Mountains, craters and gorges

This has been the week of natural, scenic beauty, driving across the southwest, up through Colorado and now in Wyoming. We've slept in the desert, soaked in mineral hot springs, peered down into meteor craters and river gorges, looked up at extinct volcanoes and imposing 14,000' mountains, and played music in backyards, bars, farm-to-table restaurants and ale houses, with time for reconnecting with friends and family along our route. It's been a rich time -- and reminds me again how many great places there are to experience. 

Looking back: Boulder, CO

Lost and found keys at Mt. Sanitas

Two weeks ago, I was in Boulder, Colorado, for the first time in 14 years. Boulder, of course, is a hip, educated, happening hub of nature, spirit and athletics, at the foot of The Rockies. But I'd forgotten much about the place, having come to associate the town with a bad/sad ending to a chapter of my life as much as place where I was introduced to many of the themes of my life. However, I re-remembered, driving down Arapahoe Blvd, ogling, at once, the beautiful Flatirons hinting at the mighty Rocky Mountains to the west and the new construction that's reshaped some of the city since I lived in it, how much I'd been privilege to in Boulder. When I first moved there, I was newly married, avid about bike racing and my new job with a sports publication, enthralled to be living somewhere where it snowed during the winter...and generally clueless in that young, naive, hopeful and ambitious way that tries everything and doesn't yet understand consequences. And so Boulder was perfect for me at that time. The place is lively: the natural beauty conspiring to get you moving, whether by two feet, two wheels, snowshoes or skis. It houses Colorado University, The Naropa Institute and The Rolf Institute, Etown and Chautauqua. Everyone looked and evidently is fit and beautiful. There are trail-heads and bike lanes and open space at almost every turn. Pearl Street was packed with shoppers and diners enjoyed the expanding shopping district (we ate at a really great new-to-me restaurant The Kitchen). I ran into people I knew 15 years ago, and people I'd met in India. I practiced yoga at the first place I was introduced to Ashtanga (the venerable and great Yoga Workshop) and sang in a place five blocks from where I used to live (and where I only sang in my living room). Change. A lot of life happened for me in Boulder. A couple more lifetimes seem to have elapsed since. We went for a walk through Mt. Sanitas park and I was breathing hard, not really out of shape but far from hyper-Boulder-fit, and had to laugh when a crew of triathletes went whizzing by (oh how easy it was for me back then to get on my bike and ride 50 miles or more most days... once you get over the 5430 ft elevation). Somehow, seeing a loose set of lost keys at the trail head was apt: how many doors you try and open at different times in your life, how many keys work for a while or a lifetime, how many you lose or simply turn in. Thanks Boulder!

A List of (Western) Birds: August Road Trip 2012

Jessica Feis photo

I'm a long ways from that college kid who worked summers for the Predatory Bird Research Group helping release Peregrine Falcons back into the wild in The Sierra Nevada. Nonetheless those summers honed my eyes for identifying an eagle or falcon at distance in a glance. So while our Come Ashore adventures didn't include official birding forays, I kept a good pair of binoculars at the ready under the passenger seat as we traveled through two national parks and more national forests and BLM land than I could count. Despite time spent in Yosemite and along the East Side of the Sierra, I did not see a Peregrine this trip. Nonetheless, I was pleased with many of the sightings. Following is a list of birds IDed as we drove, hiked and played our way through California, Nevada, Colorado and Wyoming this August (no real order here albeit vaguely grouped by family):

 

