Green

There is a green that is greener than green, and that green is yellow.

About three weeks ago, around the first of June, in one day we watched the pasture turn green. There were still patches of snow, but the sun was (finally!) warm, and over the course of just a few hours, green stuff sprang to life amid the brown and gray straw of the dead grasses and weeds. In the days that followed, the pasture just got greener, until you didn't think the color could possibly become more saturated.

Then the dandelions started to bloom. Just when you didn't think it could get any more green, the bright yellow deepened the color. Right now, the pasture looks like God threw a staggering quantity of gold dust onto a carpet of emeralds.

The aspens also have leafed out. They bring their own quality of green to the mix. They start out almost yellow when the leaf buds burst open, but as they drink in the sunshine, their color darkens. Years ago, I went on a backpacking trip down in the San Juans in late June, and we walked through a spectacular aspen forest that reminded me of JRR Tolkein's description of elven woods in The Lord of the Rings.

Even the willows have given up their early-spring orange hope. And as the sun goes down, the manes and tails of the horses grazing down there are back-lit and seem to be made of silver.

Lordy! Living up here is turning me into a romantic. Wordsworth would have loved it up here; so would his wife, Dorothy. We don't have the drop-dead views of the Continental Divide and the Indian Peaks (you have to walk to the other side of the pasture to enjoy that spectacular view), but Sheep Mountain to the west, while less dramatic, is no less beautiful. We are learning to love the shadows and highlights the sun makes in its various declivities.

To the end of my days, I will always associate the color green with quiet. Not necessarily silence, mind you. Right now, between the wind (more that a Wordsworthian "gentle breeze", the ceaseless buzz of the hummingbirds, and the swallows quarreling and copulating under the eves, the place is hardly silent. But it's still quiet with the best sort of quiet.

Snow

My last blog post was on the first of December, and it was about snow.

Surprise, here it is the middle of April, and this blog post is about.... snow.

There are two additional blog posts in draft that I never finished or published: a December post entitled, "Skiing in the Silence of Powder" and a January post, "The January Blizzard of 2011."

Lest you suspect that by now I'm in the terminal stages of Cabin Fever and about about to turn into an ax murderer, I'll let you in on a little secret: I love snow.

Even this late in the season, there's nothing about snow up here that will cause me to run screaming from the building screaming, "No! No! Dammit!" the way I did one time after coming out of a late-afternoon graduate seminar at CU-Boulder when it started to snow in May. Up here, we know what to do with snow: we play in it.

We are not officially in mud season up here at the High Mountain Lodge. That doesn't happen until Easter Monday, the day after Winter Park closes. But that doesn't mean we haven't had a lot of mud already. And the lovely snow we're having right now just means that it will cover the mud with an even layer of white. For a day or two. Of course, this snow means that the mud will just be that much deeper when all that melting moisture mixes with the dirt, but up here, we're into immediate gratification, so like Scarlett O'Hara, we'll "think about that tomorrah."

This has been a spectacular winter for snow up here. While Denver was basking in a drought-stricken perpetual autumn, we have been blessed with wave after wave of moisture from the west that has smacked into the continental divide and given up the ghost in the form of snow in our valleys.

The other day, we went over to check on the horses. It was a bright, sunny day, and it didn't even occur to us to wear snowshoes until I sank into the snow to above my knees. And for me, that's saying something.

I'm Facebooking, e-mailing, and texting all my friends: come on up! Winter ain't over yet.

Let It Snow

The other day when Julie and I were buying our season ski passes at Winter Park, one of the clerks said that the early snow had been the best they'd had in years. "It's, like, February conditions out there!" she enthused. And it's true that we have enjoyed pretty steady snow since before Thanksgiving. Happily, too, the wind hasn't been bad, so it's easy to see the number of inches based on the buildup on the railings enclosing the decks.

It's incredibly peaceful at the Lodge right now. About the only sound I hear when I cross from one building to the other is the crunch of my boots in the snow and the tinnitus in my ears. We're muddling about doing a lot of catch-up right now from the full house we had at Thanksgiving.

Reservations are sparse until the week before Christmas, when we will be jumping. However, between now and then, we expect reservations to pick up, courtesy of an incredible deal being offered by Winter Park: a two-night stay will net guests two free lift tickets at the area, and steep discounts for additional lift tickets. I expect that we will be getting a lot of last-minute reservations. Just remember: mid-week is the best time to ski, if you can play hooky from work.

The snow right now will make it worthwhile. Last year at this time, we were still seeing dead grass peeping through the snow in the pasture; not this year. The snow's already deep enough to hide virtually all the vegetation--though the horses dig down to it  quite happily.

Last night when I was driving back to the Lodge from Denver at 10 p.m., the wind was whipping up snow as I drove over Berthoud Pass. But my headlights illuminated the snow-covered evergreens rising on either side of the road. Because of the darkness, they looked almost two-dimensional: a painted backdrop for a stage play about the perfect Colorado vacation.

Or the perfect place to live. It was good to get home. And I didn't even mind shoveling off the decks this morning.

