“Summer is slipping by much too fast, what once was imagined is already past…”

-Journal entry: Wednesday; August 15, 2018; 10:23 am. In my camper, Cochise.

Three months of living on a mountainside, 9,000’ above sea level, in the woods, just south of the Wyoming border, no neighbors within earshot and no cell phone service. It’s been an eye-opener, that’s for sure. Fo Sho. I think I might make it though…we’ll see.

I’ve lived in the woods of the Alaskan interior, through winter, no running water, using an outhouse, wood stove heat (it was a great stove, too – an Earth Stove) all long before cell phones. It was no problem. One of the best times of my life, as I recall.

I’ve also lived in the foothills outside of Loveland, Colorado, for a dozen years, living in a vintage 1959 16’ camper that was just like the one we had when I was growing up, until the “cabin” we bought was habitable. It had been abandoned and open for a year after the State Troopers evicted a previous tenant for defaulting on his VA loan. He was a Vietnam vet, but the Troopers fired tear gas canisters through the windows to get him out. One of the tear gas canisters was still lodged in the siding beside the window. Oddly, the exact same thing happened at our cabin in Alaska, including the tear gas canister being lodged in the siding beside a window. I think we have to take better care of our vets, and maybe get our Troopers a little more range time firing tear gas canisters. Just sayin.

But…back to the mountain, eh? No State Troopers shooting tear gas canisters here. Let’s keep it that way, shall we? I much prefer the quietude of tall trees sifting the wind through their canopy. Gray Jays squawking, looking for food. And that pine squirrel that keeps barking because it ventures too close to the hummingbird’s nest and gets attacked. I’ve witnessed it. Damn squirrels. They drive Rambeaux crazy. They always have. Me too, sometimes. They’ll eat all the wild bird food and suet, you know. Damn squirrels. But enough of rodentia. Let the lemmings go to the sea, and let us be off to the forest, in the mountains.

Close your eyes now, and draw a few measured breaths. When you open them, you will have transcended your temporal bounds and we will stand together amongst the tall timber…

I am the steward of this patch of woodland, having paid tens of thousands of dollars for a piece of paper granting me legal title by a local governmental agency with proper, recognized jurisdiction from larger governmental agencies.

Yes, I am a landowner in America; but I know I can’t take it with me when I go. As Native People say, “We do not inherit the land from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children.” So, I put my children’s names on the legal title too; and I hope they do the same – someday.

But now I must tend to my small slice of forest, for it’s choking itself with too many trees. It’s overgrown, densely thick, a stunted jungle of lodgepole and ponderosa pine that hasn’t seen the thinning, rejuvenating force of fire since long before my arrival. I must be Caesar of the Timberland and select who shall live, and who must die.

I march into the spiny thickets of adolescent growth, shoots of trunk and branch twice as tall as me, to find the Alpha Tree – the lone pine who rises above the others, if only by a few inches. The tree whose bark is darker and roots run deeper, having established themselves in the granite below. I fall all others around it, giving it sufficient room to spread its branches and climb toward the sun, which now can reach the forest floor, fostering growths of fern and underbrush.

Ah, the rarified, pine-infused mountain air! It’s a tonic requiring no gin, and to pull it in is to drink Mother Nature’s finest essence – forever free.

I close my eyes and breath deep, listening to screaming silence. This is my garden, planted by the Great Force and bestowed upon me for a few more changes of the seasons. This is my reason to be for the rest of my years, and I will not shirk my task. I’ll resist the forbidden fruit and not be cast from this Eden in the Sky. I pass back the apple – the forbidden fruit – and chase that damn serpent back to Hell.