I feel like I was recently summoned by the Sangre de Cristo range. I don't know how else to describe it. I knew we were offering a retreat in Boulder and I always try to shoulder retreats with a little bit of personal time when I can restore my own inner reserves after being tuned into the participants of the retreat. I'd asked some friends in Colorado if they had recommendations but I got a lot of vague responses. Last year I designed a Costa Rica retreat for Colorado-based yoga teacher, Carrie Keahey. She said, "Go to Crestone." I had breakfast with my friend Karin Otto and mentioned this. She gasped. In awe she said, "go there. I did my 3 week zazen sit there."
I'd never heard of Crestone, but all of my favorite travel experiences began with someone else's wide-eyed suggestion. We went to Guatemala based on the recommendation of some Chilean backpackers when we were all sandwiched in the back of a van in Panama. Staying in a hostel near Tikal, we played rummy for a few hours with a guy who'd motorcycled down from Canada. He told us, "Go to Lake Atitlan. Go to a village called San Marcos. Stay at a hotel called Aaculaax." A few weeks later, while sunning on the boulders along the Lake Atitlan shoreline, we chatted with some Irish backpackers. "I love Vietnam. Go there." While planning my Vietnam trip, a yoga student said, "Go to Hoi An." And on and on.
I don't know if other people get these suggestions or not nor whether they listen. In my experience, it is worth listening to these recommendations.
I found an airbnb in Crestone and figured out how long it would take us to drive down from Boulder. I often take public transit when traveling but it wasn't an option here. There is one road into Crestone and one road out. No buses. No trains.
As we finished long, sweet hugs with the participants from the Boulder retreat, we hopped into our rental car and got on the highway south through the Rockies. We skirted the western border of Denver before dropping into more arid rock formations, following winding highways along serpentine paths of rivers. My ears never stopped popping as we found our ways into many little towns, the formula: one gas station, on camping spot, one motel, one restaurant. Again and again. And then wide open space. Uninterrupted mountains, climbing trees, open skies.
We saw several of Kevin's "weird Colorado" finds; a Coney Island hot dog stand among them. So funny to find a 8 ft tall hot dog among aspen and yet another "Yogi Bear" KOA campsite. We stopped for lunch near Breckenridge and got some good spicy burritos. The landscape shifted gradually as we wove in and out of valleys and then back up into the mountains. The biggest shift came as we exited about 45 minutes from Crestone. Suddenly, we dropped into a high altitude desert, an altiplano. The San Luis Valley plays tricks on your perception. Because it's so broad and flat, with the only discernable difference between the mountain range boundaries, it seems possibly small. But it's not. The valley opens into a vast range but there's little to differentiate distance. More tumbleweed, low grasses, grazing animals. Open, open space.
The altiplano was arid, desolate and completely beautiful. We drove towards a majestic range of southern Rockies known as the Sangre de Cristo because at sunset, the sky makes the mountains appear the color of the blood of Christ. That name gives some indication to the potency of feeling in this place. This particular area has long been a site of pilgrimage. Indigenous peoples lived and live in the region but many sites in this particular area have always been places of spiritual reverence, not places where you live your everyday life.
Highway 17 or the Cosmic Highway, which links into Crestone, is also where the most UFO sightings in the northern Americas have occurred! This feels pretty linked to me-- there's interesting scholarship on previous generations talking about spiritual sightings or communions with angels in the same terms that people in the last century have used to describe UFO sightings. Some say that these experiences are the same. Whether they're UFOs or angels is obviously a bit tricky to discern or prove, but many in and around Crestone split the difference by referring to "sky beings" or "sky spirits." Many in Crestone purposefully meditate or seek to commune with these beings who they see as helpful or conducive to shifting perspective and consciousness.
Already, we'd obviously hit another one of Kevin's "weird Colorado" spots. He had just heard an interview with a woman who maintains a site dedicated to the Cosmic Highway's high density of sightings.
