Lime Creek Odyssey , livre ebook

L IME C REEK O DYSSEY
STEVEN J. MEYERS
Text and cover photograph 1989, 2016 by Steven J. Meyers
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.
Lime Creek Odyssey was first published in the United States by Fulcrum, Inc., Golden, Colorado, in 1989. Published by WestWinds Press, an imprint of Graphic Arts Books, in 2016 with new typography and design but without the portfolio of photographs.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meyers, Steven J.
Lime Creek odyssey / Steven J. Meyers.
pages cm
First published in the United States by Fulcrum, Inc., Golden, Colorado, in 1989 -Title page verso.
ISBN 978-0-87108-325-8 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-87108-326-5 (e-book)
ISBN: 978-0-87108-327-2 (hardbound)
1. Natural history-Colorado-Lime Creek Region. 2. Lime Creek Region (Colo.)-Description and travel. 3. Lime Creek Region (Colo.)-Environmental conditions. 4. Nature-Effect of human beings on-Colorado-Lime Creek Region. 5. Meyers, Steven J.-Travel-Colorado-Lime Creek Region. 6. Meyers, Steven J.-Philosophy. 7. Philosophy of nature. I. Title.
QH105.C6M47 2016
508.788 38-dc23
2015034594
Designed by Vicki Knapton
WestWinds Press
An imprint of

P.O. Box 56118
Portland, OR 97238-6118
(503) 254-5591
www.graphicartsbooks.com
For K. B .
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Preface to the WestWinds Press Edition
Introduction
CHAPTER 1
O F M EATBALLS , S WISS C HEESE , AND S PONGES
CHAPTER 2
A G OTHIC R OMANCE
CHAPTER 3
T HE F ISHER AND THE M ARTEN
CHAPTER 4
O N B EING H UMAN
CHAPTER 5
T HOUGHTS F ROM THE R EAL W ORLD
CHAPTER 6
W EAVING THE T APESTRY
CHAPTER 7
T HE N AMING OF N AMES
Epilogue
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T he writing of a book is no simple thing, and often it seems that it is as difficult to properly thank all of those whose contributions have made a book possible as it is to write the book itself.
A book like this one that is an amalgam of memoir and essay belongs as much to those whose lives have intersected with the author s as it belongs to the author himself, and each is deserving of recognition and gratitude. If I were to attempt such recognition here, if I were to do so as thoroughly as the circumstances that allowed this book to come into being require, I fear this acknowledgment would be as long as the book itself! I cannot name you all, but I will begin by expressing my gratitude to all who have made both the book and the odyssey the book attempts to portray possible. You know who you are. I am deeply indebted to you for your contributions both to this book and to my life.
A few, however, whose contributions to the book are truly great, must be named. Not to do so would be unthinkable. First, I must express my gratitude to Karen Boucher to whom this book is dedicated. It was her finding me and joining her life with mine here in the heart of the San Juan Mountains, her unbounded joy in the presence of this very special place that contributed most to my understanding of what it means to commit to, to make a home in, to truly dwell in place .
My love and partner for the past twenty-eight years, Debbie Meyers, embodies the rebirth wished for after the often terribly dark, cold winter of Karen s passing-the new season of spring anticipated more in hope than in actuality at the time the Epilogue to the first edition of this book was written. Debbie is that hoped for rebirth, the warm, green spring of new life that has, indeed, come again.
And finally I must thank the staff at WestWinds Press, my editor Kathy Howard, and most especially Douglas Pfeiffer. All I have dealt with at WestWinds have been gracious, supportive, and hugely capable. It is their talent and expertise that have brought this little book back into print. It was Doug s desire to see it in print again, his efforts to secure the rights for a new edition, his gentle guidance and encouragement that have made this book possible. For the arrival of this new edition of Lime Creek Odyssey I am forever indebted to him and hugely grateful.
PREFACE TO THE WESTWINDS PRESS EDITION
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it s not the same river and he s not the same man .
