Spirit houses of Crestone

The Sangre de Cristo range has long been a site of pilgrimage for Indigenous spiritual seekers. Apparently, when students of Tibetan Buddhist Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche were looking for a site to house their teacher in the Americas, they thought that the high altitude of Crestone would feel like home. They were a large part of building a stupa in Crestone.

Somewhere in there a politician bought a bunch of land in Crestone with thoughts of development. Somehow, happily, his plans didn't come to fruition. Either due to conscience or for the tax write-off, he donated the land to several religious organizations. There is now a Carmelite Catholic Hermitage, several Hindu Ashrams, several Buddhist monasteries of different stripes, permaculture sites, and more. Most people going to Crestone are going for periods of contemplation in one of the religious houses.

The town of Crestone proper is a few dusty roads at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo range before opening into the vast San Luis Valley. If you don't turn back to the valley but instead head up into the mountains you're entering a part of town known as The Baca. There are scattered houses with view of the tumble weed and shrubs below and soaring cliffs above.

Soon, you come to a remarkable Buddhist stupa.

On site, we read about the formation. There seems to be an unusual level of collaboration between the various spiritual houses. As I write this it actually makes better sense-- it is HARD to live in the San Luis Valley. Perhaps cooperation is a natural byproduct of maintaining in adverse conditions.

The stupa was erected in coordination between some of the various Tibetan Buddhists in the region. There was a small meditation house devoted to the Divine Mother. There was a potent feminine energy there... but I tried to describe it to a friend. It also felt very strongly masculine at times. She said, "That's when you're in the presence of something outside of what we know." I think that's true.

We made a few trips up the Baca. We visited with some attendants in one of the Hindu Ashrams and heard stories about their Guru. I loved that many of their structures were built with repurposed tires into the cliffs to be less interrupting to the environment as well as naturally temperature controlled. We read some of the ashram schedules-- early rising, meditation, seva or work in the ashram, all while repeating mantra. The Baca is the site of many people performing cleansing austerities.

The Carmelite Hermitage is said of have one of the best spiritual libraries in the region. The University system in Colorado also had a satellite school studying local ecology.

Everyone there was there intentionally.