What a perfect weekend. My neighborhood bookgroup, all of whom except Scarf need better nicknames, or nicknames at all, went up to Kal's family's cabin in the Poudre Canyon. Just one night, but we felt like we’d been away relaxing for ever.
Blake and I drove around the corner to drop off the cooler, a canvas bag of games (Taboo and Pictionary crowded into the Scattergories box, and I remembered to bring the dry-erase board Dexy gave us for scoring darts, for Pictionary), another bag with goodies packed inside Blake's cave-box, and an overnight bag. He was in the finch cage, to which I'd added his favorite rope perch and piñata chew-toy, which fits on my lap, but we were seven people, two dogs, and a 'tiel in three cars: I scurried home and put him in his regular cage and we were picked up from there.
The first plans for this weekend called for RDC to be home, but on Wednesday, at an hour's notice, he left for Florida. Wednesday night when we readers converged to give the baby quilt to one of our members, I asked if anyone minded if Blake came with us. No one did; if they had I would have asked Inga's mother to give him his dinner and breakfast (as she had offered to do after September's Inga-walking).
We stopped in Fort Collins for coffee and met Papa Scarf. I'd met Mama Scarf before and seen little resemblance, and this is because Scarf looks so much like her papa there is no room on her face for mama. The coffeeshop, Mugs, had a patio, and I skittered back to the car where I had, guilt-stricken, left Blake in the backseat (in 60-degree shade), and there was always at least one of us and generally more outside while others ordered. Fort Collins is a genuinely college-feeling town and I wish it weren't more than an hour away, besides that I have no affiliation thither.
Saturday was just lovely. I had been up the Cache la Poudre river and canyon exactly once two years ago. It is more than two hours away, which is some justification, and this summer the weekend I was to have gone up to meet Kal's family and the cabin was the first weekend after Hurricane Katrina, when I could not justify a solo car trip for pleasure. The river and its canyon remain lovely even without my supervision, and up we climbed, and continued to climb.
I had had no good idea of the cabin's lay-out. It slept enough to sound big, but was called a cabin. Well, it's a perfect cabin. Yes, it has five double beds, but three of them and a single are nestled in a loft that overlooks the A-frame ceiling, sitting room, and kitchen. Two other bedrooms and a bath are under the loft. It's cozy yet ample. It has a kitchen "better equipped than mine" in one reader's opinion in combination with the kitschy tchochkes, secondhand furniture, pens run dry of ink, and left-over books that mark the best cabins. It looks over the Mummy Range, is unwinterized, warms up with a century-old woodstove, and is bedecked on three sides with patio furniture and birdfeeders. The south, Mummy-facing, A-shaped wall is all glass. And it's perfection.
One reader stayed behind from the walk because she wasn't feeling well, so she got solitude (well, except for Blake) and the six of us and two dogs walked five miles, had a picnic, and went for a swim in a wee pond. Actually, only the two dogs and one of the humans swam (my bathers just happen to be the same fishbelly hue as my nethers). The five-month-pregnant Scarf and 9.5-year-old lab-St. Bernard cross, Mija, did just fine on this walk, and Mija--also not her real name, but close--showed more agility and endurance than any of us expected.
We had split up meal-duties, so after the picnic we had guacamole and chips and salsa, and wine with sunset, and salad and lasagne and brownies, and Scattergories and Cranium (someone guessed "astronaut" after a six-second sketch) and stargazing. There were so many stars (and trees) that I could not find any constellations. The Milky Way was obvious, but we didn't have any red flashlights to read the starchart by and I reprimanded myself for not finding either bear. I did spot Mars, and two falling stars. Scarf's and my meal was Sunday breakfast and I made a baked French toast type thing. Someone else cooked bacon and brewed coffee. It was heaven.
Saturday was wonderfully sunny but clouds obscured Mars even as we watched at midnight. I slept on the sitting room floor, close to Blake on the dining table and because no one in her right mind wants to share with me anyway, so when Kal started the fire Sunday morning I warmed up right there four feet away. It was, again, heaven. Rain began, and if there's anything cozier-sounding than rain on a cabin roof I don't know it. Scarf left early, having another obligation (hence the third car), and we played another round of Scattergories. (My insect-beginning with J, the jaying mantiss, who crosses the street against the light, was rejected.)
Blake was mostly okay. He was a little nervous, seldom having been in unfamiliar places--he was skittery the first time he entered Formigny too--and here be'd dogs. Mija, by age and breeds, was inobstrusively interested, but the other dog, goofy and sweet though she mostly is, was, like the jackal she resembles, fascinated. As I sat cross-legged on the floor with Blake on my knee, she'd watch him, riveted, but as he got comfortable and decided he needed to hop down to prance on the floor (he needs his exercise), she'd immediately rise to approach, and I would scoop him up and she would lie again. I should have flapped him in a closed bedroom to give him exercise, but he got to hide in his box, and I gave away the more interesting feathers he dropped, and the dog was not the only one who found him and his preening and scratching and bowing and hiding in his box eminently watchable. There were no pooping incidents, and he didn't get bitten in half even once, or trodden on, and when he gave his discontented squeaks the only person they bothered was me, so I counted the weekend a success, Blake-wise.
And in all other wise, as well. What a splended retreat.