We passed hot springs I'd heard about, bubbling up from the cauldron of heat and energy beneath the valley floor before turning on T road, the one way in and out of Crestone. This road is almost a straight shot towards the mountains, but mysteriously curves a few times. The bends move around houses. My guess is they either built the road around existing properties and/or they added some bends to decelerate the tendency to just speed off towards the horizon.
We passed a dispensary and a few houses and a lot of wild, open space. We dead-ended at grazing alpaca and a sign for Crestone. A left and then a right, we found a four road town and some scattered houses. I asked a woman for directions to our airbnb. She had a leathered face, suspicious eyes, and was missing most of her teeth. She seemed very sharp and discerning. The road names I was given meant nothing but in a town of 150 people she knew our airbnb host and appropriately guided us.
We opened a rusty gate to a yard of projects: apple trees dropping fruit where mule deer grazed, a geodesic dome serving as growhouse for marijuana plants, several assorted yurts, an apparently functional sink in the middle of the yard, a human-made stream running past a house where a toddler stood naked in a tall window. Some found art projects. A couple of tools.
Beneath the towering mountains, our hobbit house, a round home built from sacred geometry out of wood and cob. We entered the code and the sweet space. It was so warm! So much warmer than I would have expected. Cob does a good job of insulating or cooling depending on the season. As the temperature quickly dropped in the high mountain air, the warmth became very reassuring.
Kevin looked around wide-eyed saying things like, "I feel like I've been here before." I didn't feel that but I don't know how else to explain it... I feel like I'd been called.
And not like this was a warm, milk and cookies invitation. It felt a little rough!
I'd arrived in Colorado feeling good. On the second day of the retreat I went into deep caves with bubbling water from hot springs. By that evening, I felt rough. I had a ton of congestion in my chest that made it hard to sleep. I figured out ways to pull through so I could be present on the retreat but I almost felt like that dip had kick-started something in my body. By the time I pulled into Crestone I was still battling the congestion as well as the altitude. It felt like a purification. It felt like I'd be plunged into the depth of the mountain's heat, shook up, warmed up, and was being pushed to run clear.
I didn't feel well for most of my time in Colorado but I still loved it. I didn't feel concerned about my health. It felt like something that maybe is often covered up, or not often dealt with (I can't even name what!), was rising to the surface level. Like the mountains called me, I had to go, and they were working me out.
Given that I didn't want to miss out on this beautiful space, I continued to do things. Each day Kevin and I set out on an outdoor adventure. As the day progressed and I moved in the open air, I would feel better. I had to stop a lot on hikes to catch my breath as the thin oxygen and my compromised lungs needed time, but I could do it and I felt better for having been free range in that way. I felt summoned and I felt like the mountains wanted to work on me.
The other day I re-listened to an interview Krista Tippett did with Robin Kimmerer, a biologian of moss and member of Indigenous spiritual community. Kimmerer said that she often asked her college students if they love the world. Many would affirm that they do. Then she'd ask if the earth loves them. That tended to produce uncomfortable silences. She phrased the question in that way to highlight the interrelatedness we have with what we perceive to be inanimate, or at least animate in a way distinct from our own consciousness. She wanted to offer the possibility of the earth's agency. I was so glad to hear that because these are the spaces I've been working in recently. Even as I write these words I think potential readers might think I've totally lost it. "Mountains calling you? Purifying you? How many dispensaries did you hit?" Language feels pretty inadequate in regards to some of these deeper senses.
I've been working to strengthen my intuition recently by simply listening to it. I pay more attention to my dreams. I try to feel my body's responses to various decisions. The more I practice in these ways, the quiet inner voice grows louder. And I'm so grateful for it's insight.
Maybe this is why I could hear the mountains call. I don't think I'm meant to stay there. The feeling of pilgrimage was strong. I think those mountains are happiest left free of human development and intervention. But I'm so grateful for the invitation and ability to be in that potent space, when called.
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