Crestone #1

If you are reading this, you more than likely came through the earthspeaks.org website to get here. And if you’re here, you’ve probably heard me say something somewhere about Crestone, Colorado sometime since last winter solstice. If you haven’t yet, I would suggest you read the Crestone essay at earthspeaks. It sets this trip in important context.

First off, let me say that I have a thing for Colorado. Like John Denver, I felt like I was born in the summer of my twenty-seventh year when I first traveled cross-country to Colorado with my four year-old daughter and wife in tow. I had been teaching junior high English for five years and found some truth in the old saw that the three best reasons to teach were June, July, and August. A bit cynical perhaps, but such did allow me to indulge in a growing love for travel that my year-round working buddies could only dream of. To this day I am grateful.

Lots of lovely memories from that first trip remain fresh in my mind, like when daughter Jennifer, on our first backpack trip up the Roaring River trail at Rocky Mountain National Park, made her favorite new toy a found detergent bottle. She was glad she had Raggedy Ann when it was time to crawl into her sleeping bag, but she really had fun with the bottle, squirting everything in camp, including mom and dad.

The drive across Kansas was pretty hard. It was a nasty hot day and I kept getting a temperature light on the dash -- unless I kept the speed under 50. Right about that time I was painfully aware that I had a four year-old on board, and thought how horrible the day would be if we broke down. We did have some trouble with the carburetor, as mentioned, but other than that, we made it into the high plains of eastern Colorado with dad having the worst part of the day worrying.

And tomorrow, Cindy Lou and I set out on the next pilgrimage to the Centennial State. Destination: Crestone, a little town with only a few hundred residents year round, tucked on the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo mountains in the arid San Luis valley, just a bit north of Great Sand Dunes National Park. Again, if you haven’t read the Crestone piece at earthspeaks, I’d recommend it. It will set up what’s about to happen nicely.

And just what that is, I’m not sure. All I know is we’re heading out tomorrow in a quest for a quiet two weeks during which the folks at the Nada Hermitage, our hosts, aspire to create a vital environment characterized by solitude, simplicity and beauty, where community thrives, love is nurtured, prayer flourishes, and the whole person can be transformed.

Oh, boy. Does that sound good to us. We are ready. I hope you’ll stick with me as I blog through this trip, trying to explain what it is about mountains, Mother Nature, and solitude that moves me. More later.