As planned, “Over the River” comprises some six miles of fabric panels suspended like huge awnings above part of the Arkansas River between Cañon City and Salida for two weeks.

Opponents fear the project will ruin a “pristine” river canyon, drive off bighorn sheep and other wildlife, cause traffic gridlock on the sole route running through the canyon, prevent access for emergency vehicles, and cost the taxpayers an enormous sum of money. Proponents wax similarly enthusiastic about the project’s virtues.

What is it about “Over the River” that has provoked such a passionate response?

It could be the scale of the project, which will employ hundreds of porous fabric panels as wide as 120 feet, attached to cables stretched above the water and secured by thousands of removable bolts. The longest block of panels will extend 2.5 river miles, the shortest less than a third of a mile.

It could be the potential environmental effects. Neither river nor canyon are actually pristine: a transcontinental railroad was blasted along one bank in the late 1880s, a highway blasted up the other beginning in the 1920s, and increasing numbers of houses dot the canyon walls.

Unlike these projects, the artists propose a positive footprint, leaving the landscape in better shape than they found it, and removing and recycling all waste, construction materials, and trash.

It could be the wildlife, including some 400 bighorn sheep beloved of area residents, although these animals have survived decades of railroad and highway construction projects, introduction of diseases from domestic livestock, human development, recreation activities, trapping and radio-collaring, and the thousands of vehicles that pass through the canyon each year.

It could be the traffic, with an estimated quarter-million people coming to see “Over the River.” Traffic issues aren’t uncommon in the canyon: boxcar-sized chunks of cliff have dropped on the highway, closing it for weeks, road projects regularly impede traffic for moths; accidents cause hours of delay.

The project has hired traffic planners and will pay for medivac helicopters and extra emergency personnel, and will explore mass transit and alternate routes.

It could be the money, although “Over the River” is paying for everything from environmental review to public employee time and expenses, and restoration.

Perhaps it’s simply the idea of something so ephemeral and quixotic as suspending panels of fabric over a river where they will shimmer and ripple for two weeks, shifting our view of water and sky and landscape–showing us a new perspective on a place that is both everyday and extraordinary.

That, to my mind, is the whole point of art: It asks us to pay attention to things we might otherwise not notice, and in the doing, it transforms our view of life, and our role in it.

Copyright 2009 Susan J. Tweit

I should have known things were going too smoothly.

We had planned to bring dinner to my parents, who live near the city. But when we arrived at their senior community, we learned that my mom been taken to a nearby hospital, with my dad accompanying her.

We drove straight there, and found my mother in a room off the busy ER, looking tiny under a mound of blankets and attached to a plethora of tubes and wires and monitors. She was sitting up though, and devouring her hospital dinner.

Turns out that the sore throat she had reported when I called the previous weekend had been the beginnings of pneumonia. Hence the antibiotics dripping into her veins from one bag and the saline solution from another, plus oxygen chuffing into her nose, and electrodes attached to her chest to monitor her heartbeat.

Now that she was stable, she was slated to be transferred to a regular room. So we drove my dad back to their apartment and fed him dinner.

By that time, Richard and I had almost forgotten why we ventured the long drive to Denver in the first place–almost. Our destination was another hospital, where Richard was scheduled to meet with Oncology to learn what’s next in the journey that began with him hallucinating birds more than two months ago and continues through treatment for brain cancer.

By the time we left the city the next afternoon, headed back home over the mountains, my mother had improved so much that she hoped to be discharged from the hospital the next day. And we had conferred with Richard’s oncologist, who explained that his tumor, a Grade 3 Astrocytoma for those who track these things, is serious enough that they want to treat it aggressively.

That means radiation to start, accompanied by chemotherapy to enhance the cell-killing effect, and then a course of chemo by itself.

And that’s where Thanksgiving comes in: Our two-hospital trip reminded me of why I give thanks. Not just on Thanksgiving, or just for the turkey, no matter how delicious it and the trimmings might be.

No, what I give thanks for on this holiday and every day is not stuff–nor the chance to stuff myself with food, nor money, power, or prestige.

My giving-thanks list is short, comprised of the essentials that I believe are worth more than any things or money: Sharing my days with Richard, my mother’s recovery, being part of a far-flung-in-distance but close-in-heart community of family and friends, the gift of practicing our art and writing, and of being able to live in a generous and sustainable way in a place we love.

Those blessings are what make every day Thanksgiving for me.

Copyright 2009 Susan J. Tweit.

Suddenly, a ball of blue-white fire streaked across the sky above the highway, passing right through the after-sunset glow. A sparkling orange and blue tail trailed the speeding star and hung glittering in the heavens for a few heartbeats after the meteor burned out.

“Wow!” said Richard. “I think that’s the most spectacular meteor I’ve ever seen.”

That falling star was a precursor to this year’s Leonid meteor shower. Although the height of the shower is November 17th and 18th, when as many as 100 meteors an hour may be visible, the “rain” of meteors began several weeks ago.

Named for the constellation of Leo, the area of the heavens where the falling stars appear to originate, the Leonid meteor shower is triggered when Earth passes through the stream of dust, ice, and rock chunks shed by Comet Tempel-Tuttle on its orbit around the sun. This particular shower is known for the unusual colors of the meteors and their persistent tails.

Meteors are born when bits of comet-debris, most the size of dust-grains, slam into Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere and these particles ignite. Drawn by the pull of our planet’s gravity, the burning space-litter streaks earthward, tracing a line of light across the sky.

The flare of a falling star is simply energy discharge: as the meteoroid collides with air molecules, its outer layers are abraded into a vaporous shell. Continuing collisions “excite” the electrons in this gassy aura around the streaking particle, knocking them into higher-energy orbits; when the electrons return to their normal state, the released energy is visible as light.