Crow

Raven

Wild Turkey

Turkey Vulture

Ferruginous hawk

Red Tail hawk

Swainson's Hawk

American Kestral

Bald Eagle 

Golden Eagle

Osprey

Great Egret

Great Blue Heron

Magpie

Steller's jay

Scrub Jay

Clark's Nutcracker

Loggerhead Shrike

Western Flycatcher

Western Kingbird

Western Meadowlark 

Brewer's Blackbird

Red-winged Blackbird 

Common Grackle 

Gambols quail

Mourning Dove

Band-tailed pigeon

Cliff Swallow 

Rough Winged Swallow

Cave Swallow

Avocet

Spotted Sandpiper

American Pipit 

Killdeer

Canada Geese

Mallard

Gadwall

White pelican

 Brown Pelican

Western grebe

Pied bill grebe

Sandhill Crane

Cormorant

Common nighthawk

Brown Towhee

Black-chinned hummingbird
Broad-tailed hummingbird

Robin

Chipping Sparrow

Song Sparrow

Pine Siskin 

Dark-eyed junco

Mountain bluebird

American Goldfinch

Lesser Goldfinch

House finch

Yellow-rumped warbler

White-breasted Nuthatch

White-faced Ibis

Coming Ashore: across the West in 10 days

Along Highway 128 in Utah

We just returned from our 'Come Ashore Tour,' 10 days of driving up and over The Sierra Nevada and The Rocky Mountains. As with most every trip I've taken, it took me about 3 or 4 days to really sink into the fact that I could let go of my routine and get into the groove of where next...but once I did, it was a full trip. A trip that included all of it: beautiful views and tired-from-being-on-the-road-too-long eyes, letting go of usual routines and developing new habits (including taking more pictures on Instagram than writing), soaking in hot springs, playing music at a variety of venues including living rooms and music stores, visiting family, discovering the wonders of Airbnb, revisiting former home towns, eating pie at almost every opportunity, cowriting in parks and reading the The New Yorker aloud across Nevada. We saw a good cross section of Western wildlife, including many birds (Ibis, Sandhill Cranes), native mammals (moose (!), bobcat, and at least one 'mystery ungulate), and a few lizards amid a lot of road construction. Amazingly, while there were definitely a good number of U-turns made, we didn't get lost. By the trip's end of course, the trip was the routine...  now it's going to take me a few days to realize I'm home. 

Come Ashore Tour 2012

We're heading for the hills! Come join us in Colorado and Wyoming and perhaps some other points along the way. I haven't back in these parts in years, and am looking forward to being in the mountains. As well as soaking of the views (and hopefully some hot springs), we're playing a few shows:

Thursday, August 9th, 2012 The Laughing Goat 8pm 1709 Pearl St. Boulder Colorado 80304

  Friday, August 10th, 2012 Spotlight Music Store - 6pm 4606 South Mason St Ft. Collins Colorado

  Saturday, August 11th, 2012 Coal Creek Coffee Company 8pm 110 E Grand Laramie Wyoming

Rex's Blues: Van Zandt, Rodriguez, Holland

A good song is a good song, period, not matter who it's sung by. Such is 'Rex's Blues' by Townes Van Zandt. It's a dark, bleak song about following one's own compass...despite the consequences.

'I'm chained upon the face of time
feelin' full of foolish rhyme
there ain't no dark till something shines
I'm bound to leave this dark behind" 
—from Rex's Blues by Townes Van Zandt

It was December 1992 when I saw Townes Van Zandt take a stage in Boulder Colorado. Barely out of college, raised on equal parts California fog, rain and sunshine, I didn't really know he was...and then I heard him sing. It was kind of like seeing Allen Ginsberg at The Fox a year or two later. Both men, pioneering and dogged in their pursuits, were very near the end of their lives. I knew it was big to see them but I didn't quite realize I'd remember these moments so clearly 20 years later.

When I feel lost where I am, I scan the past for such times. Sometimes, it's only when  you  look back over a life, you see you are being led all along.

So it's striking to me that several versions of 'Rex's Blues' by Townes Van Zandt have come to my attention in recent months,  both sung by female singers.  I've been listening to a version by Carrie Rodriguez, a polished, alt-country artist from Austin, since I heard her sing several months ago in LA. And this week I realized Jolie Holland, a true old-soul new blues/Americana artist of the day, included it on her latest album 'Pint of Blood.' Both make it their own—Rodriguez sweet and reflective and a bit more loyal to the origianl; Holland, haunting, howling and slower in tempo— while retaining both their own and the song's respective souls. Good stuff. Check 'em out: