Tag: Colorado

Flaming Wind

Posted on by Mike McLaren

Along the front range of Colorado we wait for snow. We have only wind, the demon that moved the fires swiftly and decisively from August to November 2020, through 625,356 acres of forests, which now stand only as charred splinters. Without the familiar snows of February and March――and sometimes April――the drought will continue, which means the fires will return in 2021. Yesterday, Groundhog’s Day, the sun blared and the outside temperature rose to 61°F. Today, the sun blared again with the same temperature, but the forecast tomorrow predicts cold. The two weather fronts have collided and now blow at 42 mph.

At times the Cameron Peak Fire raged forward on the back of 75 mph winds (Derecho), though during several days the wind surged at 116 mph. When the Mullen Fire (176,878 acres) roared down from Wyoming and merged with the Cameron Peak Fire (208,913 acres), Roosevelt National Forest along the Cache la Poudre River corridor could do nothing but burn to cinder. When the East Troublesome Fire (193,812 acres) jumped the Continental Divide and merged with both, Colorado recorded its worst fire season on record. For weeks on end in 2020, those of us who live in the front-range towns of Northern Colorado choked on the smoke that turned the sky black. There were days when headlights were necessary during daylight driving. Even now, after Groundhog’s Day, I am afraid to wash car; washing off the ash stuck night take away chunks of paint.

So now in the Centennial State we curse the wind and wait for snow, though if we get it the spring thaws will bring what would most assuredly cause massive flooding…

… and I live just a stone’s throw from the Cache la Poudre River.

California lost nearly 4.5 million acres in the 2020 Western United States Wildfire Season; Oregon lost more than one million; and Washington lost more than 700,000 acres. All three states recorded their worst fire seasons on record. All three states, like Colorado, are in danger of a fire season repeat.

The causes of the fires in the western United States are blamed on poor forest management and climate change.

Personal Accountability

Posted on by Mike McLaren

Trump is whole-handedly responsible for the insurrection January 6, 2021. He is also responsible for the five deaths that occured during the incursion. With his particular phrasing, the worst POTUS in American history purposefully incited violence and “wild action,” and kindled that violence over the course of months. Just as troublesome is that Trump could not have incited anything had he no followers. Thousands of people stormed the United States Capitol and took control of it for several hours. Would they have amassed in what many of them called “revolution” without someone giving them cause, on a specific date, at a specific place, for a very specific reason vocalized by Trump since his failed re-election in November?

Probably not, especially after knowing how the police handled the riots in Portland, Oregon (tear gas, baton beatings and rubber bullets in the eyes).

The ruction at the U.S. Capitol, however, was brewed over the entirety of Trump’s four-year term, his bombastic lies empowered by a political party that refused to uphold its duty to defend truth and the U.S. Constitution throughout his tenure.

The showdown January 6 was bound to happen, because the Republican Congress pushed it that direction. Had our Republican senators and House representatives not willingly acquiesced Trump’s ineptitude in the highest position in the United States, had they not aided him in perpetuating obvious and dangerous lies, and had they stepped up to the plate like Vice President Mike Pence to act contrary to the wishes of their “savior”――to uphold the United States Constitution and American Rule-of-Law――Trump’s ability to “enlist” thousands of people to his personal cause could not have happened.

Trump did lie throughout his calamitous term in the White House; his false claims were exposed day-after-day by reported fact-checks across the country. Statements he made claiming the 2020 election was rigged were determined by more than a handful of U.S. justices to “have no basis in fact and law.”

Still, people followed him, and continue to follow him.

Trump led the charge to “Make America Great Again” during his presidential campaign in 2016. It is ironic that upon his exit Russia laughs and points fingers at us, claims we are now an example of how democracy crumbles. Iran now calls us “fragile and vulnerable.” China touts itself as more safe than the United States. So many other countries have expressed pity for our plight.

Such statements and sentiments are not how other countries refer to “great” countries.

The United States has fallen from its high global perch because so many people allowed themselves to believe Trump’s lies, and too many still perpetuate his latest last-ditch fabrication.

Unfortunately, even after life-threatening sedition at the Capitol, one hundred fourty-seven congressmen still upheld Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, though the United States Supreme court decreed this was not true.

In Colorado, all nine of its congressmen admonished the January 6 attack on the Capitol, yet two of the State’s House Representatives――Rep. Doug Lamborn and Rep. Lauren Boebert――voted to sustain Trump’s assertion of voter fraud and electoral miscounting. Such equivocalness makes no sense; a person cannot condemn that which she or he helped perpetuate.

But that is the state of my country: divided by too many in positions of authority who persist without factual foundation to ignore truth, justice, and the American way.

