Crestone #2: Pilgrimage

I know it would have been quicker to take a plane, rent a car, then get about the pleasure of making our way into the mountains. Denver’s Frontier Airlines, in fact, has a direct flight from Dayton International, and with a rental car, the cost would have been about the same as our gas and motel expenses. I checked. And I’ve heard lots of people say how much they hate to drive across Kansas. It is over 400 miles of monotony, they say, and takes about forever. I understand. It is a long and often painful drive. Still, we welcomed it for reasons I’ll get to in a minute.

Today we took on Kansas from a starting point new to us: the southeast corner. We had spent the night prior in Springfield, Missouri, having dinner with Cindy’s aunt and uncle. An hour southwest to Joplin this morning put us on the Kansas line. From there we noodled our way across on red highways (two-laners) all the way west into the high plains, stopping tonight in the little burg of Las Animas, Colorado. It was a hot day, too. A bank sign in Dodge City reported the temp had reached 104.

Aside from the summer heat and the time it takes to traverse, Kansas is downright beautiful. Coming up from the southeast, we watched countless harvesting crews take out mile after mile of winter wheat while others gathered hay and alfalfa into huge rolls and bales. We saw countless western meadowlarks singing their hearts out on fenceposts and marveled at scissor-tail flycatchers working the air. The Gypsum Hills were downright stunning, as well: arroyos and the occasional water hole accenting rolling grassy hills with only a few scrub trees -- as far as the eye could see.

It is important to say, too, that we both saw the trip’s difficult-on-the-butt drive as element of pilgrimage. We signed on for two weeks at the Nada Hermitage because of the silence it offers. Such a promise of silence, we both thought, needed some preparation. We both commented that in the days we spent at home selecting and packing things we might use in our cabin, we were deliberately disconnecting from the world. We had work to do -- stopping the mail and newspaper and lining up family and neighbors to water plants, tend the tomatoes and cucumbers, and cut the grass. But we also felt ourselves slowing down in anticipation of Crestone and the Sangre de Cristos. The long drive is part of that preparation.

The silence Nada and the San Luis valley offers will be important to, as the folks there say, re-humanize us. Essential to that renewal, then, is Nature’s remarkable beauty. Our pilgrimage across the Midwest into the mountains reinforces, again, the wonder and power of this Earth and the amazing geography and geology we know as the United States of America.

Today’s elder idea: Take time to get ready for the really good stuff. Slow down. Immerse yourself in time and place.

PS: I apologize for a few spelling errors published lately. I mistyped earthspeaks.org in a recent email and some of you were directed to earthspeak.org. Sorry about that. If you have a few extra minutes, though, give earthspeak.org a look. Brother Will reports it is a 2002 piece on California toxics and bears a closer look.