Crestone redux: Lessons learned

A couple of weeks ago when I started the Crestone blogs, I wondered what I would learn during my two-week quiet stay at Nada in the San Luis Valley.

One thing is that I need to exercise more. I’ve always liked walking the neighborhood, but over the last year or so it has seemed more like a ‘should’ and as a result, I haven’t. The consequence for that lack of exercise, I think, is my aborted attempt to reach South Crestone Lake. Given, the hike was a steep one and my legs did damned well for three hours. Still, I know if I train a bit, I’ll make it next time. Trust me. I’m looking forward to it, in fact. So #1: I learned I need to exercise more.

Second, I learned that I really like being in the quiet. We played a little music and talked a bit, but other than that, our hermitage was really quiet. Cindy read, sewed, and knitted. I read and wrote a bit, walked the neighborhood some, and found myself reclined on a bench by the fireplace pretty often just listening to the quiet and checking out the knotty pine pattern of the ceiling. One afternoon while doing so, I also wrote a half dozen poems when ideas jumped out of my brain. #2: I rather like being a quiet introvert.

Which brings me to another personal realization determined some years ago at the Grand Canyon. It was June 1987, one year after my first visit to the South Rim. I was impressed on the first visit, but not overly so. I mean, the Grand Canyon is one big hole in the ground, no doubt. But the air quality that early summer was poor: the North Rim shrouded in a haze and the colors of the side canyons muted. The rim sunset we watched was cool, but overall, I could boil down my Canyon experience to my being thankful for having survived the hike down to Phantom Ranch and back up Bright Angel.

But then 1987. The second coming. I stood there with a new batch of kids, including my own daughter, peering into the abyss, while my eyes filled up with tears. Just like they are doing now, remembering. I realized then, as I do now, that the Canyon gets into you and doesn’t let you go. I believe it’s the reason cranky old Ed Abbey wanted his cremated ashes tossed in the Canyon. For all eternity.

Since then I’ve been able to return to the Canyon once by myself and once with my buddy, Will. On both occasions I was able to find a spot and sit, listening to wind whistling through my ears and the pine needles, being present with both the greatness of that place and this amazing planet.

So it could be that I’m a year away from knowing more about what I learned at the Sangre de Cristos. Or maybe I’m one trip removed from feeling the special stuff.

I do know this, too: the Earth is a special place. It is good to be quiet with it. It has a lot to say and much to share. I’ve learned something about that at the Grand Canyon, in the Sangres, and on my back porch. In fact, it’s interesting what you can learn just tying up the tomatoes plants.

Today’s elder idea:

Take as much as you think you ought to

Give just as much as you can

Don’t forget what your failures have taught you

Or else you’ll have to learn them all over again.

Dan Fogelberg

from ‘Lessons Learned’

Nether Lands 1977

Farewell Bill

The ranks of 59 year-olds on this planet was reduced by one yesterday. We lost Bill Chmiel, a classmate of mine from Carroll High School’s illustrious class of 1968. Dreaded cancer took him.

I must admit, I did not know Bill well back in the day. Whatever classes and other stuff I was involved in weren’t the same things he was up to. I did email him a bit since January, most of the time while he was shuttling between his home on Block Island, Rhode Island and hospitals in Boston getting his diagnosis and beginning to take treatment. He seemed up to beating this thing, and like a lot of his friends, I hoped the medical profession had one more miracle in its bag of tricks to make him whole again. Everybody tried really hard, of that I’m sure.

CHS ’68 had our 40th reunion last summer. I think Bill was there. Again, I didn’t know enough to seek him out. I think the deal was that it was after the reunion that he was diagnosed. In January he mentioned it had been a tough six months for him and his wife, Terri. So it was a pretty steep decline Bill and his family had to deal with.

As we babyboomers live into our 60s, the inevitability of death comes ever closer. That’s okay, I guess. Life is what it is. Death will come for all of us. It’s just that we’re on the cusp of being invulnerable and well, being way too vulnerable. I will hug my grandson, who is here today, and my wife a bit tighter this day. Life is good. I don’t look forward to dealing with death any time soon. Still way too much to do.

