Coal Camp

Sugarite Canyon State Park is located just east of Raton Pass where Colorado crosses into New Mexico.  The park holds the source of Raton's water supply and the ruins of a coal mining camp.  The camp was founded around 1894 and continued to operate until 1941.  The camp produced coal for domestic use.



The camp was actually a substantial community, housing up to 1,000 people, with school, post-office, baseball teams, household gardens, and the company store.  Miners were immigrants from Italy, the Balkans, Japan...and local Hispano families.  Their houses were substantial...impressive ruins of house foundations neatly line the hillsides.  To the east of the canyon, small farms and ranches supplied food stuffs, meat and other produce to the mining families. It was hard, dangerous work...to cut down on the coal dust, a cause of explosions, water was sprayed in the mine.  The water was cold...men often worked while standing in cold water up to their knees...at least five were killed during the time the mine operated...those who got injured simply lost their jobs, but the company had a doctor on site. 



It helps to be reminded of how difficult life has been for so many people.

Of course part of the reasons for closure may also have been that the coal was marked under the Swastika brand....a brand name most unfortunate in a country about to go to war with Hitler.  "High in heat, low in ash" just didn't cut it.  Where were the advertising mad men when we needed them? 

Denver

Catching a 6:00 am flight from Dullas to Denver, giving me a morning in the city before heading to Santa Fe, checking in with a friend, having an early lunch at my favorite Ethiopian restaurant on Colfax...  Ahh, the air is dry.  The sun shines.  I feel like I am back in "my" part of the country. 

Washington again....

We took the train from Providence to Washington to see Tom, Halie, Robin...more offspring.  A quick side-trip to Annapolis to check in with family including a musical interlude with Tony. 

I found a few afternoon hours to take one of the bike-share cycles down to the Washington Mall to visit the museums...but which one?  Ahhh...the range of artistic experience in the capital's museums....endless.  More endless than the need to find shade from the summer's high heat and humidity.

So just a short time to check out the Hirshorn...an exhibit on "time and space" featuring wall-size video screens of an elephant moving slowly in a bare museum gallery...and then part of the permanent collection. 


 

 

 

Getting reacquainted with paintings viewed in art books and, many decades ago, in art history courses.  Edward Hopper, Joan Miro...attempts to express life, movement, on canvas. 

Freya

Freya Marie Werge Whitehead, last names sometimes combined as Wergehead, was born to my daughter Ingrid August 11 in Rhode Island.   What more to say.  Another leaf, then twig, then branch on the tree of life.  Beautiful, amazing, "best baby in the whole world" according to the mother. 

Sharing her first week.  Observing that over the course of three-four days her learning that if she opened her eyes and...here's the hard part...kept them open, she could see things.  And, also, that she could focus...though as I left she would really only focus when she heard her mother, saw her, smelled her milk.  And as I and Charlotte would hold her for times, I realized just how many songs I knew...melodies for Freya as the different parts of her brain began making those initial connections.  So sweet. 

 

 

We will be seeing more of Freya in the future. 

Catching Up

Rain fell most of the night but morning has dawned clear.  Am looking over the San Luis Valley from the Orient Land Trust hot springs...writing in the administration building.  I have taken a day and a half to see if I can let my soul catch up with my body. 

I've been moving through space at a fast clip: driving back from San Francisco, going to cousin's wedding in Vail, camping with one grandchild in Colorado, seeing a new grandchild in Rhode Island, visiting sons in Washington, DC, flying back and camping at Raton Pass, going to meetings and the opera in Santa Fe...now on my way home.  But stopping first to collect my thoughts and impressions...taking time to make them part of myself, not just surface experiences that will slough off as I go through the next months. 

I'll just share a few impressions of some of the people and places...not necessarily in chronological order...ruminations as I've rested on the air mattress in my tent, sorting out these days, listing to the sound of rain on roof, keeping warm and dry under my poncho. 

The bay, the ocean

So here I sit in Vail Colorado....trying to have my soul catch up with my life...and thinking of where I left off my last post.  We were heading west...and we made it to Larkspur, a small old hippy town on the San Francisco Bay.  Visiting friends, taking the ferry across the bay to the city, riding some of the best bike trails in the country, feeling the soothing calm of fog which, like snow, slows everything down.  We stayed four days.  Time to get reacquainted with old friendships, urban streets, and water.  So little in Colorado and here, along the bay, water just hangs in the air.  

Windsurfing must just be a variant on the impulse to go fast on the earth's surface...as old, perhaps, as running through tall grass chasing an animal, seeking the meat.  But now just the sense of movement for its own sake. And perhaps the road trip has something in common....moving through space with a purpose, maybe without a purpose.