Getting off the grid

What is newsworthy? Local heroism!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 7 Comments

It is obvious from watching the national news since our county almost burned down, that kids in a cave in northern Thailand are all that matters to us. Listen, I do get it. Between listening to our president berate everything and everybody and watching a human interest story about some kids in a cave, I would choose that too. But the fact is, we don’t need to go as far as Thailand to find the highest level of bravery and heroics in this world. I have never been the witness to a more newsworthy story than what happened here last week.

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The mountain behind our house…

Our nation missed  an uplifting and encouraging news story of bravery and selflessness when our own firefighters and their support teams saved this small rural county in southern Colorado from total destruction. More than half of our county was burned or at least affected by the Spring Fire, started by some Danish idiot in the county west of us. And even if the national news chose to ignore us, the entire western part of our country is on fire right now. In response to this national emergency we get a big fat “Who cares!” from the national news media.

The local TV stations have at least attempted to cover this third largest wildfire in Colorado history. KOAA in Colorado Springs had a great piece called “Saving Cuchara” on recently.

I would at least like more Americans to know that thousands of government employees risk life and limb everyday, breathing in toxic smoke constantly, with little sleep or any other creature comforts on 12 plus hour shifts, so that you and I can still go home to our house tonight.

Heroism is everywhere this summer, not just in Chiang Rai Thailand!

HOME again! All’s right with my world!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

I will never take home for granted again! We got back into our house on Saturday afternoon, completely frazzled but so PLEASED to be back home! Even though we have no Internet there and probably won’t have it for weeks, nobody appreciates home more than we do now!

morning sun on comanche drive

We saw smoke up behind our house as we drove up to it, which freaked me out, so I called 911 one more time, and it was a controlled back burning to secure and contain all fires around us.

The STRESS of this past week of wildfire evacuation can be felt all over my body. I felt almost incoherent the day we got into our house, with body aches everywhere. Since I finally felt safe and secure for the first time in over a week, I took a little THC and drank a rum drink, which I rarely do…you have to go crazy sometimes or you might go crazy! I’ve been sleeping so much in the past few days.

How strange to be let into your own area by a blockade of National Guard troops! They were checking picture IDs and “re-entry” passes for everyone on the way in. Luckily today that is over and we are completely off evacuation status!

What would you take in a wildfire evacuation?

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

Being evacuated from our lovely new home in southern Colorado last Saturday, as the “Spring Fire” raged west of us, was a first for me. What should I take? What would I really miss if I never saw it again?

The irony was not lost on me. Four years ago we got rid of most of our personal belongings to move down here from Fort Collins. At that point I felt like half of the selection at the local Goodwill was mine! We moved from a 2,000 square foot house up north, into a 1,000 square foot rental in Walsenburg for a year, while building a 1,400 square foot passive solar retirement home in the foothills.

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We have been in our new home less than three years now. Within that process I have learned so much about non-attachment. It is true. Clearing out the space around you does help you to clear your mind. We usually choose to keep things around that remind us of our past loves, trips, and lives.

So what did I quickly pack into my car last week? All of my pictures and journals going back decades, my books, an ink painting I picked up at the Great Wall of China, my cloisonne ginger jar from China, clothes I like to wear, my entire desktop computer, a big Chinese lacquer box and quilts my Mom made. I wanted to load up my Mom’s hope chest, built by her in 1950, but it was just too heavy for us to lift.

Driving away from our new home was devastating. We had struggled and suffered so hard to put this new home here in the Colorado outback. Were we really going to just leave it here to burn?

morning sun on comanche drive

As you can probably imagine, this week has provided gigantic ups and downs for me. Just a few days ago I watched as tremendous plumes of smoke rose up near our new home. Ask Mike. I was one hot mess!

Now that the smoke has cleared, literally, I can feel nothing but supremely fortunate to live in a country that takes care of us when we are so terribly vulnerable.

