Facing East

Short essay, one of four facing the different directions from our cabin and how we got here. Wrote these during the pandemic. Felt damn grateful for our place up here, surrounded by beauty.

Side Porch Facing East

Looking to the east is Mead, a little north is Loveland, which sits behind Blue Mountain.  Blue Mountain is about 5 miles away according to Google Earth.  The sun pops up right behind Moon Rocks to the south east at about 7:45 in early February.  By June it will have moved all the way in front of Loveland, a nearly 80 degree swing from December, and it roars up at 4:45 in the morning, whether you are ready or not, at the far right hand base of Blue Mountain.  The cabin windows and walls fill with bright light.  I usually put a black t-shirt over my eyes for the first hour and then get up, a little too excited to sleep longer.  I need to see what's going on.  

Sitting here in the dead stillness of early morning is the rarest of treats.  It’s an odd thing to say given that this happens every single morning, but there you have it, it's true.  Just like when my wife makes an omelet and I tell her, “that’s the best omelet you have ever made”.  And it’s true, her omelets are amazing, just like each of these magical mornings.  Who ever won a fair maiden by semantics?  Not me, not you.  You had to hold her hand and explain about glorious mornings.  You had to tip your hand and show her that beneath your significant practicality beat the heart of a romantic.  That’s how I did it anyway. On our first date we spoke about how, above all things, we wanted a family.  That we wanted to devote our lives to these children. I knew I wanted to marry her that first night.  I had to show her I was not a flake, that I had plans, I had dreams of stability, even though I had no idea what I was going to do with my life.  She agreed to marry me on “spec”, as we carpenters say.  I was a house as yet to be built, on speculation.  I showed her the plans of my foundation but the rest was unknown.  That was good enough for Laurie.  She said, “Let’s go and see where this thing leads.”

I sit here, working on the second cup of coffee looking dead east.  Moon Rocks were named by us one summer in 2008.  My older son Brad and I camped out between the two trees that I look at right now, they flank my computer.  Doug Fir on the left by the escape button, Ponderosa on the right side next to the delete button.  We pitched our tent there in the first week of July.

  By the first of August we took it down and packed it into a box and stowed it under the 20’x30’ cabin we had just built during the previous four weeks.

That was the very best four weeks of my life, getting to know my son in a way very few people get the privilege of doing. By the end of week one we had the floor deck built. My nephew Ian came out for two days at the end to help with the roof.

We had no electricity, no water, no road. Just a very nasty track for our old Land Rover. Through the heat, heavy work, tilted sleeping, so-so food, Brad didn’t complain once.

  On that first night, before we pitched the tent, we slept among some rocks and cactus.  As we fell asleep we wondered what enormous light must be shining on the other side of that hill, a half mile to the southeast.  Then the full moon arrived.  It bathed us in such a luminous light.  He grabbed a rock under his bag and said, “Is this a Parker rock?” and we began to giggle.  We had just flown from Massachusetts that day, so the leap up to 7,200 elevation and lack of oxygen added to the sense of weirdness and silliness.

 It was pure magic then and it has never let up.  You may say to yourself, “how much daily magic can you take?”   This is what the cabin looked like after four weeks.

My Dad said that you can definitely gild the lily. You can put gold leaf on it, then dip it in chocolate and serve it in a small pot made of exquisite hard candy and the soil could be chocolate mousse.  It really should be chocolate mousse. The stem of the lily would be something fascinating and if I had a confectioner sitting next me we could describe that edible wonder.   Dad understood excess in a way that very few Americans would feel comfortable with. He was a distant Catholic, dropped in his youth, so no hint of Puritanism either.  He had seen a lot of the world and he liked everything he saw (stole that line from Brad).  He could handle all the hilarity available because he was a large man, Zorba the Greek, and could ramp up an afternoon or evening with a barrel of fun.  I do wish he had been able to see this place, hear this enormous morning quiet. This is Brad putting in the last nail.

 Another sorrow is that Mom never got to see this place.  She was a quiet morning person.  This place would have suited her well. She would have sketched every view within the first couple days, including the outhouse.  I would have introduced her to all the big trees so that they would be on a first name basis.  She would have introduced herself to all the small, bent, twisted ones.  They take more time to get to know since they are a little shy.  She would win them over by asking permission to take their portrait. The birds would all come by to pay their respects and maybe a fox or mule deer.  It would have been a grand old time.  But, you can’t have everything and I thank them both for giving me the kind of nerve it takes to buy a piece of land 1700 miles away on a mountaintop with no road, water or electricity.  I heard Dad’s voice then and I hear it now-”Oh, you can do it” and we did. 

This is the view to the east, with the finished cabin, only took ten years more to really finish it.