COLORADO COLLEEN: Phoenix of the forest

Native Americans called aspens “the tree that whispers to itself.”
It’s no secret that each autumn, when their green foliage changes to gold, aspen trees shout. These popular poplar trees call droves of people to drive to the high country to witness the mountainsides warmed by the wondrous amber aspens. Aspen colors coupled with Colorado’s bright blue skies, evergreens and mountain backdrops create the scenic stuff calendars are made on.
The species populus tremuloides is commonly known as quaking aspen. Some locals call aspen quakies, an allusion to the trees’ shimmering leaves. The quaking comes from a hinge attaching the leaf that allows the leaf stem to flex and flutter in even a slight breeze.
Aspen is one of the most readily identifiable trees, and the aspen leaf’s simple shape--not unlike a heart--is a symbol synonymous with Colorado. Aspens are not exclusive to Colorado. In fact, they’re the most widely distributed tree on the continent.


BRANCHING OUT

Identity is a question at the core of a friendly debate concerning aspen. Individual aspens are either female or male. Only the rare aspen forms from a seed. In a process known as suckering, most aspen clone from laterally spreading root suckers with identical DNA. The stems rise out of the ground and appear as individual trees; but one theory holds that they actually are all attached.
In 1992, a 122-acre male aspen clone was discovered in Utah. The clone includes 47,000 trees and weighs about 13 million pounds. University of Colorado biology professor Michael Grant nicknamed the clone Pando, a Latin word meaning “I wander.”
Pando gained notoriety when the CU professor suggested the aspen clone could be the largest living organism on the planet.
The theory that Pando is the largest living organism on the planet relies on the definition of a clone as something with the same DNA, but not necessarily physically connected. Another hypothesis suggests Pando is ancient, up to one million years old—not the wood, itself, but the clone wandering across the mountains.
In North America, Aspen is the deciduous tree with the largest range: from the mountains of Mexico to Alaska, and almost from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. Colorado’s average aspen stand ranges from 110 to 120 years of age, with a few rare stands approaching 200 years of age. Even more rare are young stands under 40 years old, which occur only where fires have burned or trees have been harvested.


ASPENS FORM FIRE BREAK

Colorado’s aspen woodlands exist at altitudes between 7,000 and 10,000 feet. Aspen groves tend to form on sites disturbed either by natural activity such as forest fires and avalanches, or human activity such as logging.
Over the eons, aspen have adapted well to dealing with periodic fire disturbances. Pure stands of aspen don’t burn because green, wet grass grows beneath, preventing a natural fire break. And after a wild fire, the aspen acts as the phoenix of the forest, rising from the ashes. Aspens will immediately sprout as the first new growth on the site.


ASPEN PROMOTE BIODIVERSITY

The nature of aspen trees provides biodiversity to the ecosystem. Aspens allow light to flow through branches, supporting a rich and abundant under story of smaller trees, shrubs and grasses.
Aspen habitat is home for a number of cavity nesting birds: Mountain Bluebirds, Red-Naped Sapsuckers, Tree Swallows, House Wrens and owls. Gray Jays and American Robins flock to aspen woodlands, and Cooper’s Hawk and Northern Goshawk can be seen hunting near aspen stands.
Deer and elk eat aspen bark in winter and young trees in summer, sometimes to a devastating impact on aspen groves. Cattle also graze in aspen forests.
Aspen also benefit the environment by consuming less water than conifers, and the trees could be used to promote water retention.
As precious as water is in the West, that’s key.

COLORADO COLLEEN: Urban Aspens

Aspen trees don’t fare well in city environment, where hot temperatures and heavy clay soils prove detrimental to their well being. Plus, they can’t filter air pollution effectively. Injury by hail, pruning and other elements render aspens susceptible to fungus, and other diseases readily set in. Quaking Aspen is the most typical species. Big Tooth Aspen can be found, but is rarely commercially available. Aspens don’t make good street trees, but can make nice accent trees in yards.