Personal Cleansing

Posted on by Mike McLaren

It is said fire purifies, and for that my wife and I perform a ritual every New Year’s. We write all the things we want to forget of the previous year on strips of paper and burn them. This year, when we stepped into the frigid cold one second after midnight, my wife held a toilet paper tube crammed with thin strips of denunciations. My tube looked identical.

We stood oblivious to the weather and joined in the cacophony of our neighbors as we all whistled and cheered and yelled obscenities about the previous two hundred ninety-one days. Every few seconds small fireworks blossomed overhead, rekindled our shouts and catcalls, and though all of us appeared as only shadows beneath the streetlights or remained unseen in the darkness of our own yards, we howled united in a common cause–death to the Year of COVID.

I lit a small fire in a small portable barbecue grill. My wife laid her tube in the flames. I laid mine beside hers. We watched the tubes turn to ash, as if the rising smoke could wisp away all we had burned.

Against our better judgment, we stayed up two more hours, hoped the next time we opened the front door the world would be different, like Dorothy stepping into the color world of Oz. My wife and I knew better, but still we hoped.

It is said fire purifies; this year it cannot. Like so many others in the world, my wife and I carry too many unhealed wounds from last year: the loss of her dream, a yoga studio that celebrated its second anniversary only days before California issued “Shelter in Place” directives; leaving thirty years of our lives behind in a move from the West Coast back to the Colorado Rockies; the passing of a dearest friend, and the passing of the cutest little fella we’ve ever rescued from the SPCA…

… and the devastating fires in the western United States, and all over the world; the shooting of innocent people by policemen; the political destructiveness of a madman in the White House and the misguided elected officials who furthered (and for another two weeks will continue to further) his dastard, narcissistic plans…

… and the pandemic which killed nearly two million people, forced too many people into unemployment, has closed so many of the businesses that supported so many people, and which will persist in shutting down so many more as it continues its wave of global depredation into this new year.

The fire did not erase all my wife and I hoped to forget. We knew that as we stepped out beneath a clear blue sky New Year’s day and crunched through snow toward the path which follows alongside the Cache la Poudre River, one of only fourteen wild rivers remaining in the United States. Years ago the river was sacred to us, and once again has become another of our rituals, our stream of hope for the future that flows from the majestic Rockies.

After a thirty-year absence from Fort Collins—the home of our college Alma maters, the town where met, and the birthplace of our daughter–we have returned full-circle to start fresh.

Something inside me says the mountains and the waters of our past will cleanse us. Maybe 2021 will be better than last year.

Coming Upon Winter

Posted on by Mike McLaren

The green of summer is gone, the reds and yellows of autumn faded. All that remains above the Poudre River are brittle brown leaves that await their final fall into the flow. Seventeen inches of snow fell one week ago, but the only the bones of the storm remain in gray piles along the roadside, like roadkill wanting to disappear.

‘Tis the season of change――in the air, on the ground, in our lives.

In Colorado, Hell erupted to the surface of the Earth in more ways than several. The entire West is burned to char, and still burns. Violence among people still boils over the rim of the “melting pot,” and the POTUS proliferates violence and ideas of civil war.

Guns in public, aimed at the buses of a presidential candidate opposed to the maniacal, insane antics coming from our “sanctified”: White House.Who could have imagined that, one hundred fifty-five years after the War Between the States, the modern United States would relive one of the worst catastrophes in its history, a catastrophe indicative of Hitler’s rise, Mussolini’s rise, Qaddafi’s rise… .

Rome burned and lost its foothold on the world because of Nero’s insanity. My hope is that history can repeat itself so many times before people wake up.

My wife and I rode our bikes alongside the Poudre this afternoon, and at the bridge just before the intersection leading into Old Town Fort Collins we heard a steel tongue drum, beautiful and so much attuned to the slow rhythm of the river. I stopped on the bridge to listen, and to watch the fella who sat beneath gray trees and played the music. I stood longer, bowed my appreciation to the player as he bowed his appreciation that I listened. He restarted the melodic enchantment for my enjoyment. At the end, I waved good-bye. He waved good-bye. No sound; only the music.
It could have been an eternity. Maybe just a few minutes. He shared his music, I shared my enjoyment, and together, in silence, we shared our appreciation of one another.

I can only hope the U.S. election a week ago brings our country closer to an appreciation of one another, more appreciation of itself, and more appreciation of other countries.

Hi-Ball on a Roll-by

Posted on by Mike McLaren

—I don’t mind hanging lonesome, ‘cause I’m a hobo myself sometimes, and it’s easier to hit the grit alone than to feel accountability for others, and jumpin’ from a cannonball ain’t no fun.—

12:00 a.m.

