As the century turned I was fulfilling a lifelong goal to live and work along the front range of the Rocky Mountains. Having landed what seemed to be an excellent job with a dot com startup there I immersed myself in the Front Range lifestyle with glee and gusto. Mere yards from the Bear Creek Park trailhead and not much farther from Monument Creek Trail, which I frequently bicycled to and from work on when the weather was good, a feeling of having finally arrived settled in.

With only about three decades of life remaining for me (unless some life-extending biobreakthrough is discovered and developed to marketable state before the end), it seems prudent to begin planning for my demise sooner than later. Now is as good a time as any. The trick is to predict what I'll be capable of engineering before breathing my final breath. I do have a clear vision of the particular environment in which to establish this Deathstead. A high mountain valley wildern

One thing I expect to see happening in a decade or less from now is drone deliveries to and from the food forest. This is technology I'm looking forward to but isn't essential as long as UPS and FedEx and (ugh) USPS are still operating by that time. They've all three saved me countless hours and miles driving to and fro purchasing and transporting goods and materials I used to have to hunt down at brick and mortar stores–a convenience I depend on. Whether it's pickup service

Not far from here is an outfit set up to provide therapeutic outdoor-environment activities for veterans and their families free of charge. Situated on scenic terrain and populated with lots of native and imported wildlife species where no hunting is allowed, it provides a tranquil space spanning thousands of acres where its clients can unplug and unwind at their leisure without having to navigate tourist crowds or endure chronic commercialization at every turn. I won't speak

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to live in a treeless environment. Extreme summer heat waves and bone-chilling winter winds are the first aspects that leap to mind. Not desirable. But having spent time sleeping nights in the San Luis Valley I do know that the unobstructed views are inspiring, especially where the dark sky rating is Bortle Class 1 or 2. Maybe just a camp set up there is the best way to get big, deep, dark sky fixes. A flat parking place, with water w

Thinking back on all significant phone calls I've received, the most impactful one rang the old rotary dialer while I was asleep a couple of days after seeing the ruins of the homestead. That obsolete telephone was the clue, and the glue binding present to past, past to present. The embers still glowed, six months after. Six months of a landscape scorched, of ashes that once were home. The Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon Fire. A beast, they called it, but a beast born of carelessn

It has been more than four decades since a cougar was sighted on this parcel. In 2018 a student driving to school near a small town locked in the past less than 25 miles from here (as the crow flies) struck and killed a 200 lb male. The student was unharmed. Game wardens respectfully did not share photos of the victim. Driving to office as I wrapped up working as an employee in 2006, one leapt over me as I eased my vehicle down a steep, rocky cut. The long tail was the cl

A contented cat in kitchen window is a delightful sight in the morning while making coffee.

As of now, my experience with FEMA spans three years and sixty days. So I am speaking from direct knowledge of its dysfunction, which has been consistent during this entire timeframe. Specifically, its reluctance to acknowledge the economic value of standing timber losses in the Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon Fire–a prescribed burn ignited by USFS nincompoops gone wild. To date, FEMA has staunchly refused to compensate victims one red cent for economic losses experienced from dest

When the now-convicted felon in the White House withheld information about SARS-CoV-2 having made landfall in the USA before it was finally announced on Jan 31, 2020 because he didn't want the stockmarket to fall before he so reluctantly left office during his first seedy term, I contracted the virus, spent four days and five nights in bed not knowing what the hell was happening to me, followed by several months experiencing the strangest aftereffects I've ever endured. My on

Last night's dreams were sparked from tinkerings in Nano Banana to create personal aircraft. The first renderings of a cockpit design in which the pilot lays prone on belly were not ideal. Then a dream sequence ensued about developing swarm drones to protect it, and myself. Moving on from that authoritarianist nonsense, another design emerged of a flying platform. Then dream sequences trying it out in some safe wilderness trial flight environments ensued. Before moving on to

Every now and again I think of adopting a burro and roaming the once beautiful land now so ruined by the USFS until I keel over and expire someplace no one will find my remains. I'm not sure why this occurs to me as something to do. Maybe watching the land heal would help me appreciate it again. Maybe documenting it all would help me accept the inevitability of destruction's ever-present effects. It would almost surely be a path to insanity. It won't heal much before I do e

Sometime within the next thirty years of lifetime, I'm expecting a personal aircraft to become part of my daily routine as a means to quickly survey the food forest from above for gaining a sense of what might be best done at ground level to maintain and enhance its productivity. Such personal aircraft already exist today but with limited payload and flight time. Maybe by the time I decide to get one they'll have figured out how to make them much more useful. Until then, it's

Dreaming in a dream, a moose eased up to sniff at my dreamed self. It didn't disturb my dream-in-dreaming self, politely sniffing before going on about its own dreamed business. Waking after spending a while trying to stay in the dream, hoping it would return, its quake lingered long enough to be recalled by the conscious mind. Happy for that, its aura persisted throughout the day, providing pleasant vibes while dealing with pressing realities.

Preparing the harvest for storage will be a major annual operation requiring weeks of kitchen work. A harvest processing cottage might be best for this than doing it in the house kitchen. A large pantry will be required for storage of prepared foodstuffs. Preferably mouse proof. Also essential, a good tub for soaking away aches and pains induced by the work required. Having a separate harvest cottage will keep the house kitchen free of mess for its daily use. A short bike ri

Another aspect of homesteading the new parcel is transitioning its arable acres into a sustainable food forest. Hugelkultur beds construction using fallen branches, leaves and compost has already begun while house design is underway. By the time construction begins on it, the first beds will be laid out and planted with nitrogen fixers like beans, peas, spinnache, lettuce, radishes. After they do their biomagic stabllizing the soil then small fruit-bearing trees, bushes, vine

The USFS loses control of about 7 prescribed burns each year. They acknowledge a total of 43 having escaped control to date of this blog post. As with all things government, I suspect these numbers are deliberate undercounts. Regardless, it's a pretty good record even if the numbers are a little higher. Still, it burns when they let it happen due to gross incompetence and criminal negligence, as was reported to be the two cases which caused the Hermit's Peak/Calf Canyon Fires

When I turned ten, my parents bought a cabin tent with screen door flap and we began camping in style at various places within the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge near Fort Sill, Oklahoma. In those days there weren't a lot of controls in place preventing close proximity of larger wildlife and humans recreating there. That's when I became enthralled by all things outdoors and natural. One morning after sleeping comfortably and deeply in the tent with my family, the sound of

Feral hogs had the dog all worked up in the wee hours of the morning. Chased them away twice. They balked the second time after moving away from me into ground tangle. At first I cursed at them. Then I wondered at my arrogance. They're here by no fault of their own, just like me. Just like everyone forced into a place and time. So I whispered conversationally to let them know I don't hate them for being who and where they are. A low grunt from the thicket near the stream bank

Averse to altering natural features of land beyond construction of shelter and supporting systems, it's still fun to visualize enhancements to the parcel for both functional and aesthetic effect, not the least being engineering part of the seasonal stream to always flow like an artesian well would. Something like this with its simulated spring source being an exercise pool with solar-powered pumps recirculating water from it into a section of the stream. But such engineering