Farewell, my friend. I hope it was a lovely ride.

Today’s elder idea: Thanks for channeling some of that positive energy my way. It has been a very challenging six months for my wife and myself. We value and appreciate all your prayers.

Bill Chmiel

3 January 2009 email

And on this rainy day in the Miami Valley:

Water spirit feeling springin’ round my head

Makes me feel glad that I’m not dead.

Witchi Tai To

Traditional healing song in the Native American Church

My man Neil!

Let’s see. In about thirty minutes we’ll be at the precise 40th anniversary moment when Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on another heavenly body. Oh, what a night that was for humanity.

I was 19 in the summer of 1969 and worked at Rike’s warehouse on old Miami Boulevard West in Dayton. Remember Warehouse Sales? Where lots of good stuff goes on super special? Perhaps Rike’s didn’t originate the concept, but they surely perfected it. I was an Extra that summer who drove a fork lift, unloaded trucks and train cars, worked Will Call, and did just about anything anybody in a tie asked me to do. It was one of the best jobs I ever had.

July 20 was a Sunday night in 1969. I had promised to attend a church event in Cincinnati: a Cursillo closing. You know, when tons of people who already made the retreat show up in solidarity for the newbies? I really wanted to stay home and watch the moon history on television, but I felt responsibility to Alvin, my Cursillo sponsor and buddy from work, who I had promised. He drove and promised to get me someplace that night to see the landing.

Alvin got me someplace, alright. It was some restaurant at the Paddock Road exit off I-75 in Cincinnati. As I recall, the place was pretty crowded, everybody watching the monitor mounted high on the wall. Odd, I can’t remember if we were tuned into Uncle Walter on CBS or another network. All I really remember was how lousy the picture from the moon was. Shoot, I thought, we could get a man on the moon but we couldn’t get a better picture? So it was. I was elated, nonetheless.

I’m a space junky. Got that way listening to Al Shepherd’s and Gus Grissom’s suborbitals in 1961 on the school public address system when I was 11. Then one year later when John Glenn became the first American to orbit -- and he was an Ohioan like Orville Wright -- I was beside myself with pride and hero worship. I came to conclude that astronauts were the modern manifestation of the great American archetype, the independent and self-reliant cowboy. Cool!

We need heroes. John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, and the host of NASA pilots and mission specialists, fit that bill. Still, today, I bet few people paid attention that two astronauts put in a full day walking in space, doing some hard work that will make the International Space Station a more complete habitat and research facility. Did you know it was Dave Wolf and Tom Marshburn working in space today, making their own kind of history?

I’m a Trekkie, too. Not a colorful one who goes to conventions dressed as a Klingon, but just a guy from the 60s who’d love to see a Federation where lots of different types of people do, indeed, try to get along. There’s still trouble, to be sure, but money and opportunity aren’t the issue anymore. All you have to do is try hard and opportunity will find you. And the good guys can win.

I’d like to think I learned something about hard work and adventure from NASA about that when I was 19. I know I learned something from Star Trek.

Today’s elder idea: That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.

Neil Armstrong

US astronaut and American hero

2:56 UTC July 21, 1969

10:56 pm EST, Sunday, July 20, 1969

in Cincinnati

Crestone - Lake City - Winter Park - Kansas City

I write this entry from a Drury Inn just across I-70 from Royals Stadium in Cindy Lou’s town of birth, Raytown, Missouri. Since we left Crestone two days ago, we have traveled another 1,200+ miles and will arrive Dayton sometime later today. As many travelers feel after more than two weeks on the road, it will be good to get home.

But before we get there and put this trip into past tense, let me just wax philosophical once more to say how amazingly beautiful this country is. The quiet retreat at Nada was surely worth the trip, but witnessing first hand, one more time, the purple mountains majesty and the fruited plain that we sing about on patriotic occasions, is something to appreciate.