The tracks in Fort Collins, Colorado, paralleled the main street, divided the town equally between east and west. My three band mates and I lived on Mason Street, one block west of the main drag. The rails ran through the center of our street. We always knew the time because the 2:30 northbound to Laramie, Wyoming, passed us every afternoon but Sunday’s. Funny, the whistle sounded so lonesome when the train made the city limit, four miles south of where we lived, but then sounded like a hell-chained dragon right outside the front door.

We spent a lot of time on our front porch, jamming and practicing for any gig we could scrape together. We got few, so we spent more time on the porch than anywhere else. We often hankered to be somewhere different, and so at 2:30 p.m. we’d step to the curb, wave to the hogger as he rolled by, and would then watch down the line for the first vacant flat, always on the lookout for the rare open boxcar.

The slowest man went first. If he stepped steady onto the stirrup, caught the grabiron, and made the flip, the next fastest guy would go. I went last. Two hours later, we’d be in Laramie, killing time until the 7:30 southbound came rolling. Being young, we never thought much about greasing the track.

Corvallis, Oregon
(2009-2017)

I’ve forgotten how many runs we made in my alma mater–been over thirty years since I’ve hopped a train. But every morning and every night here in the heart of the Willamette Valley, the train runs through town at irregular intervals. I hear the whine just a mile away in Corvallis, and when the train hollers that close to my house I start feeling like a hobo.

Yet, all I want is to settle down, once and for all. In the seven years since moving back to Oregon, Corvallis has never really felt like home, even though I own one. I still feel as though I’m only passing through, mainly because I’ve yet to find a job that suits me well enough to stick around for more than a few years, and because I’ve yet to meet people who can fill the shoes of the friends I left behind in California.

I’m on my fourth means of employment, and am hoping to return to the Golden State and find permanent employment before summer. (Jobs do not define a person or create friends, but they do provide a solid rail that allows one a chance to concentrate on the journey, instead of how much coal gets shoveled into the boiler.)

I don’t think I’ve burned any local bridges. My visits to the stations I left behind here have been enjoyable, cooperative, and productive. I was consistently upfront about my intended goal to be more than what they could offer.

And at this moment, as I listen to the whine of a midnight train, I’m hoping my hobo thoughts go away in another week. I’ve got my fingers crossed that I get this new job, and that it turns out to be the steady track to  a destination more suited to where I thought I would end up…

… ’cause I’m gettin’ older, and it’s getting harder to hop trains, though I can still shovel coal with the best of ’em.

Morgan Hill, California
(2017-2020)

Ten years after first writing of this blog post–thirty years since my years in Fort Collins)–I am still reminded of my days hopping trains in Fort Collins, Colorado. The whistle of the speeding train last night reminded me of my past “rail days,” and reminded me that at the end of this month, July 2020, I will return to the town where I learned to hitch an empty boxcar. I am going full-circle.

Of the seven times I have moved since leaving Fort Collins in 1991, I have always said, in every town, “This is finally where I will bury my bones.” I could have been satisfied to leave my bones here in Morgan Hill, but it just can’t happen. This return leg across the Great Divide… I hope my wish will someday come true. I will be happy to leave my bones in Colorado dirt.

Upon returning to Fort Collins, I will stand beside the tracks that run down the middle of Mason Street, and I will wonder if I am too old now to hop a train headed to Laramie or Cheyenne, Wyoming. I suspect I am, only in the sense that I no longer run as fast as in my youth, and it would be more than possible to grease the tracks at my age.

But I will dream as the trains through Fort Collins pass beside me, just inches away from where I linger beside the rail. Who knows, maybe on one of those days I will catch solid hold of the grip, will secure my foot in the stirrup, and I’ll toss my skinny ass into a rare empty boxcar, just because I want to test my youth. I want to set my pace alongside the train to find the right car at the right moment, to re;live the thrill of hopping a train. Who knows, maybe some day in the near future I will get a free ride to Laramie.

_____

Highball: all clear ahead, proceed at full speed.

Roll-by: means just that (and it’s a might friendly if you wave while the train rolls on by).

Hobo: someone willing to work, but only enough to get what he needs or wants, always moving down the road, looking for the next thing. Most hobos are honest and trustworthy.

Hitting the grit – to be thrown from a fast moving train.

Cannonball: a fast train.

Hogger: engineer.

Stirrup: first step on a freight car, under the lowest grab iron.

Grabirons: handholds on all railroad cars for ascending onto or descending from the car.

Flip: the motion used to hop a moving train.

Grease the track: fall beneath the train and die.

Put in the hole: when a train is stored on a side track to keep the main track clear.

Boomer: someone who drifts from one job to another, staying only a short time.

Crossover: switching from one track to a parallel track.

Ditch: jump from a moving train.

Mileposts: markers along the line (at regular or irregular intervals) to indicate where the train is at different places on the line.

Big Rock Candy Mountain: hobo heaven.