For those who want urban aspen, note the following considerations:
* First, make sure you’re selecting and planting a tree with a well developed root system. A lot of aspens are collected from the mountains, and sometimes the trees don’t have much of a root system.
Ask questions about where the aspens came from and when. If the trees are in containers, look at the bottom of the container to see if you can see roots. Sometimes, the aspen are collected with they’re much younger, but if they’ve been growing in the nursery for a year or two, they would have a more developed root system.
* Another key factor in successfully growing aspen is finding the correct site. Don’t plant them on the south side of a house or anywhere the tree will get a lot of reflective heat from the street, sidewalk or buildings. Aspens are prone to sun scald.
* Amend the soil. Aspens typically grow in decomposed granite. The key to successful growing is well drained soil. Local soils tend to be heavy clays, but they can be amended with organics.
* Water slowly and deeply. Aspen growing in their native habitat get a lot of moisture. Aspen in the city need a good watering regime. Water every couple of days after the soil has dried out--about every three days during summer. Like all plants, aspens need water, but also oxygen. If the site is constantly wet, the trees won’t get the oxygen they need.
Other caveats:
* Due to the big, woody roots that connect trees, aspens tend to produce sucker growth, especially when placed close to lawn areas. Aspen can fill in, so keep them in isolated beds filled with other plants or heavily mulched and you’ll have less of a problem. Do not mulch with cedar.
* Aspens are the shortest living tree species in Colorado. People growing aspens in the city should view them as 20-30 year plant. Some live longer, but not many.
* Be aware that aspens are prone to twig gall disease and leaf spots, both fairly difficult to control.
* For information about aspen trees, visit Plant Talk.

COLORADO COLLEEN: Aspens on Vail

Enjoy these slender, sylvan aspen trees on Vail, at left. We skied all the way to the slurpy bottom and hockey-stopped to say hello to this aspen grove toward the bottom of the run known as Whippersnapper.

If you're curious about aspens, check out my post "Phoenix of the forest" somewhere on this blog.

But bear in mind that I left out the most controversial part: Aspens have been on the downslide. When I reported the story, firs were overcoming the forests. One forester called it "an outbreak of firs." And many species rely on aspens for habitat.

Also yesterday, I shot a couple of less-than- picturesque images of a tree dying from Mountain Pine Beetle. This is a huge problem in our Rocky Mountains, leaving shocking swaths of rusty red throughout the evergreen forests. Of course, many voices speak out on this issue. I'm not well posted enough at this point to say, but I'll show you some photos for those of you not exposed to this blight. Some say that within a few years all the lodgepole pines will fall.

I don't have ready facts for you, but if you care about these trees, please Google away: I'm sure there's lots of information. One thing we can all do to help all trees is use less paper--so even as my beloved newspapers are evaporating across our nation, I can see that the electronic media has benefits.

Like blogs. (Can you tell I'm hooked?)

If anybody has any good sources on aspens, lodgepole pines, or Mountain Pine Beetle, please sound off here and leave a comment.


But back to nature.


Years back, beginning in the mid-90s, I wrote a feature titled "The Nature of..." for The Denver Post. They gave me a whole page every other week in the old, large broadsheet format. That kind of real estate is unheard of in the pages of today's newspapers! I wrote a main story and a sidebar, and they ran some wonderful art to illustrate the pieces. I was thrilled to be writing about subject matter I cared about profoundly. At the time, the whole green movement was not yet in vogue. Looking back, I see I was something of a visionary, if I may say so, with a message of wonderment from the natural world of canyons and clouds, hummingbirds and snow crystals. Feature after feature, I looked closely at a plant, animal, mineral or weather form and attempted to distill its essences. Always, I stood in awe.

But always, too, I seemed to be reporting a message of alarm: butterfly populations and thunderstorm patterns and aspen populations and prairie dogs colonies and wildcrafted medicinal herbs all seemed to point to what we now know is true: Our planet is in peril.

Yet we are waking up, in earnest. We are saying no to plastic bags in favor of cloth. We enjoy cloth napkins rather than paper. Paper we do use, we recycle, along with glass and cans and aluminum foil and all the rest. We turn off the water when we brush our teeth. More and more people are carrying out more and more actions on behalf of Creation.

I'd been a nature girl since I can remember, playing in my yard, my neighborhood, the library gardens, at my grandparents' farms, Girl Scout camp. Researching and interviewing and writing about all these awe-inspiring aspects of nature taught me so much and introduced me to people passionate about their life work in the natural world.

