the parsley.blog.landscape.life

originally posted December 31, 2008

I’ve just returned from Denver again, this time not just for Christmas but for a family reunion on the occasion of my mom’s 70th birthday, just two weeks after my 40th. a wonderful time was had by all; and I am now happy to be home.

the connections with Colorado go way back on my mom’s side of the family, many of them involving a certain summer camp in the Rockies where my grandparents first met; several generations of the family later went to the same camp and some in the family have settled in Denver over the years.  my mom moved to Colorado the year I graduated college and has been there ever since.  the love of this wild mountain landscape is in my bones too.

but…the suburban sprawl is not my favorite thing about Denver.   you can look up and see the sky and the mountains doing all kinds of dramatic things, especially in the winter when it’s always storming in the high country:

but at the ground level…chain stores and cul-de-sacs for miles and miles.

the first night that the whole family rolled in from their various home bases – New Mexico, Utah, Texas; nobody’s left in the old hometown in Iowa any more – we all went to a nice chain restaurant that serves, among other things, bisonburgers.  some of my young cousins were not at all sure how they felt about eating something so exotic, and opted for chicken instead.

speaking for myself, I love bison. my fascination with bison goes way back, but probably mostly dates to a time I read a book by Dan O’Brien called “Buffalo for the Broken Heart,” in which the author describes how after years of frustration trying to raise cattle in the harsh climate of a South Dakota ranch, he came to be a bison rancher instead. he had just gone through a painful divorce, and called his ranch the “Broken Heart Ranch”; he found that the animals native to that landscape were better adapted to it, and the landscape to the animals, leading to the ultimate healing of a damaged piece of land.

without going into a long screed about bioregionally appropriate agriculture (and believe me, I have one ready) it might suffice to say that although I have eaten bison many times (Lindner Bison, Santa Monica Farmer’s Market on Saturdays, Hollywood Farmer’s Market on Sundays)…I have rarely had the opportunity to see them, you know, roaming.

one day before the big party, in all our errand-running, we got lost and came across yet another neighborhood of hideous mcmansions:

adorned with a fine bronze sculpture at its entrance:

oh, says my mom, we must be near that park where they have the bison.

me:  WHERE?? CAN WE GO SEE THEM??

well, we might get back here later if we have time.

lots of errand running and family time.  not a lot of excursion time.  but we did sneak in one little excursion to the Colorado Historical Society Museum, which was very good and we ought to have taken more time to see it.  out front, glowering at us:

and my desire to see the buffalo roaming only intensified.

the party went off well, most of the extended family departed the next day, and my sister and brother-in-law had one day left in Denver.  everyone else had forgotten the intention to go see the bison, but I assure you I had not.

we found the place all right:

but the bison were not there.  we speculated with someone we met in the parking lot that they had been moved, since a new access road was being built in the park. there was nobody inside the fence but a lot of prairie dogs.

well, you might have to take my word for it, but there are prairie dogs in that shot.

nevertheless, Daniels Park turned out to be a nice spot to have discovered. if you looked to the other side, you could see a grand vista of the mountains, and a valley in front, which my mom said was the Plum Creek valley.

of course, it was better if you didn’t turn around to see what was right on the other side, creeping along every ridge top:

down there in the plum valley, said my mom, I know a really nice little church with a cemetery around it.  you might like to see it.

of course I would.  my family knows how I am about cemeteries.

so, we drove down into Sedalia, a real place with houses and ranches not yet stamped out by a developer’s cookie cutter, and a real church, St-Martin-In-The-Field:

and all around it, a little rural cemetery, with all the quirkiness that such places can acquire over the years of people being there and caring about it, and not buying every gravestone out of a catalog.  some of the markers were homemade, a few were very elaborate:

the little sign on the neck of the bass reads: “Most people go to their graves with their music still in them.”

realizing that we were losing the light, I ran around as quickly as I could to photograph everything; another cemetery for my collection, and one that I really liked. although we had the place to ourselves on this cold December afternoon, it felt like a place visited and loved by the community, a real place.

I headed home from Denver to Los Angeles the next day, getting stuck in the Denver airport for a while waiting for a delayed flight: I sat in a patch of sun I found at the end of the terminal, reading “A Sand County Almanac” and thinking about what makes a place a place.

every time I start to think I’m only loosely connected to Los Angeles, a place where I wound up for reasons that have now vanished from my life, I come home from a trip and realize how the light and the crappy streets and the smells of the ocean and the chaparral plants have rooted themselves in my heart.  somehow, if only for myself, I created Los Angeles as a real place.

I’m cooking bison for new year’s tomorrow.  I had to go to Whole Foods to get it and it’s not Lindner’s; but it will still make my tiny apartment smell amazing all day.  Ten hours in the slow cooker with red wine, garlic, onion, salt and pepper, rosemary, thyme, and a couple strips of bacon.  I recommend it as good for many ills, possibly even including broken hearts.