The Outside Edge
On Memmen Ridge, winter grudgingly yields to spring
Text and photos by Tim Miller
http://timotheus.synthasite.com
Spring showers bring green fields and many wildflowers. With this in mind, I took a voyage to a soggy, new dimension on Memmen Ridge during an April blizzard.
Winter’s last beard dandruff was laden with tears, and everybody knew it. Inches of rain and feet of snow fell for three mid-April days in the South Metro area. The air was cold, yet pregnant with the promise of immediate warmth. After writing all day while watching the precipitation change Castle Rock into a wet, white, new world, I stepped out for a snowshoe hike around nearby Memmen Ridge Open Space.
View of Castle Rock while climbing The Rock
My co-worker Carol Johaneson and her husband Mike had given me a pair of snowshoes to ease my addiction to outdoor activities in winter and spring. I couldn’t have made a better environment to test out the new footwear. As I trudged through the snow to Memmen Ridge’s trailhead off of Oman Road in Castle Rock, I noticed that people were out on their porches or sledding on any available slope. Their enthusiastic behavior was a distinct change from residents’ usual hibernation and avoidance during deep winter storms. These Castle Rockians knew that winter would soon bawl itself to sleep.
Memmen Ridge was relatively devoid of people and animals. A few lonely crows landed on tips of pine trees to shake the wetness from their wings, but they were the only wildlife around. I’d walked Memmen Ridge’s trails earlier that week, when the greening grasses tricked me into thinking I’d seen the last snow. Now, the ridge had completely transformed to a new dimension, in which white topping sprouted from every sagging tree limb. A matrix of sugar frosting had coated everything. I couldn’t find any trails, so I made my own with Carol and Mike’s donated snowshoes.
Like a three-year-old child seeing snow for the first time, I used my snowshoes to hop up and down the ridge’s hills. Winter’s gray chin hairs had stopped shedding for the moment. Everything was quiet. The deer I often saw on the ridge had disappeared without a track. I was alone on this desolate plain in the middle of the suburbs. Breathing in the chill, I imagined that Colorado had somehow crossed paths with an extra-dimensional world.
A few weeks later, I walked the same snow-free ridge again. Late April and early May had yielded a lot of rain. Gradually, spring had demanded preferential precipitation from the fickle clouds. Winter bought some anti-dandruff shampoo, had a long cry, and laid down to rest under a tree’s cool shade for summer. Still, this spring was unusual.
Just about every other day, the clouds lingered unusually long. The temperature dropped, threatening to turn wet air into ice. Looking at snow-addled Pike’s Peak from the top of Memmen Ridge, I wondered if humankind was witnessing
Spring flowers on The Rock
when the greening grasses tricked me into thinking I’d seen the last snow. Now, the ridge had completely transformed to a new dimension, in which white topping sprouted from every sagging tree limb. A matrix of sugar frosting had coated everything. I couldn’t find any trails, so I made my own with Carol and Mike’s donated snowshoes.
Like a three-year-old child seeing snow for the first time, I used my snowshoes to hop up and down the ridge’s hills. Winter’s gray chin hairs had stopped shedding for the moment. Everything was quiet. The deer I often saw on the ridge had disappeared without a track. I was alone on this desolate plain in the middle of the suburbs. Breathing in the chill, I imagined that Colorado had somehow crossed paths with an extra-dimensional world.
A few weeks later, I walked the same snow-free ridge again. Late April and early May had yielded a lot of rain. Gradually, spring had demanded preferential precipitation from the fickle clouds. Winter bought some anti-dandruff shampoo, had a long cry, and laid down to rest under a tree’s cool shade for summer. Still, this spring was unusual.
Just about every other day, the clouds lingered unusually long. The temperature dropped, threatening to turn wet air into ice. Looking at snow-addled Pike’s Peak from the top of Memmen Ridge, I wondered if humankind was witnessing the dawn of a new ice age.
Winter did not sleep well. Spring hung out like a wallflower. I watched three vultures perch on branches to dry the morning mist off their wings in the sun. Colorado had become an indoor garden, watered by the skies daily. The deciduous trees and wildflowers that bloom in profusion on Memmen Ridge were skittish. If they sprouted too soon, the remnants of restless winter might have frosted them.Nonetheless, nearly all of Colorado’s vacationing birds had returned by May. The state’s feathered residents had followed the old people south for the winter a few months before—perhaps to ease their arthritis as well—but now they were back. Bluebirds nested in the comfort of houses custom-built by concerned humans. Jays, finches, and mourning doves chased each other across budding groves. The spring flowers had finally begun to sprout. Trees were becoming leafy. This, too, was a new, verdant dimension of sun and color.
Then again, Colorado is a crazy trans-dimensional shifter set on random. Looking at the snowcapped fourteeners to the northwest, I knew the threat of snow lasted well into June.
Special thanks to Carol and Mike Johaneson for the snowshoes.