Here at Bluesox headquarters, we're in the process of distilling those stories down to blog-sized bites. I'll share more nature photos, too. I guess I believe that by sharing the mysteries and facts we've gathered about nature, we can learn from other living beings and find ways to live more harmoniously on the big blue marble.

NATURE POSTS TO COME:
Rabbits
Lilies
Butterflies
Dragonflies
Hummingbirds
Lightning
Clouds
Canyons
Medicinal Herbs
Peppers
Zinnias
and more.
Thank you for making time to read.
Please stay tuned.
Namaste'.

THE WRITTEN WORD: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in another context

Several years ago, on assignment for The Denver Post, I wrote a piece on Aspen Summer Words, the annual literary festival in the high country of Colorado. The festival that year focused on African literature. I chose to focus on Wole Soyinka, a Nobel Laureate who would make an appearance in the famed ski town.

During the interview with Mr. Soyinka, he mentioned his friend and colleague Skip Gates. I learned that Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. is regarded as one of the foremost experts on African literature, so I decided to try to get an interview with him, too, to round out my piece.

I learned that--at the time, I’m not sure about now--Gates also served on the board of the Aspen Institute. He was a professor at Harvard. He was scheduled to travel with Soyinka to Berlin, to accept the City for the Cultures of Peace Prize award. He was, in a word, accomplished.

During our telephone interview, Gates was not only brilliant and articulate, but also polite, friendly, unassuming, congenial, and funny. We probably talked for half an hour. I used a couple of quotes from him. He put Soyinka in context: “Wole Soyinka is one of the few people who also could have won the Nobel Peace Prize, as well as the Nobel Prize for Literature.”

Gates singled out “Death and the King’s Horsemen” as his favorite Soyinka work.
“A thousand years from now, people will still be reading it. It’s a play of the stature of Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. He had a uncanny capacity to write about the particularities of Yoruba people in a way that makes the work about the experiences about the entire human condition. He’s not writing as an anthropologist, and you don’t read him to learn just about the Yoruban people any more than you read Hamlet to learn about Danish princes.”
Gates himself seemed princely.

Which is why I was deeply disturbed to learn that on July 16, an Anglo police officer arrested Gates at his own home—handcuffed him on his front porch even after he had shown identification proving that he lived there. He was arrested for disorderly conduct. I have to wonder how disorderly I'd be if the police arrested me at my own home after I showed valid identification. Gates denied a statement that the officer said he made--something about "your mama"--and I tend to believe him. Yet why would an officer trained in race sensitivity suggest such a thing? The whole encounter perplexes.

Gates directs Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. He is arguably our nation’s most important and influential African American academic.

Sadly, 40 years ago, Malcolm X put forth this question and answer: “What do you call a black man with a Ph.D? A nigger.”

The charge against Gates has been dropped. President Barack Obama intervened: He invited both men to the White House for a beer. The issue showed us once again a contrast between black and white. We still cannot seem to arrive at gray in these matters.

POSTSCRIPT: Sometimes, a beer can be an olive branch. Here's a comment from Professor Gates after the get-together with the president and the arresting officer at the White House, as reported in the New York Times-- "We hit it off right from the beginning. When he’s not arresting you, Sergeant Crowley is a really likable guy." A silver lining in the black-white skirmish: Gates' name is not a household word. And since these two men found common ground, they've demonstrated that other can, too.
PROF. HENRY LOUIS GATES JR.,

COLORADO COLLEEN: Mt. Melancholy

FROZEN WATERFALL

in Colorado's Rocky Mountains between Denver and Vail. Old Man Winter hasn't had his last word with us yet.

VIEW FROM THE PORCH -- Winter or Spring? In Denver, Colorado, Mother Nature can't decide. This snow was so heavy, I could barely hoist the shovel. This was the most possible water content in snow. Any more and it would not be snow, but rain. We so need the precipitation, so the moisture comes as a benediction. The trees on my corner seemed fine since the snow wa mostly melting off. *** Elsewhere, though, roofs caved in, including a new roof on a library. I70 was closed both east- and west-bound; foothills had about two feet of snow. Got out of Denver late, and made it to Vail, to ski Day 21. Tomorrow is closing day on the mountain and several other resorts. But you never know: Last year, Aspen opened for Father's Day. And there's always the possibility of eking a few more days out of the season at Arapahoe Basin. Today on the mountain, skiers and riders seemed melancholy. The snow had held up surprisingly well, and new snow fell. Light went flat. At one point, we were like blind skiers, skiing through fog and small pellets of snow that sandblasted our faces as we made our way down.