After pulling out of Crestone for the last time on Wednesday, we drove a loop inside Colorado, stopping for a time in the little town of Lake City, which like so many others, is an 1880s-era mountain town with roots in mining precious metals. It still sports a real bank on the main corner downtown, with most other storefronts now converted to tourist shops. To get there from the south, one has to traverse scenic CO 149, better known as The Silver Thread. Such a drive! No major mountain peaks on this route, but a 50 mile drive that takes you first along trout fishing waters, then through a pristine wet valley that can take your breath away. Eventually the scenic byway takes you over a pass and down into town, but not before passing through stands of aspen and then mountainsides of conifer. I heard about this route from a teaching colleague who fell in love with it years ago. I think this trip marks my third time through. Wow.

From there our destination for the night was Winter Park, a skiing/rafting/biking mecca about an hour northwest of Denver. Lots of peaks on this route, and some mighty steep passes. Still a bit of snow up there, too. We finished the day with dinner with our nephew, Josh Cooke, a recent Indiana State grad who is making a career in the adventure business. In summer he guides river rafting trips, while in winter snow mobile, or ‘sled’ expeditions into the national forest. He had a few harrowing stories to tell!

Yesterday Cindy and I headed out for earnest on our return trip east. First the long return drive over 13,000 foot Berthoud Pass (nine switchbacks), then onto I-70 through Denver and on into the high plains. Make no mistake: it’s a long way across Kansas. But by late afternoon we found ourselves in the Flint Hills and marveled, again, over America’s natural beauty. One day took us from snow covered peaks to rolling greens hills that went all the way to the horizon. America the beautiful, indeed.

* * *

I regret I haven’t been able to include pictures with this blog. When I get home my goal is to upload pics to my Mac gallery and then figure out how you can view them. Stay tuned for some Colorado imagery. It’s coming.

Today’s elder idea:

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!

from America the Beautiful

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

Crestone #11: Solitude

When most folks think vacation, they usually visualize a Florida beach, gambling in Las Vegas, or seeing a show on Broadway. There are some of us mid-lifers who still like to camp, but most of us now seek a little more comfort when we leave home for a week or two.

Cindy and I picked solitude as a destination. How can solitude, some of you might ask, be a vacation?

Well, for us, it’s been a pretty crazy year plus. In May 2008, Cindy’s dad fell and broke his hip which took him out of assisted living and put him in a nursing home. As the primary care giver, Cindy had to make all the arrangements, plus drive to see her dad multiple times a week. My mom has been in much better shape, but there are still lots of doctor’s visits and trips to the grocery. My sister Patty takes care of most of Mom’s needs, bless her heart, but I’m called on to do some. Then there’s child care for grandkids. It’s all good, but all of this sometimes leaves us wondering where our retirement time is.

Then, of course, Cindy’s dad passed last Christmas. All of her sibs came to town and while it was good to see everybody, there was some family tension. As Cindy continues to work through her father’s final financial reckoning, she finds herself on a learning curve that would make a banker’s head swim. In other words, things have been tough.

A vacation where all of that could be left behind for two weeks was just what we both needed. Enter Nada.

The monks here at Nada live in the old Roman Catholic Carmelite tradition that dates back to the Crusades. Early Carmelites lived a simple life in the desert, practicing contemplative prayer with special devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The small community here at Nada -- three lay women and one priest -- still do. In addition, of course, they offer desert hermitages to retreatants to come and have their own solitary experiences. There is usually only one community meal a week, after mass on Sunday. There is morning and evening prayer most days, but all of that is optional for us. Retreatants are free to come and go as we please, taking hikes, driving into Crestone or Alamosa, or taking side trips to wherever.

Cindy and I have pretty much kept to ourselves, hanging out in the remote Juliana hermitage, one of only two set up for a couple. There has been much sleeping, lots of reading, some writing, and much quiet time as we both try to give each other the space we need. Meals have been simple but good, largely put together with canned food provided in the cupboad by the Nadans. We also brought along some cookies, juice, a little soda, some frozen ground turkey, and a few bottles of wine. We played John Denver on my iPod desktop system a few afternoons, but other than that, it has been pretty quiet inside our personal hermitage.

Two days into our stay, Cindy stood at our picture windows looking out at the desert foothills of the Sangres and said, ‘This is just what I need.’ Most times I know where I can find her: sleeping in her single bed or perched in the window seat, either knitting or reading a book.