We spoke to one of those great Forest Service men in Walsenburg yesterday. He was explaining where the fire is now and then my friend ask him how we might make donations to help their cause. He said, “We can’t take tips, this is our job.” His partner came over and said, “Just keep paying your taxes…”

What a nice New Year’s gift!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

We had a pleasant visitor a few weeks ago, a reporter from the Denver Post who was putting together their final piece for a series on rural life across our state. Kevin Simpson came down to visit with us about why we came here.  I think he did a great job of LISTENING to those of us who chose to leave city life behind. The section on us starts with a quote about Mike’s google search when we found this place: “cheap land in Colorado”  ENJOY!

Colorado Divide: Why some Coloradans are cashing out of the Front Range and seeking their rural happily-ever-after

Living in the simplicity of the present

/ Laura Lee Carter / 14 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I have been changed by the experience of leaving city life behind. The greatest change has been my new ability to at least occasionally be in the present. I see now that before I moved here, I was constantly stressed out, and in distraction mode.

“Distractions are both more tempting and more destructive than we realize. It’s tempting to fill in every little minute of the day with productivity or distractions. Don’t. Leave some emptiness.”  – Zen Habits

It seems to me that cities are set up for constant outside noise and distraction. Any time you feel uncomfortable in any way, you can call up someone to go see, order some new kind of food, go out shopping or go see a movie. People in cities spend most of their time sitting in traffic or driving somewhere else. Cities are distraction machines, and the Internet is the ultimate, easily available escapism.

Being in the present means you are not planning ahead. You are sitting still, willing to be here now to observe and absorb your present surroundings with no thoughts of yesterday or tomorrow, no need to distract yourself. I find many of the observations of ZenHabits.com useful in my new mindset:

“If you’re filling your life with distractions, its probably because you’re afraid of what life would feel like without those distractions…”

To be honest, I never really had the time to gain full awareness of all of this until I moved away from modern American life. I knew I was anxious and not as relaxed as I wanted to be in the city, and now I see why. Cities raise our anxiety levels. I know because it took me at least a year away from a city to see how anxious I have been most of my life, and then find ways to allow myself to truly relax.

I have been a worry shopper my whole life. Once I solved one problem I moved on to the next one. Out here there is so little to worry about, leaving me much more time to focus on what is important to me. Now that’s a great new challenge! And what is important to me now is a few important relationships, and appreciating the natural world and its wonders.

We can sit and dream about so many things, but we would be wasting our lives. This present reality is all we get. Let’s learn to love it.

Naturalist report from Spanish Peaks Colorado

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

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In a summer of many terrible wildfires in the West, we are fortunate to have received over 12 inches of precipitation from March through June in our area. How do I know? I measured every inch of it myself for COCORAHS. We are also fortunate to have such vigilant volunteer fire fighters patrolling our area at all times.

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Our temperatures are not too bad at 7,000 foot elevation, and our solar home is keeping us nice and cool this summer. The highest temperatures here have been in the low 90s and our well-insulated stucco home hasn’t gone up past 76 degrees inside yet, with no need for AC. Every room has a ceiling fan when more air flow is needed.

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Our greatest surprise has been the plethora of different birds stopping by our bird feeders this spring and enjoying our bird bath. Mike also built a bird house to Blue Bird specs this spring, and we did have a few Mountain Blue Birds check it out…

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but in the end a pair of Ash-throated Flycatchers laid eggs inside. We were thrilled to watch them so close to our home, bringing bugs back for the babies to consume. Mike looked inside the nest a few times while the parents were away.

Then we were so disappointed to find they had all flown the coop while we were up in Fort Collins this past week! In fact so many of the birds we’ve come to expect at our feeders are not around anymore…

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I had another surprise in my garden recently. I LOVE to see so many lovely cacti (common name Cane Cholla) around this region. This photo was taken along I-25 on July 2nd on our way up to Fort Collins. I read that if you cut off a small section and stick it in the ground, it will begin to grow immediately, so I tried that this past May.

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The other day I was messing around in my native plants garden, and was shocked to find that my tiny seedling was already flowering! You go girl!

IMGP6233Keep your eye out for a major bloom along I-25 north and south of Pueblo soon!

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All in all, I am quite pleased with the turn out in our new native plants garden in the southern Colorado foothills. Note the Mirabilis Multiflora that volunteered to bloom right in front of Buddha… Life is good!