midlife change

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?

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 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…”

Denial: The most insidious of human of flaws

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

As a lifelong student of human behavior, I now find denial to be the most ubiquitous and powerful trait known to us all. The best therapist I ever met told me,

“People can get used to anything, if they can get used to schizophrenia.”

I would only add, we do seem to specialize in getting used to emotional problems instead of doing what we can to change them. It surprises me when I see someone suffering from deep emotional challenges and yet making no effort to do anything about it. To some it must seem natural to live with emotional discomfort, feel self-critical of ourselves and yet never seek out professional help to change. Speaking from experience, this tendency literally ruins lives, because unresolved emotions lead to self criticism, unhappiness in relationships, destructive addictive habits, and reduced productivity.

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Most don’t seek help for debilitating denial issues and feelings because we are also in denial that these parts of our emotional makeup can change. Our main concern may be the fear that we aren’t up to the challenge of breaking addictive cycles, ending self-abuse and the habit of choosing toxic relationships, or the simple certainty that these things can never change. So what do we do? We get comfortable with the familiar and yet frustrating habits we were raised with.

For many (including myself) our lives will continue to go gradually downhill until that final crisis that says with absolute certainty: “Things must change NOW!” Confronting that moment with self-honesty and self-responsibility is the end of denial. And once the walls of denial start to tumble, the denials underneath those denials all must go.

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Admitting exactly how miserable you are is always the first step. Finding the best solutions unique to your own needs comes next.

Yes, I know how disturbing it can be to see your lovely set of life rules and plans based on absolutely nothing but denial fall to ashes before your eyes. Then you know it’s time to start from scratch, but not really. If this happens in midlife, as it did for me, you will find that you have amazing amounts of resilience,  life experience, intuition and deep inner wisdom to fall back on.

Letting go of that old, worn out crap your entire life was based on and hitching your future dreams to the power of the new you, following your heart for perhaps the first time ever, now that is powerful and exhilarating! Don’t miss out on this once in a lifetime opportunity to have it all.

Hang on, it all changes!

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool: A Review

/ Laura Lee Carter / 12 Comments

I experienced a unique and piercingly beautiful film yesterday! Based on Peter Turner’s memoir, this film follows the playful and passionate relationship between Turner (played by Jamie Bell) and the eccentric Academy Award-winning actress Gloria Grahame (played by Annette Bening).

Annette Bening in Film Stars dont die in Liverpool

I loved the way this film skillfully intertwined their budding romance in the late 1970s, with Ms. Grahame’s death in 1981.

What starts out as a vibrant and totally unexpected love affair between a legendary femme fatale and an unknown fellow actor in Liverpool England, quickly deepens into a passionate and caring relationship. Thus her decision to spend her last days on earth with him and his great family.

This 2017 film so skillfully and seamlessly takes the viewer from their early days of lustful romance, to Turner’s present uncertainty about how to handle Gloria’s obviously serious illness. Seeing her again brings back so many exciting memories for Turner as he watches her slowly fade away.

The skill of director Paul McGuigan in taking us back and forth in these characters’ lives, explains everything about their love for each other, so much so that Miss Grahame pushes Turner away when she realizes she is very ill. She hopes to spare him some degree of pain, but pain cannot be avoided in death, not when love is involved.

Childhood Stars, Crazy Ideals and who did you want to be when you grew up?

/ Laura Lee Carter / 8 Comments

We just recently got access to a new channel on DirectTV, MeTV. They show old programs from the 1950s and 60s including classic TV characters from my youth. Watching these old shows reminded me that the only TV character that I ever idealized and wanted to be just like was Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke. It ran for 20 seasons from 1955 to 1975! In retrospect I find it down right crazy that I wanted to be a saloon proprietress. Come to think of it, she was probably also the Madam of the Long Branch brothel upstairs, but nobody talked about things like that back then.

The first career I ever considered was acting, something my college professor Dad would have never approved of. How I got from there to academic librarian is a mystery to me! But I still enjoy watching Miss Kitty and remembering the simple, innocent dreams of a ten year old so many years ago.

Who did you want to be when you grew up and how did that work out?