Conversations in Oak House

Oak House at Orient Land Trust

Beyond soaking in the hot springs or hiking up to the old mine or riding my mountain bike along retired railroad tracks, the brief, always revealing, conversations are memorable.  Somehow the mountain air, the views off the back porch onto the valley, open people.  They are sometimes stark but always provide a glimpse at stories, at stories recorded deep in the soul. 

On the front porch

 

 

 

There was Tammy who had come up from the valley to spend a night with WiFi (a dust storm had shaken the reception in her solar-powered cabin.  Her boyfriend of 10 years had just left her.  In her early 40s, she was trying to make contacts to "figure out where to move, how to get a job."

The young (one year out of college) couple spending five months on the road to explore the western landscape, now heading back to California because they had "run out of" money.  I asked him what was the one most important thing he had learned on the trip.  He hesitated, saying "there were so many."  But then he said, "I've learned that you can live simply and cheaply..."  And I rejoined, "That's an important lesson."  He paused again but before he turned the corner out of the kitchen, he said, "....and I don't think I want to."  Perhaps an even more important lesson. 

Kim, rubbing her wrists with ice to reduce the pain from tendonitis, wondering how to leave job cleaning houses (been doing it for twenty years..."raised two kids myself") for something that would produce less pain, thinking if she could just take off for three or four months to let them heal.....

Another place for conversation

Philip who comes up from Santa Fe a couple of times a month to escape the stress of his business of fixing cooling systems in old cars.

Patrick, a nurse, has not had a fixed address for 18 months..."all the mail goes to my ma."   Been working in Palm Springs (he's a nurse) and "hated it," now on his way back home for a three month contract in Minneapolis....then off somewhere else.

The family moving in two weeks to an "intentional community" in Missouri.  I asked the Dad what his intention was...he said it was to live a "really sustainable" lifestyle....it sounded like very serious business "but it is so cool because everything is done by consensus."  

In short, people taking a little breather from daily tasks and relationships, perhaps using the time to try to pivot into a new life.  Or just keeping those daily cares at bay for a while.

 

Sculpture

A massive horse...designed first by Leonardo di Vinci...now set among rolling hills...well hills that kids can roll down. In Grand Rapids Michigan. Who knew?

Location:Grand Rapids

La Garita

La Garita

The San Luis Valley was settled by Hispano families in the early 1800s.  They built small irrigation ditches to carry stream water to subsistence crops (corn, beans) and to small herds of sheep and cattle.  After the US obtained this territory as part of the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, Anglo settlers claimed water rights that these small Spanish-speaking ranchers had "failed to file for."  The settlements began to shrink after they lost their water.

The church at La Garita has been rebuilt several times...the cemetery continues in use.  Many of the headstones are simple rocks...many are close together indicating children's graves.  These markers of both life and death represent the poverty and difficulty of life on this high desert valley.  The crosses are repainted by the church congregants from time to time...maintaining ties to that hard not very distant past. 

Cemetery at La Garita

Close by the church is the La Penitente Canyon...a place where Los Hermanos Penitentes, a religious brotherhood, practiced their religion out of sight of the Catholic authorities.  The figure of Our Lady of Guadelupe looks down from one of the canyon walls...setting aside this somewhat remote area for worship. 

The canyon is now touted for its "world-class" rock climbing...one wonders if at some future time, the climbing hardware punched into the rocks will seem to be artifacts from the past as are those white crosses on simple stones, the figure of the Virgin.   

Other passages

Going somewhere

Coming over these mountain passes, I'm thinking about other ways in which we pass these days.  Airports seem to be our primary means of passing from one place to another...a way of using a sky vehicle to guide over mountain tops and river basins to get to somewhere else. 

Going somewhere

Yet there is a kind of antiseptic quality to these passages.  One walks over acres of floorspace, stands in lines waiting to board, sits strapped into chairs, and dismounts onto other acres of floorspace.  Sometimes a glance out the airline's windows gives one a sense of place, of the land being traversed, but in general one passes the time in a book or watching a movie of someone else's adventure.

But the passage, unlike the view from Fremont or another mountain pass, is not exhilarating.  and as a place to pause to contemplate the direction in which one is moving, well, there's not time for that.  It is all about moving...with announcements blaring "do not leave your baggage unattended"...and lines to show the State your identify.

 

So the airport represents less of a passage and more of a kind of portal...a place that shoots you from point A to point B.  It's a kind of journey that only begins when you get off the plane, when you leave the airport by bus or car or train.   It's a shared journey but shared with folks whose destination bears no resemblance to one's own.  It's like being part of a swarm of insects...one which dissolves at a point of arrival and disperses into the new landscape.  

The swarm at DIA, Denver International Airport

 At the same time, these portals have the ability to move us great distances, far beyond the steps we take to hike over a mountain pass.  They can transport us, somewhat lessened of our humanity by having to prove we legally belong to some national governmental entity, to new (for us) worlds or back to old ones.  Trade-offs, I guess, every journey is a trade-off, a road taken, a road not taken. 

 

Fremont Pass

Fremont Pass, named after the American explorer who traveled over it in the 1840s.

When I first came to Colorado, I was struck by how people, at least some people, described their car trips as going over passes rather than naming a route number.  As in, "went over Kenosha Pass" or "lot of snow on Berthoud Pass when I came back" or "went skiing at Careron Pass."  The term comes from the Latin "passus"...meaning step or pace.   So these passes, some of them paved, are routes for going  from one side of a mountain or mountain range to another....from one river basin to another.  

Fremont Pass forms part of the continental divide....on the north side, water flows downhill as the Blue River into the Colorado, flowing west and south for 1,500 miles to the Gulf of California.  It doesn't flow freely as much is contained in ponds to catch runoff from the huge Climax Mine.  The mine extracts molybdenum, used in making high strength steel alloys, and is still the largest such mine in the world.  It has been closed for decades but it due to begin operations again this summer....providing much needed jobs to the town of Leadville on the other side of the pass.  

Climax Mine

The south side of Fremont Pass contains the headwaters of the Arkansas River which flows 1,500 miles east to the Mississippi, thence to the Gulf of Mexico.  The river follows a rift valley past the towns of Leadville, Buena Vista and Salida before rushing down to the Great Plains through the Royal Gorge, a canyon some1,200 feet deep and only 50 feet wide in places.  The headwaters, though, occupy an wide, open valley, gathering snowmelt from the surrounding hills and moutains.  

Headwaters of the Arkansas

I learned about these river basins largely on week-long bike tours, like Ride the Rockies, when biking up (and then speeding down) Fremont and other passes provides the time to put the pieces of mountain geography together.  A mountain pass is a place to pause, to get off the bike or out of the car and look both ways.  Usually one is heading, stepping as the word implies, one way or the other: west to the coast or east to the Mississippi.  But occasionally the pause is an opportunity to ask, "What's the direction I want to go in?"  "Where do I want to go?"  "Which flow of the water do I want to follow?"

The Arkansas beginning its journey east.