Judy Sunde Hanawalt

Things I'm Thinking About

Category: Things I Love (Page 1 of 4)

Cabin Wedding

May 4, 2020 / / 3 Comments

Our daughter chose to have her wedding at the cabin. We loved the idea–we pictured a homey and rustic event, flowing dresses and cowboy boots, champagne and chuck-wagon grub in the mountains. We imagined a blend of present and past, new chapters in our family story and old childhood memories. It would be perfect!

Bride’s vision was a little different, though. She wanted a celebration of family roots and new growth, but in the couple’s style: formal dresses and heels, dark suits and bow ties, a white tent with linens and china, and a very long bridal veil.

The summer before the wedding, the whole family worked together to clear a space for the ceremony, put up a pergola, and prepare extra rooms to house wedding guests. Spreading gravel and clearing pathways replaced our typical vacation activities, and Bride and Groom were enthusiastic about investing in their future with sweat equity.

The ceremony site was on a rise behind the cabin, where an overgrown logging road curved up to a clearing. Looking to the south towards Colorado, a raggedy patch of dead trees obscured the view of Bull Mountain and the Rawah Wilderness–a lovely vista that we had not noticed at that spot before. In a burst of bridal energy, my daughter started pushing a dead tree, rocking it until it fell. Encouraged, she tackled another one. Soon her fiance joined her, making good progress on the unsightly stand. More family members joined in, one with a chainsaw, and when we had pushed or cut as much as we could, we stood back and admired the view that we had opened up.

The day of the wedding, a white, four-peaked party tent filled the space in front of the cabin, outfitted with a long wooden head table covered by a sage-colored runner, round guest tables with white tablecloths, sage napkins and rangy, romantic bouquets in rose and burgundy, and a square parquet dance floor. Up at the wedding site, hay bales lined up in rows in front of the pergola, draped with colorful Mexican blankets Bride and Groom brought from Albuquerque.

The little log cabin, down the hill and off the to west side, was transformed into a bar, and down the path a little more to the east, the large front deck held cocktail tables, a photo station and a gift table. The big cabin, with the only real bathroom, became the Golden Club, reserved for guests over 45. Cafe lights crisscrossed the tent, the deck and the front of the log cabin. Rope lights marked the paths between them all.

I was so caught up in all the details that I was still in shorts and a t-shirt when guests started to arrive. As my daughters helped me change into my dress, apply my makeup and curl my hair, I could see guests winding their way up the path to the ceremony site to take their seats on the blanket-covered hay bales. Crowded into an upstairs bedroom, we watched nervously as Sister-Bridesmaid pulled tiny loops over the long line of tiny buttons climbing up the back of the wedding dress.

Before I left the cabin, I wanted to give Bride a handkerchief to carry–her “something old.” It belonged to my Grandmother, the namesake for Bride’s middle name, and had a pink script “R” embroidered in one corner, surrounded by roses. Sitting on the daybed in the living room, our hearts were full, holding this moment along with all that came before–a momma and her baby girl, summers at the cabin, a dream wedding, and the beginning of a new family.

I crossed the deck to join the wedding party at the bottom of the path for the walk up to the ceremony site. My parents were in the UTV with Uncle to ride up the hill, Mom hanging on to Dad as they bumped up the path. We walked up then, skirts gathered in hands, on tip toes to keep heels from sinking into the dirt, giddy and excited. Bride and Father of the Bride stood by the cabin window, watching us make our way up the path. At the top, both Sons walked me down the aisle; I was floating. I was careful to take it all in: so many happy faces, sunshine peeking through cooling clouds, all the plans unfolding. It was perfect.

As soon as Bride appeared at the the top of the path, the first notes of Sunshine on My Shoulders played, and tears fell from almost everyone, even the famously stoic Father of the Groom. To symbolize the beginning of their life together, Bride and Groom planted a little spruce tree behind the pergola, with the four parents helping. The vows and exchange of rings was emotional and sweet, and then they were down the aisle, with dip in the middle for a kiss.

The bridal party lingered at the ceremony spot for pictures while the guests hiked back down to the deck and the tent to find their tables for dinner. I watched as Bride posed, her veil flying in the wind, mountains visible in the distance–the view she had so fiercely wrestled trees to clear a month before. 

As we ate and talked and enjoyed the first dances, the clouds cleared and the sun came out, slanting through the trees into the tent. The newlyweds and attendants hurried away with the photographer for sunset pictures. When they came back down the trail from the promontory, they looked like fairies flitting out of the forest, laughing and dreamy and pastel in the fading light.