-H ERACLITUS
I n 1986, when the first chapters of this book were being written, Lime Creek appeared almost exactly as it does today. A few major avalanche cycles after particularly heavy winter storms have taken down slopes covered with trees and opened up hillsides here and there that were once densely forested. Young spruce and fir growing in the protective shadow of mature aspen that had risen from the charred forest floor in the aftermath of the great Lime Creek Burn of 1879 are now beginning to overshadow and will one day replace those aspen in a cycle of forest maturation that is ongoing. But the green tundra that surrounds the stream s beginnings as small furrows of trickling water above tree line, the alpine meadows and dense forests of its midstream meanders, the narrow, deep rock canyon of steeply tumbling chaos that characterizes the wild creek just before its confluence with Cascade Creek a mile or so above its joining with the Animas River several thousand vertical feet below Lime Creek s lush green beginnings do not appear to have changed at all.
But the region the stream flows through and the man who steps into that stream are no longer the same.
Those who have read the first edition of this little book already know that an extended essay begun in the attempt to explore one idea grew in the course of its writing into a collection of small vignettes that added another theme. The first edition began with the assertion that, in an age when bold journeys to distant places seemed to have captured the fancy of many readers (often to the exclusion of reading about more humble excursions), significant journeys of discovery did not require great distance and even greater adventures in order to be meaningful. In fact, that introduction asserted, perhaps the best place for such a journey of discovery was one s own home, one s own region, one s own place . A few months into the writing, my partner and love, Karen Boucher-K. B., was diagnosed with leukemia and within a year, before the book had been completed, she had died from the ravages of that disease. What began as an exploration of physical place, a collection of tales set in a valley we both dearly loved, became also an exploration of the experience of illness, loss, and grief, and the discovery of rebirth and healing in the powerful presence of nature and in the awareness and experience of natural cycles.
It was this rebirth that was anticipated, hoped for but not yet fully realized, that was metaphorically represented in the first edition s epilogue as the coming of spring, an inevitable spring that would follow as it must, as it always had, a long winter in the Lime Creek valley.
The first edition alluded to environmental concerns with an incipient awareness that sensed a reality climate science would soon confirm. The carbon emissions that we d been pouring into the atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial age, that we ve continued to pour into the atmosphere over the course of the thirty years since this book was begun have dramatically altered the alpine environment. Surrounding peaks once climbed in deep, firm, hard snow as late as early July now rarely hold snow (except in their most shaded north-facing gullies) much past May. Warmer, drier winters have seriously stressed the forests of the San Juan Mountains allowing cataclysmic fires to rage with a frequency and intensity they rarely demonstrated before, many of those fires fueled by acre upon acre of standing deadwood the result of beetle kill. The trees of those forests once suffered less stress because they had been well watered by deep, long lasting winter snows. The bitter, subzero cold that was once common in winter greatly reduced tree-killing insect populations. As a consequence, previous cleansing fires had been less frequent and far less catastrophic. On the Atlantic side of the Continental Divide, not terribly far east of Lime Creek in the Rio Grande River headwaters, the effects of beetle kill have been so severe, so extensive, that over great swaths of land few healthy trees remain.
Strangely, wonderfully, the worst ravages of climate change have not yet appeared in the Lime Creek valley. The winters are not as cold. The snow is not as deep. Winter doesn t last as long as it once did, but vast expanses of standing dead timber have not yet appeared. The high tundra still absorbs and gently releases the downpours from summer storms. Other streams in the region now quickly rise and become muddy during such spates, but for the most part Lime Creek remains clear. How long it will last, I do not know, but for now the Lime Creek valley is a place one can go and experience the world as it was, a place where one can imagine that there are still regions relatively untouched by the ravages of human population growth, modernization, and the now readily seen as not entirely wonderful consequences of industrial progress. For now, for a while, Lime Creek remains a place of natural beauty where one can go to heal a wounded modern soul.
There have been other changes.
The child I wrote about in the first edition of this book, my son, Daniel, who once roamed the dense woods that press up against the banks of some favorite stretches of stream, places I often fished while he played in and ex