Memorial Day

It was a poignant Memorial Day in Highlands as we continue to monitor Martha's Mom in her battle against cancer.  We have wonderful memories this time of year of her Dad, too, driving one of his old cars downtown, flags fastened to the radiator, on one of these summer holidays or at the Motoring Festival.  How he loved to get them out!

But those days are gone, as are the days when Main Street was packed and there was bumper-to-bumper traffic on this holiday.  Still, the Town filled up more than it has at any time since the coronavirus pandemic began, with relaxed restrictions in the hotels and restaurants now encouraging visitors.

We have entered that summer weather pattern in Highlands when daytime humidity builds up during the day and thunderstorms begin to fire up nearly every afternoon.  The pattern will be continuing all week, all summer:  Rain/Storms possible every day, with varying percentages of likelihood.

Yesterday, we drove up to visit Martha's Mom in changeable conditions, dark ominous clouds looming one minute, bright sunshine breaking through the next.  All around we could hear thunderclaps, as loud as artillery firing, and then echoing and rolling around the surrounding mountains like Surround Sound in a movie theater. When we returned home in the afternoon, the sky turned a peculiar yellowish color, a few big drops splattered suddenly down, and then it absolutely poured - what local folks call a "frog-strangler" of a rain.  The little waterfall out back roared, brown with mud, and the rain barrel near the garden beds became hopelessly overwhelmed in minutes, cascading over the top and pooling up in front of the new stone wall I built two weeks ago.  I realized that my next project needs to be cutting a larger drainage hole in the side of the rain barrel and connecting it to a new drainage pipe large enough to handle such surges.  The required ditch will need to be at least 40 feet long, so once again I will schedule a meeting with my old friend the mattock.

The weather forecast this morning seemed to sum up what most Americans are expected to be doing on this holiday, in four stages.  I thought the little graphic was amusing: 

We knew we would not be "Hitting the Lake," so we drove to Town to get an early start running, four miles completed by each of us, and Bearpen Mountain once again ascended by me; it is becoming a weekly habit these days, burning off calories and stress equally well.  ("Hitting the Mountain?")

Martha had to wait for me at the park for a few minutes, and told me she had seen some of the visitors who arrived in Town for the holiday, their oversized SUVs parked in front of every rental house we passed along our route.  A blond woman, dressed in the uniform of the privileged and with a brassy voice, was talking to her companion about a man with a mask who had gone by.  "That's ridiculous!" she said.  Indeed, few of the visitors were wearing masks, and they were congregating much too closely for our liking.  So we were glad to return to Clear Creek and practice a little social distancing.  And perhaps "Grilling Out," one of those four essential activities, although in our case the grill likely will hold black bean burgers or tuna burgers.  But plenty of my home-made potato salad, corn on the cob, and beans - yum!