Crestone #12: Talismans

When I was in my last year at Carroll High School in Dayton back in the day, all seniors were required to go on a retreat before graduation. I forget most of the details forty plus years later, but I remember when it was all over, each retreatant was gifted with something special to hang on to. Holy cards were the thing back then. But not with Fr. Jim Heft, our retreat director at Bergamo. He gave us, instead, a small hinge.

In those post-Vatican II days when change was blowing through the Catholic church, he wanted us to think of ourselves as hinges. We could help open doors or close them. It was up to us. Fr. Heft might be surprised to know that I still have mine. I’ve carried it on my keychain for years. It’s a bit bent now from when I tried to tighten a screw in a pinch and it surely is tarnished. But it’s still with me, a talisman from a day when I started to know the meaning of being an adult.

I picked up another talisman this week: a rock from the spot in the trail 10,000 feet above sea level where I gave up the hike to South Crestone Lake. It’s a little piece of bright shattered quartz, small enough to fit in my pocket. When I finished the hike, I assumed that was it. At my age, my mountain treks were over. A day or so later, though, I caught myself thinking that if I worked out regularly before coming back here, I really could try it again. Perhaps my quartz talisman will be in my pocket during those workouts. In any case, having a little piece of the Sangres in my office or in my pocket will be a tangible reminder of these amazing two weeks in Crestone.

* * *

This is my last blog from Nada. Tomorrow we move on. I’ll have more to say here on The Back Porch blog about our Colorado retreat, but this is the last one I write in the Juliana hermitage as the morning sun comes through our mountain-facing windows. A few odds and ends to tidy up:

• I had hoped to cleverly title today’s blog ‘Dinner at the Dunes.’ We had a picnic packed last night and were on highway 17 on our way back to Great Sand Dunes for an evening meal and an opportunity for me to photograph sunlight setting on the sand peaks. Alas, in the place where it doesn’t rain in the summer, Great Sand Dunes was getting a downpour at dusk. But we made the best of it. We went into Alamosa and found the Chili’s.

• If you like jazz at all, you really should get yourself a copy of Paul Winter Consort’s Crestone. Winter’s claim to fame, as you probably know, is recording his soprano sax out in the field. North Crestone Lake was the setting for this album. Other great Consort field recordings are Canyon and Prayer for the Wild Things. I recommend them all. We heard on the local grapevine that Winter and the band were back in town lately filming a DVD of Crestone. In an email snagged yesterday, Winter confirms the Crestone music video is near. Go to his Living Music website for details: http://www.livingmusic.com/

• One of the reasons I love Colorado and the West is because of John Denver. I was a young dad when Denver was making the top 10 with hits like ‘Rocky Mountain High.’ Singing it in the local cover band, Collage, with the likes of Marty & Steve Doody, John Lauer, Jeff White, and Bruce Gunnell set that love deep on many a Saturday night back then.

• Former GFS/AmW-er Laurie Scott Mattern sent an email this week re: a crackdown on rock-snatchers at Acadia NP in Maine. Heavens! I hope a crackdown on talisman-heisters at the Sangres isn’t next! ;-)

Today’s elder idea: In nature, a child finds freedom, fantasy, and privacy: a place distant from the adult world, a separate peace.

Richard Louv

from Last Child in the Woods