Our Mountain Goats

Just in case any of you noticed Nicolas was not in the birthday party pictures, that would be because he took it as his cue to get the hell out of Dodge - I mean, took advantage of the amazing autumn to go climbing with his girls. They called at 9:15am Saturday morning from the summit of their second mountain. This being seven hours after I got home from next door, the same level of activity could not be said of me.

That summit marked Cayenne's 27th Fourteener, and Acacia's 23rd. Nick spent some great hiking time with the girls this summer, but if I'd posted about every climb, all my posts would've looked the same. I'm very proud of them though, so if you'll indulge me for a bit here, I'd like to share some of it with you:

Cayenne on the Spiller-Babcock Ridge, June 9, 2012

Acacia and I on Sneffels, June 15th, 2012

The girls and I popped up to Engineer on July 6th (just down the road from Durango)

The flowers on Engineer were gorgeous

 Acacia on East Babcock, July 12, 2012

While Acacia was on a road trip with her grandparents to visit her cousins in California, Cayenne and Nicolas spent a long weekend camping, and climbed four 14ers: Yale, Shavano, Tabeguache and Antero.

She said they were Easy Peasy. :) Good father-daughter time.

July 31-August 1 they climbed Snowmass and Castle.

I love this shot

The Red Rover enjoyed this summer

Although it looks like she's peeing, Acacia is actually unloading her latest rock collection.

Kind of ethereal with the sun rising behind them.

They also climbed Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Democrat, Lincoln and Bross.

On the most recent one they were reminded that the climbing season was probably nearly done. And while I'm sure someday they'll look back on their adventures in the mountains as some of their most indelible, my guess is they welcomed the snow.

 

Stop This Ride!

Can someone please stop our planet for a week so I can get off this ride, catch up with life, and climb back on??? My apologies to any of you who have faithfully checked in to peek at what's been going on at Camp Cofman, only to hear the crickets chirp.

Acacia hit double digits on September 24th and it took about a week to celebrate it Acacia-style, starting with a double birthday party at Michel & Ilona's. With my 45th just three days later, we economized on the celebration - but not the food. Acacia requested anything with sausage and Ilona got to work on homemade Italian pizza fit to rival anything in the Four Corners region... That said, a new place downtown is about to open, so Ilona may have competition soon! Last weekend Petra and I enjoyed the parade of homes and Fired Up Pizza was on the tour. They served free pizza and barley vodka basil lemonades. Needless to say, it was our most lengthy visit on the tour and they were calling us by name by the time we left.

But I digress. Like her sister, Acacia got a bedroom makeover for her birthday - but I got smart this time and allotted three days to do it, so was less suicidal by the time it was done.

 Once the last pillow was in place, I realized this is the room I never knew I always wanted.

Cayenne helped make the box on the wall to the left of the window
for Acacia to hang her jewelry and store her nail polish.

Painting on the furniture and walls felt so naughty - like my Mom was going to walk in and flip out at any minute - it was pure pleasure!

(I found the mirror at a thrift store - this very heavy oak one was just what I was searching for - and because it was only $17.50, I didn't mind testing the paint idea on it. 

I had so much fun I went a little nuts on the rest of the room...)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Luckily, while I was busy making sure Acacia's birthday was just right, next door Petra was sending out invites to make sure mine would be too. Good times!!

Thank you Petra!

I'm Famous!

Well, at least among my friends who not only read the Durango Herald, but also make a beeline for the Bear Tracker section, which, it seems, is exactly one of my friends.

The Herald printed this photo today:

Pretty cool, eh?

Took this one a few minutes later...

Michel lent me his good camera so I can take photos of houses for work (merci!) so I'm practicing, and the zoo in our garden is making it easy! 

I took the hummingbird one while talking on the phone with Jeanette, who happens to be the friend who noticed the bear picture in the paper. :)

Adventures in Real Estate

"Get there early to pick up the homeless guy's sleeping bag and stuff off the porch." That was the advice I got before showing a house a few days ago.

Huh?