Horizontal Snow

Looking west from the High Mountain Lodge toward Sheep Mountain

When you live as high in the mountains as we do, directional dimensions can be a little confusing. Instead of the mountains being "up there," they are "over there"--directly in front of you. Clouds, too, don't seem so far up in the air as much as they appear to be in the next valley over, hiding behind a mountain, then drizzling down one of the valleys into the next lower drainage.

Why, even the stars scarcely know their place. True, the Milky Way still stretches across the heavens high enough that you have to look up to spot it in the inky-dark sky over the Lodge.

Nevertheless, it's pretty disconcerting to look out the window on a wakeful warm June night just before dawn to spot the Big Dipper upside-down on the horizon balancing on the line of the mountains, as if God had taken a drink, then upended the ladle in the dish drainer to dry out.

Up here, it's easy to believe the world really is flat and that the firmament truly is a bowl with holes in it to let through the light of the Empyrean in the form of the stars.

Consequently, we weren't all that surprised to wake up late last week to a snowstorm that had to come from a 360-degree torus of clouds encircling the Lodge. That was the only place the snow could be coming from: The sky above us was achingly blue and cloudless, but snow was drifting down quite steadily. It had to be coming from the horizontal clouds. No wind to speak of, but that snow didn't fool us; it was coming from "over there."

In successive days the weather got organized, and the clouds covered the whole sky. We had four successive days of pretty much non-stop snow. For the most part, the fall was gentle, though we had a few times when the wind kicked up. But over the course of those days, we got almost two feet of snow.

We bought our Winter Park ski passes last week when it was snowing, and one of the people waiting in line exclaimed that it was going to be the best Opening Day in many years. We couldn't wait! We skied the last day of the season in April, and we were going to ski the very next day that the lifts were open. Hoo-rah!

Alas, it was not to be. I had a choir rehearsal in Denver Tuesday evening, and Julie and I went down that morning to work on cleaning our old house and getting it ready to sell. It was balmy and warm (relatively) in Denver, but in mid-afternoon, Julie got a call from somebody wanting to spend the night at the Lodge because CDOT had closed Berthoud Pass and I-70 west of Denver.

So we spent the night with friends, and by the time we got back to the Lodge the next day, it was mid-afternoon. And today we spent time getting ready for guests this weekend. But even with the disappointment of not making Opening Day, there was some consolation in the sunset we experienced that night after the snow had cleared. You can't grumble too hard.

So we have yet to get our ski-legs under us. We are, however, within days of hitting the slopes. The next time the clouds band around the Lodge, we'll know to start sharpening those ski edges. It's only a matter of time.

Thank you, soldiers and veterans

Well, we're almost to November 10. If the weather holds, we expect a lodge-full of active military personnel and veterans for Veterans Day. The weather forecast is for snow, and we've already had a few cancellations, but even so, we're going to have a lot of wonderful people visiting the High Mountain Lodge.

Last week, the pool boiler went the way of all flesh, and we wrestled the installation of a new one with the help of friends. We left it firing merrily when we went off to a B&B conference in Colorado Springs, and if we're lucky, when we get back to the lodge, it will have successfully raised the pool temp above the temperature of a November Colorado mountain stream. It will be just in time for soldiers, vets, and their families to enjoy.

It's hard to find another group of people who have made such personal sacrifices for our country. We're honored to welcome them to the lodge and hope to thank them personally when they arrive.

Unexpected Beauty

It was not a dark and stormy night but a damp and chilly afternoon at the High Mountain Lodge. Who knew that the sun, obliterated by the clouds, still had enough gumption to turn the brown, dead fields into gold this afternoon....

Frequently it gets so staggeringly beautiful up here that you wonder if the Chamber of Commerce has a contract with some hideously expensive Hollywood special-effects company--as if the Winter Park/Fraser Valley C of C had enough money to conspire with the Big Boys to turn the valley spectacular at any season--including our current slow time....

Not that the Big Boys could pull this one off. They don't have enough imagination.

We live in a place where nature's gestures are overly large and embarrassingly dramatic. The clouds that in any other place would soar overhead, unreachable, here drizzle down the valleys like spilled buttermilk looking for a low place to sour the floorboards in the kitchen.

And, if the sights don't sock you in the eye, the smells in our valley would put a Paris perfumery to shame. Fallen wet aspen leaves have an indescribable dark aphrodisiacal musk to them. It doesn't take much for them to rot and become soil, but in the magical few weeks after they've given up dazzling our vision with their incomparable fall color and fallen to the ground, they ravage our nose instead of our eyes.

It's no wonder all the large mammals lose their minds this time of year. The elk go into rut and start to bugle; the foxes down in the willows scream at the drop of the hat; the moose do creepy moosey-rut things like destroying outhouses; and the coyotes, lordy, the coyotes behave like freshman frat boys having their first kegger.

When everything seems to be dying, the animals give the lie to the season. This is one of the most fertile times of the year. The colder it gets up here, the more life deepens, and when the snow is an even blanket hiding all that life, we'll be skiing on our future spring.

Curse you, Marie Callender!

