Poco Mountain Girl

A few nights ago, a really strong wind blew across our side of the mountain. We were up most of the night, hoping the windows wouldn’t blow in. Later we heard that several houses (and cars) did have shattered windows.

We simply lost power for a day and a half, which was really ok, since we kept warm with the wood stove and we were still able to cook on our gas cookstove. This tree fell (and was then sawed up) down the hill and around the corner from us.

And this happened right at the end of our road.

They sawed this one up as well, and somebody probably used it for firewood.

The mountain people really have learned to use natural destruction for their benefit. One of our neighbors walked by me smiling, carrying an armload of fallen branches from this tree. She was really excited about the “Christmas tree smell” she was going to have in her house.

I walk by this house every day. Two trees snapped and fell on it, but thankfully, there didn’t seem to be much damage.

Here’s another tree near the bottom of our road. I cannot even imagine the speed of that wind.

I’m not much of an expert on the age of trees, but to me, this tree looks at least a hundred years old. I guess that would make this the strongest wind of the century?

The sign on our neighborhood market mysteriously disappeared.

This little ranch lost half of its entrance.

This tree–

and this one–were simply uprooted.

On our property, only this small-ish tree fell. It was near our house, but far enough away not to cause any damage.

Here’s another great old tree that snapped near the base. The top of the tall tree next to it was completely lopped off. It fell about 5 feet from the nearby earthship house.

Despite the wild winds, everyone around us seems to have weathered it ok.

And that, my friends, is reason to celebrate…

with a hot dish of genuine New Mexico enchiladas.

(Yup, half of them are gone. Before I could even snap a picture. Scarfed.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 16th, 2011 at 7:04 pm and is filed under Colorado, Nature, The Great Outdoors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.