I got there well before the potential buyers and had just enough time to move the sleeping bag, hide the cords he was stealing electricity with, and gather the mounds of junk food wrappers. Mounds.

It didn't feel wrong to hide this evidence because once someone buys and is living in this home, no one's going to be squatting on the ground-level back porch.

But their first question to me was, "So... what can you tell us about the soup kitchen around the corner?"

Then, as they're measuring the rooms in this house they've fallen in love with, they notice that about twenty people have come in and out of the beautiful clump of trees across the street. In with a back-pack, out with nothing. It seemed like a place where these wanderers could unload their burdens, literally and figuratively, judging by the colourful conversation emanating from the leaves. I was fascinated and would have enjoyed the sociology lesson if I hadn't been in the hood to sell a house.

And I just might have, had these smart shoppers not driven around the corner and noticed Hilltop, our local halfway house. I knew it was in the vicinity, but not that close or I would've mentioned it when they showed concern over all the dreadlocked activity going down. I'm glad they saw it now instead of weeks into a contract, though.

But during the two hours they were imagining their furniture in this house, I couldn't stop thinking about the tube of Anbesol I found among the candy wrappers, remembering how awful my recent experience with toothache was. Anbesol wouldn't have touched the pain - I used Nick's leftover Percocet! All the junk this guy eats doesn't help I'm sure, but here in America, crap food is the cheapest thing you can buy.

How do you get out of this horrible cycle? How do you get into it in the first place? If you had a tight group of friends in the same situation, would you even want to get out of it? What's society's role in breaking the cycle? I think the soup kitchen is great - we've served dinner there and Cayenne helped plant their homegrown garden - but is feeding them daily healthy meals keeping them on the streets?

Probably not, but these were the thoughts going through my mind as I remade his bed. I tipped the wheelbarrow back on its side like he'd had it, hung up the ratty towel, and then, not 10 ft from his sleeping bag, nearly stepped into a huge pile of bear poop.

Petey

The Plum Thief...

                                                                       P.T. for short...

...or Petey.

Racing to School

You know you live in a bike-crazy town when the start of school is postponed a day because the US Pro Cycling Challenge is in town. Their 2012 race began here on Monday the 20th, and everything else pretty much stopped.

But on Tuesday, our 6th and 5th graders packed their school supplies, got up early and told me to "Chop! Chop!" so they wouldn't be late.

On Friday, Acacia informed me that there were only 40 more weeks left in the school year.

Lawd Ha' Mercy!!

The race coming through  Durango, seen here at J-Bo's corner.

This is War

When I heard part of the rock wall tumble down the stairs Friday night, my first thought was, "Oh no you don't, Bear... Those plums are MINE!" I didn't exactly go outside and tell him that. I actually first had a heart attack. Looking up and seeing a bear is always a bit disconcerting. Then, with my heart pounding in my throat, I locked the doors because the bears around here can open them. As a matter of fact, Ilona's neighbor had one in the house the other day. The bear opened the garage door - from the bottom! - came into the house, opened the fridge and helped himself. I kid you not.

Thing is, Cayenne and I had already transformed all those gorgeous Reine Claude plums into jam and tarts and sorbet... in our minds, at least. The tree was so laden after our warm frost-free spring the branches were bowing to us. 

Saturday morning revealed that he had enjoyed some of our plums, and judging by the pits in the massive pile-o-poop he left for us, this hadn't been his first trip. Apparently, he'd also visited our apple tree and many of the acorn scrub oaks. 

So the girls and I picked about one hundred of the ripest plums that evening, hoping he'd leave the tree alone in favour of a different tree with riper fruit. We also sent a Diarrhea Curse his way: "You will pay for this sacrilege with the squirts!!"

He broke a couple of small branches that first night.

(We'll save the wall for Nick...)

This morning had more surprises for us. Our harvest-of-the-ripest did not work, and seems to have brought out the beast in him. He destroyed a third of the tree. Branches lay twisted and broken at her feet, my Reine standing nobly with open wounds.

But it seems our curse worked.