GARDEN GATE: Waiting for the Last Frost

The deciduous trees
have not yet concealed their nests.
The aspen tree next door shimmers in full leaf,
suddenly.
The Emerald Queen maples have unfurled their leaves,
almost.
And the oak trees,
finally,
let go of last season's brittle, brown leaves.
The oaks are the hangers-on,
refusing to relinquish their old leaves
until assured of buds.
The lilacs down the block
have just started to pop,
releasing their purple perfume.
In Denver, the last frost date is 5 May.
My mother swore by 15 May.
Gardening cultivates patience.

IN MEMORIAM: Nuala O’Faolain

Colleen Smith interviewed Nuala O’Faolain for The Denver Post in 2005, prior to O’Faolain’s visit to Aspen Summer Words. A slightly different version of this article originally appeared in July 2008 in The Denver Post following O’Faolain’s death.

She had that lyrical, quintessentially Irish name: Nuala O’Faolain. A native Dubliner, she eventually split her time between Ireland and Manhattan.

“Writers,” O’Faolain had written, “are the nearest thing the human community has to spokespeople.”

In 2005, on assignment for The Denver Post, I had the good fortune to interview this writer, this spokesperson, this feisty conversationalist with the charming accent, the capacity for searing honesty and the vocabulary that included words like “gobsmacked.”

O’Faolain had a reputation as a gritty firebrand, but during our exchange, I found her courteous and funny, even warm—every bit the force I’d admired in her books’ pages. After our interview, as I drafted my piece, favoring one radiant quote over another proved my biggest challenge.

“Women of my generation in Ireland--I’m amazed that we came through. It’s so recent that women have had jobs and money of their own that Ireland doesn’t know what to do with women,” O’Faolain said.

“There is no role model for lippy, middle aged women. Women of my age are supposed to be apple-cheeked grannies.”

Which wasn’t an option for O’Faolain, who had no children—and no regrets at the end of her life about that choice. O'Faolain, second eldest of nine kids, endured a turbulent childhood. Her father was a journalist, a minor celebrity and a philanderer. Her mother fortified herself with gin, shortbread and books.

O'Faolain had earned a postgraduate degree in 19th-century literature from Oxford University, taught literature at University College Dublin, launched a journalism career embracing both broadcast and print. She authored columns, and eventually novels, a biography and two unflinching memoirs, including "Are You Somebody?” which topped The New York Times best-seller list in 1998.

O’Faolain wrote with vulnerable candor, presenting less than flattering facets of herself and her homeland. She came clean about everything from her woefully dysfunctional family to her flabby physique to her tempestuous love affairs with members of both sexes.

“There’s a reason why more autobiographies aren’t written, especially in small, watchful countries,” O’Faolain told me. “People have too many hostages to fortune.” She realized that her lack of spouse, lover, judgmental friends or close family members left her free to be unaffected when she began writing her first memoir.

“It was a wonderful thing that my life was so mismanaged and empty; there was nobody to stand in my way. I could afford to be reckless,” she said. “And I was under the absolutely sincere impression that nobody would read it.”

But read it they did, and in droves. Yet O’Faolain claimed to me that being set among the Emerald Isle’s literary crown jewels came with incredulity.

“I didn’t think of myself as a writer,” she insisted. “I had no literary ambitions at all, though I’m very literary. I’ve taught literature, and I’m an extremely snobby reader. I love the most demanding writers, but I never saw myself as part of that world and don’t still. It’s inconceivable to me.”

O’Faolain acknowledged her cultural link to melancholic memories and lilting language. We touched on Joyce and Yeats and Shaw, on Seamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh and Galway Kinnell. And when I asked this Dubliner how tiny, impoverished Ireland came by such huge, rich literary clout, she answered with a huff: “We had nothing else. Everything else requires something: paint or a musical instrument. The Irish were much poorer than anyone cares to remember, bitterly poor, and under political oppression. All of us were oppressed. All of us denied. England conquered Ireland and discriminated against the native Irish in education, religion, commerce, every possible way--all of us,” she said.

“The one thing they had and nobody could control and they didn’t need any money to buy was what they say. The Irish are good talkers.”