The cake was cut, and I hurried to bring a slice to my Mom. She was standing outside the tent surrounded by Grandchildren, who were dancing and laughing with her. For this day, she recognized her family and she remembered where she was and what we were celebrating–a gift I relished.

After the sun set, it was dark in the trees. On a normal cabin evening, I would not have ventured off the deck after dark, fearing the critters that might be lurking out there, especially when I can hear the coyotes yipping through the woods. On this night, though, we were in a wonderland.

Lights twinkled in the big tent, over the bar and on the deck. Guests traveled the paths through the aspens to go between the dance floor, the cabin and the bar. They lingered between the deck and the tent, and music, laughter and chatter filled the air, chasing away lonely animal sounds. Fireworks, a gift for the couple from fun-loving friends, lit up the sky (and brought the volunteer Fire Chief around for a visit).

How different it felt that night, waltzing around in the moonlight, my long gown swishing past the sage, the dark woods transformed by the magic of the wedding.

In the following days, when the tent was packed up and hauled away and all the festivities were done, quiet returned to the woods. The space around the cabin shrunk down to its former size at night, keeping us close. The bouquets and flowers from the tables were jumbled together on top of the covered hot tub and the deck bar. I pulled them apart, hanging roses upside down to dry for Bride–now Newlywed–and setting succulents aside to root at home.

I made small bouquets from the still-lovely flowers to set on the memorial stones at the promontory,  telling that little group of loved ones that we missed them, and knew they were with us. The rest of the flowers I scattered around the wedding site, under the newly-planted spruce, and in the meadow where the tent had been, sowing memories into the soil, mixing these most recent joys into the rich family history already there.

 

Gathering In

October 17, 2015 / / 0 Comments

So far no bugling and very few golden aspen leaves. We are here a couple of weeks too late. On the road to the cabin, we saw a brilliant gold stand of aspens, and hoped that the ones just off the deck would look like that too. I came around the corner of the cabin ready to see them, and instead saw the aspens’ bare white branches against the blue sky. Not what I was looking for, but a beauty I had forgotten about. Memories of past cold weather visits came back to me.

It’s just chilly enough to make a sweater feel good, but the sun is warm. The stars viewed from the hot tub were bright against the cold night sky last night, and every few minutes someone exclaimed, “I saw another one!” as a shooting star trailed across the sky.

Yesterday afternoon, we walked down to the meadow, but the old familiar trails felt different. It wasn’t just the leafless trees or the brown grass. The landscape looked quieter and smaller somehow. The feeling was calm and still. We haven’t been here in fall for at least 12 years, so I may have just forgotten about this pre-winter settling, the growth and abundance of summer tucking back into the earth ahead of the cold days and deep snows that we can smell on the wind even now.

I suspect that I didn’t notice it before. It was just tapping at the edge of my mind this time. Twelve years ago, with kids ranging from four to fifteen, the woods were so full of our family noise that I wouldn’t have noticed this quiet.

My first thought was that it was the absence of wildflowers. In July, bushy purples, lanky pinks and tall, slender yellows fought for space along the trails and the edges of the deck with the white-blooming sage and lilies. The landscape was flashy, beckoning us to come out of the dim cabin and explore. There were abundant shapes and shades, and we spent pleasant hours among them, sometimes trying to name them—mountain aster or common, wild rose or geranium?–based on pictures and descriptions in the field guide.

In late October, the flowers are gone without a trace, even their bushes and stalks sinking into the browning landscape. Only the sage are green in their dusty way, but without the usual fragrance.

It’s a deeper quiet than just the absence of color and fragrance from the flowers. It’s a calm. It’s the earth preparing for a long sleep. There are animals around I’m sure, we’ve heard some rustling and snuffling, and spotted a rabbit. The busy, talkative hummingbirds have left for warmer southern winters, but we’ve seen a vulture and a morning hawk. The elk and deer are here, but out of sight—hunters say they turn into squirrels this time of year.

The cooler air and flat, dull landscape brings us inside more, seeking the warmth of the wood stove and hot cocoa. I’m hiding on a top bunk upstairs, but I can hear the talk downstairs: My daughter asking questions about family history, my son fending off questions about his girlfriend (“Can I read her text?”), my dad trying to fix the coffee maker (“Was it making normal sounds or strange sounds before it quit?”), updates on the progress of heating up the hot tub, board games being suggested, and a lot of comfortable conversation in our little living room, with snatches of country music in the background. I’m starting to hear people asking about me, so it’s time for me to rejoin the conversation downstairs.