Yesterday in the late afternoon when I was relaxing from doing one of the innumerable chores around the Lodge, I took a break to watch Stupid TV. I don't know what channel it was or what the program was about: it was TV, and hence, stupid.

But I do remember that between episodes, most of the commercials were about food. There was the inevitable ad about that KFC sandwich that doesn't have bread (NB: I actually broke down in shame and ordered and ate one of them. Neither the flavor nor the grease justify the guilt factor. Skip this one.) Then the ads segued to pizza. But I met my waterloo when the ads for Marie Callender's chicken pot pies came on the TV.

"Curse you, Marie Callender!" I shrieked at the top of my lungs (though the imperative verb I used wasn't "curse"). I was so hungry and those pies looked so good. But instead of driving to the Safeway and buying one of her damned Chicken Pot Pies, I decided to make my own.

Here's my recipe:

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F

Crust:

You will need a deep-dish pie plate. If you don't have one, get one. Glass is good.

Put 2 cups flour and a teaspoon of salt in a food processor equipped with the pastry blade; Turn it on.

Gradually add 2 sticks (1/2 lb) butter, cut into manageable pats--about 1-2 tbsp each, and dropped individually through the feeding tube of the processor.

After you've added all the butter, process until the mixture is thoroughly incorporated. It will look like corn meal. If you're not from the south and have never seen cornmeal, think a crumbly mixture of flour and butter.

Gradually add about 1/4 cup of very cold water. Process on pulse. The water should encourage the flour/butter mixture to form a ball.

Stop processing and, after removing the pastry blade from the machine, scoop the dough out onto plastic wrap. Chill in the fridge for at least one hour before rolling out.

Sauce

Microwave or otherwise heat to scalding 2-3 cups of milk. Hold at temperature.

Melt in a medium saucepan 1/4 lb (1 stick) of butter.

When the butter is bubbling, gradually stir in enough flour to form a bubbly paste in the bottom of the pan. It will take 1/4 and 1/2 cup of flour. You basically want a mixture that holds together on the bottom of the saucepan and makes you wonder if you added too much flour. Let the mixture cook for at least a minute or so (this is so the flour will cook and the sauce won't taste like that nasty milk gravy you had at your aunt's house last Thanksgiving). Then sloooowly add the hot milk, whisking it into the butter/flour (snooty cooks call it a "roux") mixture.

The sauce will dramatically thicken almost immediately. Add a very finely diced medium onion, or 2 tablespoons of dried onion to the sauce. Grate half a clove of nutmeg into the sauce. Correct the seasoning for salt--it will probably take at least a teaspoon.

Throw in 1 bay leaf and stir into the sauce. Let the sauce rest. Don't forget to fish the bayleaf out before you proceed with the recipe, or one of your guests will have a nasty surprise.

Final Prep


Sauté 3 chicken thighs or 2 chicken breasts in a butter/olive oil mixture. When done through but not dry, cut into small cubes. Add to sauce.

Microwave 2 cups of mixed frozen vegetables. Add them to the sauce. Don't worry about excess moisture.

Get the dough out of the fridge. Divide into two parts.

Roll out the 1st piece of dough to about 1/8 inch in thickness and line the bottom of the baking dish. Ignore the overhanging dough for now. (For an extra-crispy bottom crust, paint the bottom of the pie pan with melted butter before lining it with the crust.)

HINT: The easiest way to roll out pie crust is on a pastry cloth (think a linen or cotton dish towel that's been rubbed well with flour). After rolling the dough out to the proper thickness, position your rolling pin at the edge of the dough, then using the pastry cloth, drape the dough over the rolling pin. Then roll the dough (minus the pastry cloth) onto the pin. You can then unroll the dough into the pie pan with a minimal amount of grief.

Pour the sauce/chicken/veggie mixture into the dish.

Roll out and cover the pie with the top crust.

Trim and make look pretty. Pierce the top crust to allow steam to escape.

Cooking

Place the pie in the preheated 425-degree oven on a baking sheet for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, decrease oven temperature to 325-degrees and bake for 50 minutes.

Let the pie rest for a few minutes before serving, but don't forget to salute Marie Callendar when you cut into it.

Commentary

The pie crust is really the secret here, and food processors are the secret weapon. If you don't have one, you can use the old "cut the butter into the flour using two knives in a scissor motion," or you can use a pastry masher. My mother used the latter, and you could have taken her pie dough out of the bowl, rolled it out, then sewn the pieces up into shoes that would hold together better than leather.  For all I know, that's what they did during the Depression to keep children shod. But the food processor keeps the butter/flour mixture filled with air, so that when the butter melts into the flour during cooking, the result is thin flakes of tender crusty goodness.

The sauce is a classic béchamel--basically gravy with an attitude.

Instead of frozen mixed veggies, you can add just about any fresh veggies you want: broccoli or broccolini both work well. If you use fresh vegetables, nuke 'em until they are are tender and then dice them coarsely before adding them to the sauce. If you don't have a microwave, then steam the veggies. Whatever you do, DO NOT BOIL THEM. That's just wrong, and it sucks all the goodness out of the veggies.

Enjoy!