Gratitude

Creativity and Memory Loss

/ Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

I heard the most amazing statistic the other day on the PBS News Hour:

Creative artists experience 73% less memory loss and Alzheimers than others!

I believe it too! For me, creativity has been the key to maintaining the memory I have left after a traumatic brain injury ten years ago and 2 or 3 concussions.

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Photography, writing, interior design, and gardening are the areas I love to explore in a creative way. Creativity seems to truly relax my mind and let it flow in its own way.

The wonderful monsoon rains we have been experiencing since our Spring Wildfire the week of the 4th of July have done my garden a world of good! Plus Mike has been helping out building retaining walls in the garden.

right on the edge of a hill facing the Spanish Peaks, so we have to build it up or it will all wash away eventually.

nice garden scene at comanche drive

I’m now working on rebuilding the garden after the terrible drought we had here all winter and spring. I took another trip over to see my friends at my favorite hangout, Perennial Favorites near Rye, Colorado. They pointed out a few plants that seem to not interest the deer around here, so now I have a lavender Hyssop plant, Russian sage, only the yellow yarrow not the other colors, etc. They were so kind. They gave me two free plants because of our evacuation situation.

With all of the the rain we’ve been getting (over 3 inches so far this month!) and the cooler temperatures I enjoy working outside again. I have new garden hope!

BEAUTY is the GARDEN where HOPE grows!

Gratitude for everything, wildfires and all!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

So of course it had to happen. One of my readers met with me this week and asked me one more time if I am still pleased with our decision to move to a rural part of southern Colorado, one that is prone to wildfire. As strange as it may seem, I am happier than ever to live where I do.

great Mike photo of snow and Spanish Peaks

The winter view of the Spanish Peaks from our solar home

First of all, the recent fire gave us a chance to live in town for a week because we were evacuated from our area between La Veta and Walsenburg. La Veta feels noisy and crowded to me now. My favorite quality of rural life is the absolute silence at night and on a cool clear country morning. Seeing the stars after I turn off the lights at night is also something I have never experienced before.

Returning to our home after evacuation was a marvelous treat, a timely reminder of how lucky we are to be able to live in nature on our own terms with neighbors far enough away to basically ignore them.

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The sunrises are as amazing as ever. What’s not to like about this every morning?

Wildfire and trauma

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

I have been a student of the psychological affects of trauma ever since I performed my counseling internship at a rehab hospital in 1994. There I had the opportunity to treat those who had lost limbs in accidents, suffered devastating strokes, and life-changing sepsis. But it is somehow quite different to experience your own life-changing emergency. How has this experience changed me?

Spring Fire evacuation June 30th 2018

Last picture taken before leaving our home behind on June 30th 2018

First of all, I will never forget that one last look at our brand new home as we drove away possibly for the last time. As smoke billowed above our home and ash started falling down on us, we left with two cars full of a crazy mix of things plus a cat and a dog, not even knowing where we were going.

We were so lucky that a dear friend in La Veta took us in and La Veta did not have to be evacuated. I now call our week in La Veta our emergency slumber party, because Cheryle made it as fun for us as she could.

By Tuesday I was totally stressed watching the mountains west of our home burn. I could only reassure myself that the firefighters would hold the line at County Road 520, which they ultimately did.

The next memorable moment was the evening of the 4th of July when it finally cooled down a little in La Veta and even rained a tiny bit. It felt so good out on the back porch doing our own version of a rain dance, as the TV rang out with patriotic music and fireworks.

But the real fire stopper was the gigantic rain we had up at Cuchara and here in La Veta on the evening of July 5th.  I have now learned from firefighters that that extra inch of rain saved both Pinehaven and Cuchara. Mother Nature comes through BIG TIME and saves the day!

In retrospect, I suffered some trauma. I will have dreams in the future about losing everything so soon after building it to perfection. There are many among us who have lost so much.

Please do not minimize or belittle the suffering of those in our community no matter what they have experienced. One thing I know about trauma, it so often brings up previous losses in extremely unpredictable ways. Respect the feelings of everyone you meet. If they are suffering, it is real for them.

First a record-breaking Colorado wildfire and then flash flooding – Never a dull moment here this summer!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

spring fire

Ever since a wildfire broke out west of us on June 28th and I called 911, I feel like I’ve been riding a bucking bronco of disaster and devastation here in the foothills of southern Colorado! We were evacuated from our home the afternoon of June 29th to La Veta, where we spent one week worrying about losing everything.

Returning home on July 7th we felt only gratitude that our beautiful new solar home was saved by the valiant efforts of so many local and federal firefighters and their support staff. At one point we had 1805 federal employees including the national guard here helping to control the third worst wildfire in Colorado history. The fire ended up burning over 108,000 acres and destroyed at least 250 homes.

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Then last night around 11 pm all hell broke loose at our house! The floods came with an amazing array of lightning and thunder. Nobody could have slept through that! It rained for over three hours and brought us as much rain as we have had in the past four months in one big fat storm! It’s feast and famine around here. I have been measuring precipitation for COCORAHS and the Weather Service for over twenty years now, and I don’t believe I have ever had 2.28 inches in one storm here in Colorado.

The Cuchara River that runs through La Veta has been bone dry for over a month now, but this morning it is running strong with black water flowing from the burned areas up around Cuchara and Pinehaven. Sure hope there were no worse mud slides or flooding up above here. I have seen rivers before full of black slurry after severe mountain fires. The water runs just like velvet.

I am unable to provide new photos on here because we still don’t have the Internet at our home! I have to run into La Veta to get online…SECOM is definitely on my shit list!

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!