O’Faolain most certainly was no exception. We talked fast and long, meandering from one topic to the next, including a heartfelt discussion about our aching love for our ailing, aged dogs—her Molly and my Friday—and our trepidation over the reality of soon losing them.

“I must be there for Molly,” O’Faolain said, fierce.

Having established our common love for canines, the interview morphed into a spirited conversation that seemed to delight her as much as me. She valued discourse.

“Even today [in Ireland], social status and money are not as important as personality and personal charm. In America, people don’t feel the need to tell good stories and use language vigorously and with originality. Americans are confident enough to be boring,” O’Faolain said.

“The Irish are always insecure, always trying to win over people listening to them with charm. The Irish have a different approach to truth. They play with language. They use words differently. They ask more of the listener,” she said.

“There’s a loquaciousness and joy in language, but also a peasant caution. You can talk away, but you use the talking to hide; and you don’t let any real information out.”

With her revelatory memoirs, O’Faolain broke rank with that tradition. At one point in “Almost There”--her second memoir--she confessed to feeling 17 years old. When I pressed her about this admission, she said she actually felt more like eight.

“I’m not grown up. I’m hopelessly immature,” she blurted. “Scrabbling is a reflex. I don’t even want what I’m fighting for, but I’m forced to fight because I was always a child in too big a family. It’s me back with my sisters and brothers with not nearly enough resources.”

“Almost There” includes a poignant case-in-point. The author recalled when a neighbor gave the O’Faolain children a whole block of ice cream. Ignorant of the concept of refrigeration, the kids cached the treat in a cool culvert they called The Secret. Upon their return the next day, the ice cream, of course, had melted.

Such disappointment was grist for O’Faolain’s mill. Though adept at pastoral riffs and colorful yarns, she best translated sorrow. Which is why I thought of Nuala three summers ago when my dog Friday died. I still had her email address, but decided against sharing the sad news--not that she could not take it, but she’d shouldered more than her share of grief. I wondered about Molly.

“Melancholy is a conversion of anger,” Nuala had said to me during our interview. “I’m more angry than I used to be.”

Aware that her books had labeled anger as the Irishwoman’s disease, I asked her, “What gets your Irish up?”

“Right Wing Republicanism does,” she said without missing a beat. “Sneers and insults to women, the idealization of children with all innocence attributed to children. Injustice. Waiting for dinner. Cruelty to animals.”

Despite all the misery she’d survived in Ireland, and all the troubles of Eire, O’Faolain defended her homeland.

“The people are gifted in living,” she said. “They risk themselves all the time. They drink like fish and dance and stay up late. They live intensely. It’s a way of life I’m very attracted to and admire.”

And a way of life she profoundly regretted losing at the not-so-advanced age of 68. Last February, after working out in a New York gym, O’Faolain suffered partial paralysis. Later that day, a doctor diagnosed her with terminal, inoperable lung cancer. O’Faolain underwent radiation, but then rejected chemotherapy. On May 9, after some travels around Europe, after visiting New York one last time to take in a performance of Schubert's “Death and the Maiden,” after checking herself into a Dublin hospice days earlier, O’Faolain died.

In mid-April, just weeks prior to her passing, O’Faolain did an interview with an Irish radio station. By then, cancer had metastasized to her liver and also to her brilliant brain, rendering her unable to concentrate enough to read.

In the tearful and jarringly bleak interview, O’Faolain said, “…twice in my life I have read the whole of Proust…. But I tried again the week before last and it was gone, all the magic was gone from it.”

She said, “It seems such a waste of creation that with each death all that knowledge dies.”

In the despair surrounding dying, she said that even nature had lost its allure: “It amazed me how quickly my life turned black."

No surprise, Nuala’s death has left me blue.

In “Almost There,” O’Faolain wrote, “It is not what you have but what you have lost that links the reader and the writer.”

Reading the online account of the funeral Mass, I noted that O’Faolain’s family had brought her dog to the Dublin church. The dog’s name was not Molly, but Mabel. I wondered whether Nuala had been with Molly at the end, as she had demanded of herself. Whatever the case, the fact that she’d opted for another round of uncomplicated dog love bared her tender heart and evidenced her hope.

Word has it that Nuala O’Faolain’s next book will be published posthumously, in September.