Very visible: meteoroids as small as one millimeter across (four-hundredths of an inch) can create a flash visible more than a hundred miles away.

The color of the light is determined by the meteoroid’s mineral composition. Sodium atoms give off orange-yellow light, iron atoms create yellow, magnesium flares blue-green, calcium adds a violet hue; silicon atoms and molecules of atmospheric nitrogen produce red light.

Those extraordinary hues, plus the persistent trails that about 10 percent of Leonid meteors write like streaks of sparkling chalk on the dark heavens, are what make the Leonid shower worth getting up for.

(The best times for meteor-watching are between midnight and dawn, when our side of the Earth is headed into the trails of comet-debris.)

So on the 17th and 18th, Richard and I will rise in the wee hours to watch for the miracle that occurs when Earth’s gravity sucks particles of comet dirt into our atmosphere, creating the evanescent streaks of light called falling stars.

Perhaps we’ll see one as spectacular as the falling star that streaked through the sunset after-glow that night in West Texas.

Copyright 2009 Susan J. Tweit

They’re also part of this improbable high-desert-and-marsh landscape. Twice a year, some 20,000 sandhill cranes, essentially the entire population that migrates along the Rocky Mountains, descend on the San Luis Valley on their thousand-or-more-mile long migration between nesting grounds as far north as Alberta and wintering habitat as far south as Mexico.

During the weeks they spend in the windswept oasis of the valley, the tall birds feed intently, replenishing stores of energy depleted by their long journey, call in throaty voices, and dance.

In the midst of a flock of hundreds of cranes feeding in the stubble of a valley field, two cranes face each other: They bow, bending their long legs and inclining their heads; they leap into the air one after the other, they stretch bills upward in unison, and they utter their tremulous and carrying calls.

Prehistoric artifacts and stories passed down over generations indicate that sandhill cranes have been coming to the San Luis Valley for at least as long as people have–12,000 years or more. I cannot imagine t his high-desert landscape without the sound of their voices, the rhythm of pairs dancing and courting, the sight of hundreds of cranes, wings outstretched, long necks leading and legs trailing, spiraling upward in aerial gyres.

The San Luis Valley is home for these sandhill cranes, not in the sense of their place of birth, but of a landscape that calls them to return year after year, a place where their lives flavor the seasons and weave the fabric of the high desert.

My clan of humans has not called any particular place home for many generations. We were pulled from Scandinavia and Scotland to this continent in search of fortune, and then impelled by inner restlessness to move from state to state.

Like sandhill cranes, my brother and I migrated to specific landscapes: he, tied to salmon, lives in the Pacific Northwest where those big fish swim long ocean migrations before following the scent of their natal stream home; I belong to the ocean of silvery and fragrant sagebrush that laps at the shores of the Rocky Mountains.

Home, I think, is not so much a place of birth as an attachment of heart and spirit, a landscape whose call is so insistent that we are impelled to travel epic journeys to reach its comforting contours, and to return, year after year, until death resets our course.

Home is where we give as much as we get, the way flocks of sandhill cranes fertilize the valley soil where they feed and roost, any place where our voices linger in song and story and the memories of our sojourn stir hearts long after we are gone, regardless of whether we were born there or how long we stay.

Copyright 2009 Susan J. Tweit

“Skunk!” I said after a moment. “I hope it hasn’t taken up residence.”

It’s the time of year when wild creatures either head off to more clement climates, or look for shelter. From black widow spiders and mice to skunks and bears, all manner of creatures are hunting for winter homes.

Unless we draw a clear line, they can’t know that mi casa no es su casa. I like skunks, and mice, and bears, and I even appreciate black widow spiders, but I don’t want them living with me.

How can we draw the line for our more-than-human neighbors? Winterize: Seal up cracks and crevices–which will help reduce your heat bills and your carbon footprint, and don’t feed them, intentionally or not.

In the case of larger wild creatures, including the skunk that perfumed our yard the other night, keeping them out is pretty easy: block up holes that lead into crawl spaces, porch undersides, sheds, house walls, attics, and any other spaces that could be used as winter dens.

Don’t neglect small holes. A mouse can shimmy though a hole about the diameter of a quarter, a skunk needs a hole no larger than the diameter of a soda-pop can.

Also, don’t leave pet food or bird feeders outside, and keep trash bins inside or secured until collection day, so you don’t inadvertently set up a “feeding station” for wildlife.

Once a wild animal associates humans with food, they look for food where people live, making conflicts inevitable. In Colorado, the saying “a fed bear is a dead bear” is true: “problem” bears and other wildlife are killed after two or three incidents.

Drawing the line for smaller creatures, like the black widow spider that wandered into a friend’s sweatshirt after he took it off and then bit him when he pulled it on the next morning, winter proofing means sealing up cracks around windows and doors, and fixing leaks in water faucets and pipes that provide moist habitat for all manner of tiny but not welcome guests. (Our friend was mildly sick the next day, but survived the black widow bite without other incident.)

Humans have a paradoxical attitude toward those other species with whom we share this planet. We may enjoy watching them, but we prefer them to know their place (whatever that is) and we’d rather if they weren’t quite so, well, wild.

A deer is charming until it munches our prized roses, a fox a beautiful sight unless it eats our chickens; a mouse can be quite cute as it scurries about until “it” turns into a pregnant “she” who has 10 children and in short order, each of her female children have ten more….

Perhaps as we learn to appreciate these lives as unique parts of our larger community, we’ll also learn how to let them continue to be gloriously and uncompromisingly wild, without getting in their way.

Copyright 2009 Susan J. Tweit