September 9, 2001

Where does summer go? It has been consistently hot here being in the upper 80’s and 90’s. You wake up in the morning and say “another beautiful day”. It does get hot working in the garden. At times I would change clothes 2 to 3 times after becoming drenched with sweat. Right now, I’m gardened out.

We had quite a wonderful crop of peaches. I picked some I could reach and Ken picked some of the peaches that were higher up in the tree. Last weekend we went out to finish picking and found a large branch had been broken off the tree. It had to be the raccoons. They devastated my corn patch and they now have broken a large branch off the peach tree that produced some beautiful tasty fruit.

This morning when I drove off to meet friends for our fast walk/run I had to slow down for a family of 5 raccoons crossing St. Vrain Road. One raccoon retreated from attempting to cross and it must have been mother who, after I had passed, crossed the road once more to find her offspring.

Ken mountain biked “The Rage in the Sage” mountain bike race in the Gunnison. This was a major national event. He has won the over-50 class in about half races he entered and ended up with the class championship in Colorado’s “Spirit of the Rockies” series.

Always trying to take on more than one should, Ken set out for an off-trail backpacking adventure on the continental divide. He had to abort his plans because of the hazardous snow fields and scree slopes (you can’t walk on them) and this all at 12,000 ft plus.

In the first half of June we headed up to the Brainard Lake area to hike to Isabelle Glacier. The road to Brainard was still closed due to snow, so we parked the car and hiked to the lake adding an additional 4 miles to our hike. We had shorts on and a tee shirt and were hiking, actually post holing in the snow that at times was over 10 ft deep. At times your leg would disappear into the snow. Needless to say we never did make it to Isabelle Glacier. We were exhausted just trying to get around Long Lake. We did, however, get some beautiful photographs of rushing water, snow capped mountains and little marsh marigolds.

One of our next hikes was Pawnee Pass. The beautiful scenery we encountered on this hike was unbelievable. It doesn’t get any better than that. You can have equal encounters with nature and the beauty surrounding it, but it can only equal. This hike brought you up to where you can look west from 12,000 feet on the continental divide.

We also hiked Buchanan Pass. However, getting to the trailhead was probably more of an adventure than the hike. Ken decided to take the jeep road that brings you in probably 7 miles to the highest trailhead. We found out later that this was considered by a Jeep guidebook to be an expert-only jeep trail. It had rained the night before and not only was the road terribly rough, but we had to drive through lakes not knowing what was in the water. I must mention all this was done in my “big white” jeep. Well if I thought that was challenging, the return trip was equally, or more challenging because Ken had to build up the road in areas by moving large rocks so the vehicle could advance.

Well, Buchanan Pass was an ok hike, but certainly not as scenic as Pawnee Pass.

Also, from the jeeping adventure Ken has become interesting in perhaps a winter project of building up a 4-wheel drive vehicle for extreme mountain roads. There just happens to be in the center of Hygiene a shop that is considered as one of the best places to have one of these vehicles built for competition. Well, Ken has found them and found another interest.

We took a couple of days and travelled to Steamboat Springs and did some hiking in the Mt. Zirkel Wilderness to lakes by the name of Jonah and Whale. So, I suppose you could say we went to see Jonah and the Whale. We did not see another soul on this lovely hike and although we did not see any large wildlife, it was the type of setting for bears, mountain lions, etc. Prior to embarking on this hike, we spoke to a ranger who advised how to find the path. He did not call it a hiking path. He called it a “social path”.

We saw the production of King Lear at the CU campus in August during the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. During the 1^st act King Lear comes out on the stage, after he has been kicked out of living quarters by both his daughters and is roaming in the wilderness. He looks up to the heavens and says “What manner of night is this – not fit for man nor beast”. At this point the lightening rigged up on the set is activiated and at the same time lightening and thunder in the sky above cracked and the heavens opened up and poured rain on us all. The actors continued until someone over the loud speaker system announced that the play would be interrupted and we would know in a few minutes if it would be resumed. Everyone including the actors was soaked. We were in the first row and it took some time to retreat to the building, but the play did resume and the actors played to a soaked audience on a very soaked stage and in soaked costumes.

I sold another painting. It happened that I brought a few pictures into a frame shop for framing and the person waiting on me said she loved the pastel of poppies I had painted and would like to buy it and frame it herself. I told her it was going to be put into the “Open Studios” at the end of September and she said, I’ll buy it and frame it and you can hang it in the open Studios tour with a sold sign. It is difficult for me to put a price on art. This was a small piece of pastel art on maybe a 10/12 piece of sand paper (which is a medium for pastel work). I asked would $50 be too much (not quite the marketing person)? She quickly responded “No, I’ll take it” with a big smile. Well, I’ll never get rich or be able to feed myself on these sales, but they sure are fun and exciting when they happen.

This past Friday was a reception at the Old Firehouse Museum in Longmont that was a promotional kick off for the Studio Tours. Being a participant in the tours, I got to put a piece of artwork in the Firehouse. This was quite intimidating because some of the participants are in the big leagues. Scott Fraser has work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as well as the Denver Art Museum. Mario Echeverria, does marvelous mosiacs and murals and Rick Stoner does beautiful pastels. It was a nice show and I held my own with some and was far surpassed by others.

You know something always happens when Ken goes away. He had a business trip at the home office in Alexandria, VA and from there went to visit his daughters in Connecticut. In less than one hour after leaving, I found a problem with the irrigation. This was taken care of by shutting off a zone. However, during the day I was walking up the front steps to bring the dogs into the house and a 4-5 ft snake was right at my front door. I quickly got the dogs down as I didn’t know if it were a rattler or a bull snake. Ran into the garage and got my favorite long handled garden hoe with a forked prong. All the hairs on my arms are now standing up and I have goose bumps all over and I open the front door and start pushing this snake down the stairs shouting “Get out, get out.” It turns around toward me and gives me that snaky tongue and lifts its tail to shake and I shout “You bite me and you’re dead meat you bastard, get out, get out!” It slithered down the 8 steps and coiled around my planter. For a while I dragged along my garden tool for protection from the varmint.

We also have been at battle with the prairie dogs. They view our grass near the pond as prime territory and want to get to it real bad. Ken has put up a 1 ½-2 ft high fence of wire that he thought would prevent them from coming onto the grass. They squeezed through it. He bought more wire and put it up. They dug under it. So we continue to build Stalag 17. All we need to complete the look is barbed wire coils on top of the fence.

There was a frost last night. I’m about to go out to see how much was lost to it. The temperature is cooler and quite a nice respite from the consistent heat we have been having. The mountains are covered with fresh snow and it truly is a beautiful scene.

Love,

Diane and Ken