We’ve had a fan on most of the week, and we can hear the little refrigerator hum. But other than that, all we can hear are the pinyon jays and the wind in the stove pipe now and then. It is so quiet that when the wind blows just right, we can hear Willow Creek, a rushing alpine stream about a mile away. There are times I’ve actually heard jets at cruising altitude, which is miles up. All I can see are tiny spots with vapor trails.

We like Broadway shows and camping with the kids. But getting away from our busy lives to exist in the quiet that only a mother like nature can provide has been a real blessing. You don’t have to be Catholic to enjoy Nada, either. They welcome all traditions. Solitude has provided us a recharge that we both have been hungry for. We recommend it.

Today’s elder idea: We 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.

excerpt from The Spiritual Life Institute mission

Nada Hermitage, Crestone CO

PS: If you haven’t looked yet, check out the Nada website. Staying here is very affordable. Two weeks for a couple costs less than $800, food included. And they have a place in Skreen, County Sligo, Ireland at similar rates. Beat that.

www.spirituallifeinstitute.org

Crestone #10: My iron skillet

As we gathered our gear to head west, I cleared an old plastic storage box to serve as our portable library. I brought along some Emily Dickinson; Billy Collins; the brand new Mary Oliver; this year’s Pulitzer for fiction, Olive Kitteridge; the jewel box insert for Paul Winter’s Consort’s Crestone; and my zen favorite, Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Wherever You Go, There You Are; among a few odds and ends. Cindy contributed some fiction: Charles Frazier’s Thirteen Moons, Jody Piccoult’s The Pact, and Kate Jacobs’s The Friday Night Knitting Club. Cindy has done a number on her collection, while I’ve had a pretty good time with mine, too.

Along with the library, a case of bottled water, and other stuff in the trunk, I stowed one other important thing very carefully: my iron skillet.

As it’s turned out, since my retirement, and probably for some time before that, I’ve taken on the responsibility of grocery shopping and meal planning at our house. I suppose I like to cook because my dad was such a role model. When I was a kid, he reprised his kitchen skills learned with the Army Air Corps during the war by fixing huge spaghetti dinners for the men’s group at church. After he retired he even took on some catering gigs. And, of course, there was his famous Christmas morning breakfast at the family homestead that he cooked every year until he couldn’t any more.

In any case, I like to cook. And I especially like to cook for Cindy. We say to each other now and then that if one or the other isn’t home, it’s a frozen something in the microwave. But when we’re both home, it’s a bona fide meal either off the stove or off the grill, usually fixed by me. I look at it as a real way to nourish my family and our love.

So when gear was stowed for our two week adventure in solitude, I had to bring my iron skillet. At home I use it for almost everything, from making Noah’s pancakes to grilled cheese sandwiches to my own version of spaghetti sauce. I have used non-stick fry pans in the past, but no more. There’s something about cooking on some version of Teflon that doesn’t feel healthy, especially since so many old pans have flaked off their coatings. Cindy’s favorite skillet is a lovely heavy duty stainless steel number. But for me, it’s the old iron skillet.

I’ve had this skillet through two marriages, and I suppose I’ve handled it better than some relationship issues. I oil it carefully after every use, disdaining soap unless it really is a mess. It always comes back beautiful, and frankly, with all the oilings, has become pretty non-stick all by itself.

We didn’t know exactly what to expect here at Nada. We knew we would have lots of quiet time here in our hermitage, and that we have. The books, journals, and blogs have been entertaining and enriching. And so has the cooking. Not that every meal has come out of my iron skillet, but the onions, ground turkey, and rice dish the other night was pretty fine. Something there is about sauteing onions and garlic in an iron skillet that sets the mood for any evening meal.

Taking care of ourselves, mind and body, was important during our quiet time at the mountains. My iron skillet was another anchor brought from home that has made our time together here more meaningful. Oh. And I baked cookies, too, in the toaster oven. For a pot luck.

Today’s elder idea: The habit of ignoring our present moments in favor of others yet to come leads directly to a pervasive lack of awareness of the web of life in which we are embedded.

Jon Kabat-Zinn