When the brilliant, breath-taking blooms and leaves are gone, I see solid trees standing at lovely angles against the sky, and the subtly colored mosses and lichens on the exposed rocks, the slope of the hill, the tiny cactus in the red earth. It’s beautiful in its own quiet way.

As I move from the abundance, busyness and exploration of a young family into the more sedate days of an almost-empty nest, I’m seeing the beauty of this quieter season of my life. It feels like a gathering in after the expansion is done, and I am loving the richness and the depth I find in that calm.

August 18, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Wildflower Baby

It’s a rainy day, and I’m sitting inside with a cup of tea. Im feeling a little itchy after finding a tick in the cabin. It must have hitched a ride in here on our clothes when we took a walk to the meadow earlier.

On the way down to the meadow, we stopped to mourn a little baby deer that lay dead near our path, stretched out on its side like it was sleeping. My son had found him on an early morning walk, when he also saw a big doe with a living fawn hiding in the tall grass near by, maybe the twin of the lifeless one on the path. He felt the doe watching him, trying to distract him from her concealed fawn, whose perked ears peeked from behind a sage bush.

This boy wanted to stay behind as we continued to the meadow, outlining the fawn’s little body in purple asters, putting Mariposa lilies on his side and over his eye, and few yellow sulphur flowers over his tiny heart. I joined him on our way back up, plucking blossoms and handing them to him as he worked.

Nothing is obviously wrong with the lifeless fawn, out in the open alone. It’s a perfect little deer with bright white spots. small shiny black hooves, wide white-tufted ears, and long lashes. His open eye stares blankly, his tiny muzzle, its nostrils still, looks velvety soft. I wonder what happened? Did he get lost, separated from his mama when he ran away, startled by a noise? Was something wrong with him when he was born?

Now it’s raining so hard, soaking the little baby and the flowers around him. Sadness hovers at the edges of my mind. Just a baby, so still and sweet. It seems like a waste of a perfect little creature. I wonder if deer mothers mourn their lost fawns? It was right, I think, for us to mark his loss, even if he was just a common mule deer. Maybe his mother was watching.

A few days later, some of the kids pass by the place we’d seen the baby deer. He is gone, and they follow drag marks a few yards away, where they see a matted spot, the impression left by some large animal–a bear?–who had camped out and eaten the small deer, leaving only a few bones and a large pile of scat behind. The fawn is gone. I’m glad his life wasn’t wasted, decaying slowly in the grass. It nourished another life.

The world outside the cabin has its own rules and rhythms that seem harsh to me, but also clean and right somehow.  I am separate from that wild, natural world–but I’m also part of it.

August 17, 2015 / / 1 Comment

I knew I didn’t want to look at the black, spiky forms of dead pines that dominated the view from the deck anymore. They had been green and beautiful a few years ago, but the pine beetle had destroyed many large, lush trees, reducing them to creepy, gnarled sticks scratching at the sky. I just wanted them gone, and with them, the sad memory of how many trees were killed by the pine beetle.

I felt like our beautiful mountain retreat had been ruined by the bugs; the landscape was diminished and unlikely to recover. Those trees had taken a lifetime to reach that size. One of the largest trees still had a tire swing tied to it’s branch, swaying empty in the breeze. Sitting on the deck, we knew which trees were dead, even in the dark, by the way they didn’t move in the wind. They were rigid and unresponsive to the breezes that had the living trees swaying, limbs bouncing. The last pinecones, clinging to the bare upper branches, looked like perched birds, eerie clusters of dark, still shapes.

My sister-in-law and her boyfriend came to visit for a few days, and BF was looking for a project. He may have seen this one listed on a piece of construction paper on the fridge, where I had posted some ideas for the boys to work on. He asked one of them which trees I wanted removed, and then he picked up the chainsaw and started cutting. I didn’t really notice until six trees were already down. He moved to the east side of the cabin, and took down some more large ones–now with the help of Steve and the boys–about 14 trees in all. 

They’re gone. My vision shifts to the distant wooded ridge, and down grassy draws to new stands of trees. The ridge, though it has its own share of beetle-killed trees, is still mostly green and vibrant, with more healthy trees than dead. The meadows and grassy slopes are full of wildflowers and young aspen and pine trees, some of them already 5 or 6 feet tall.

I knew what I didn’t want to see, but I hadn’t considered what I would see when the sad reminders of the plague of tree-killing insects are gone. Recovery is already happening.

