conklin House all ready for Christmas...well, not including my exterior Christmas tree, which is currently making its stage debut in my production of A Christmas Carol with the Estes Park Repertoire Theatre Company...which I'll update about this weekend before we close.

Meeting All the Neighbors

The wildlife up here is fascinating. Just the other day that coyote I saw a few weeks back walked through the front yard. I discovered elk poo in the yard yesterday, which means that it was exceptionally close to the house. (Usually they come through the back.) There's a bobcat in the neighborhood, though we're not sure where, and a couple mornings ago we woke to hear mountain lions in the distance talking to each other. (If you've never heard a mountain lion, it's kind of freaky, like someone is screaming in the distance.)

And then of course there are the birds. Yesterday I came home to a bunch of ravens hanging out in the front yard, which I think is great. I love ravens and crows; they're wickedly smart and I think beautiful birds. (In fact, the ring tone on my new phone is the call of an American crow.) Cameron's uncle gave us a window feeder so that we could see the birds come right to the window and not have to worry about the bears. (I hope.) It took a while for them to find it, but now they're in it all the time: mostly pygmy nuthatches, mountain chickadees, and sparrows. They all hang out in the tree off the porch and chatter away at lunchtime. It's great. This morning, I had a Steller's Jay at the window. That's one of these:

They're relatives of blue jays and are common in the area although this is the first one I've seen. He tried to get to the feeder and then realized he was too big. When that happened he sat on a branch of the tree over the porch, looking in the window at me, and started screaming at me. Evidently he was none too happy. All in all I'm not crazy about having a Jay at my feeder because they are kind of mean and I know he will chase away all the nuthatches and chickadees. Did you know that jays will mimic the call of a bird of prey so that the other birds in the area will take off and leave their nests unattended? Then the jay will invade the nest and kill their babies. Yeesh.

"Tuesday Morning on Highway 34"

jackrabbit flapjack
crows pick at fur flesh and bone
cars - crows fly away

They Don't Tell the Tourists about the Wind

....which will be the title of my memoir, if I ever write one.

In any event, onward!

We arrived in Estes Park with our moving truck last Friday. In the last week we've been living here, it's been a period of adjustment. Adjusting to a house that was built in the 20s and therefore was electrified before the advent of 3-prong electrical plugs. Adjusting to the fact that it's just going to be cold in the house most nights. And yeah, adjusting to the fact that this is our front yard:

The other thing we've had to adjust to is the wind. My goodness does it get windy up here. Of course, we were lucky enough to get here just in time for some pretty severe winds (we had gusts of 100mph on Saturday) that are not always the norm. That storm did some pretty good damage to other parts of Estes, including knocking down some pretty big trees, but it seems that we are far enough down the valley that we didn't get the worst of it. It does seem to be pretty breezy almost all the time though, which is something that I'm still getting used to. The house we live in is a wood frame, and old, and it creaks a lot. It's an adjustment.

All in all we are almost all settled in. We discovered a crawl space under the house and were able to throw a couple of plastic bins with duct tape under there to save some room. We finally got cable installed yesterday, and although finding an internet provider was a bit of a challenge at first, we have our service arriving on Friday. It was a little challenging to be so cut off from the world for a couple of days. This is the first time I've gotten my computer online in almost a week. Almost everything is put away now, excepting the second bedroom which is being used as my office when we don't have visitors. The problem we're running across with that room is that the electric rung heater doesn't seem to work, so it's very cold in there unless the sun is shining right into the windows. The other problem is that we threw out two bookshelves that were in bad condition, and because I have a lot of books, most of them are still boxed and on the floor. So there's not a lot of navigation room in there as of yet. In fact, by and large, it still looks just like this:

But we were surprised to find upon moving all of our furniture into the place last week that we have more room than we were anticipating. We were also pleased to find that the closets have a ton of storage space above them (because we have a vaulted ceiling) so that helped a lot. 

It's a cozy little place, and I like it quite a lot. Best of all, my green children love it.

We haven't seen too much wildlife lately, although I suspect that because it's been so exceptionally windy, the animals are all bedding down to keep warm. I saw a positively enormous coyote at the end of my driveway this morning, although I wasn't able to get a picture. (I'm discovering that it's probably best if I carry my camera with me everywhere!) He was a good-looking guy, although he was favoring his left paw. According to one of the baristas at Starbucks, he's a local and has been injured for quite a while. We did get an up-close encounter with this handsome fellow on our way up the valley a couple of days ago:

We know that there are deer nearby, because we've found scat within 25 yards of the back door. Just haven't seen any of the culprits yet! As for our animals, they're settling in nicely. Brody, the dog, was a little skittish for the first couple of days, I think because the sound of the wind was making him nervous. We've been trying to get him used to being out on his chain so that he can spend some time outside (we don't have a fence and I worry about him running for it if he spots an animal), but so far all he's done if we walk away and leave him is cry. Another adjustment. The last couple of days he's been fine though. 

Whiskey, the cat, has been nonplussed from day one. He was in control since the moment he walked into the house, as you can see.

Estes Park has been very welcoming to us so far. The community here is beautiful and the people are wonderful. I've never felt so immediately welcomed. I think we are going to fit in very, very well here.

Until next time.