Dog in a meadow

Reclaiming Our Place

August 7, 2015 / / 3 Comments

The cabin has always been easy to love. Our relationship has had a few bumps–inconveniences, really–but I’ve felt only love and devotion for the place. Last year’s busy summer kept us away; I was painfully disappointed not to spend our usual summer vacation there, and I couldn’t wait to be reunited. As we made the long trek across Highway 80, I was excited to get there, anxious to relax and enjoy being there as I always do.

Coming up the drive this time, though, it looked different to me. Hip-high weeds obscured the driveway. The cabin loomed at the top of the drive, looking less welcoming and more shabby than I remembered. The fire ring was choked in weeds and fallen trees. Aspen trees and thistles were pushing up through the deck.  We’d neglected her, leaving her two whole years alone against encroaching nature.

Once inside, I was overwhelmed. The mice had ravaged her, leaving their tell-tale excrement everywhere. The harsh winter had claimed the water heater, and mold coated the refrigerator, which had stopped working. I felt disgusted by the mess, and fearful of getting sick from the respiratory virus, hantavirus, that mice can leave behind in the dust with their filth.

For the first time, I wanted to just leave. Leave the cabin and her horrible mess. This time, she wasn’t easy to love. I didn’t know where to begin. I stood in the kitchen and cried, praying to know how to start to undo the damage of cold and mice and time.  We just had to start.

One person started vacuuming, another carefully spraying and wiping up the scattered pellets with bleach, hantavirus in the back of our minds. Others were reclaiming the deck, clearing weeds, beating down old paths, carving our space out of the wilderness again. We  rolled up mattress pads with pillows, blankets and poop into a ball and threw them away rather than trying to salvage them. Whole drawers went into trash bags. A mattress and everything that couldn’t be easily cleaned was pitched into a trailer to be hauled to the dump. We couldn’t sleep there that night; about 9, we gave up for the day and drove to a hotel in Laramie.

The initial mess was cleaned up, but the mice were still there. We captured or killed at least 14 the first week, and the number rose to 20 before they were all gone. The cabin kept letting them in, harboring those little terrorists, expecting me to clean up after them every morning, disgusting black pellets in the drawers and on the counters, exposing me to potential death. The little intruders were bold–scuttling around the living room, jumping into the dog’s food bowl, prancing through my cookware and across my counter. I wasn’t settled, I was tip-toeing around, afraid of what I’d find around the next corner, in the next drawer, nervous even in my bed that a mouse would leap up on me.

My love had cooled. 

It’s not her fault, I told myself. We shouldn’t have left her alone so long. We should have checked, set traps, been proactive to keep the mice from taking over. It’s not insurmountable, we can do better next winter. But even if it is our fault, even if we can fix it, something has changed. I’ve fallen out of step.

My love had kept me from dwelling on the problems before; now they were all I could see. I strain to see what I saw before, the reasons for my love. Some things are still good. The hot tub, the log cabin the boys are building, sitting on the deck with a beer, the way the dog runs and explores and is so happy, the friendly hummingbirds, hovering around my head when their sugar-water has run out. I remember my love, but it’s stretched and pulled and unrecognizable because of  the anger and fear that crowds out my peace of mind.

I have an idea: I need to take a walk to the meadow, that place where I first fell in love with this place. It wasn’t easy and convenient then, before electricity, the well, comfortable beds–but I could overlook the hardships because I was focusing on the beauty: the giant aspen, the bubbling brook, the wildflowers, the big, open sky. I need to get back to that vision of this place or I won’t be willing to put up with the work of keeping the cabin clean and safe and comfortable. I’ll give up and leave and go where it’s easier.

We have an investment here. I can’t just leave it behind. It’s not just me–the whole family counts this as solid ground, a place that will always be home, a place we can always come and find serenity. I don’t have to do this alone. It’s all of us. When I’m tired and discouraged, someone will come alongside and pick up the burden.

By the time we were packing up, ready to go home, I had made peace with the cabin. The mice were gone. Holes were patched. We had a plan, thanks to a pest-control expert named Gene from Laramie, to keep them out. We decided to come again in a few months to enjoy a Wyoming mountain fall weekend, to hear the bugling elk, to see the golden aspen trees, to soak in the hot tub under clear, cold skies and then to close the cabin for the season. We want to return in early spring to open it up for the summer. There won’t be mice again–or at least, the cabin will have a fighting chance against the wilderness.

It’s a tension we have to live with, the balance between maintaining and discovering, working and resting, pushing back the wild and loving the wildness and beauty of this place. 

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