sawatch mountains!
one day I'm gonna find aquamarine
so high up in those rock cathedrals
this time it was just a most enchanting place to camp
a granite heart
and lots of chipmunks
—Oct 2018
Somewhere in the San Juans, 2009
Vallecitos, 2009 or maybe 1809
Fully immersed in the power of Winter. In every visit to Colorado I feel the he, the raw masculine within the indomitable peaks, the rough rugged land, and the wind that tears into my being. It is wholly invigorating and fills me with visions and swirls of blue, ice, snow, biting wind, the opposite, the balance, of my feminine heart. It is the sturdy counterpart to the warm and ethereal enchantment I find in my New Mexico. The primal North and the beckoning South. A heart beats hard and wild.
—Jan 29, 2017
On a lake in Colorado, watching storms that keep the mighty mountains green... dreaming of where these bones shall settle.
—Sept 9, 2017
You are like reading a new, very good, book and I am thankful to have wandered into your story. We soaked in warm earth waters staring up under yellow cottonwoods until the sky fell black.
—Oct 20, 2017
Random notes:
Today we saw a lot of snow (yay) and learned that some parts of Colorado are browner than the desert (nay). The mountains are often impossible, you cannot climb them... unless you are part mountain goat or a touch mad I suppose. The feeling this gives is unrivaled and to feel their cold teachings is a gift. I still love the way Silverton feels the most—old west spirits abound and I am still trying to articulate why they are some of my favorites. I want to live in a forest, not out in the open looking at one. The way the trees go silent and frigid when the sun catches only the tallest peaks is a place I need to find myself. The lack of people in the places we have seen so far is freeing. Snow makes me happier than any other weather.
—Oct 21, 2017
I had one conversation with someone new in the town I loved most during my visit to Colorado. He had the kind of eyes that offer a lifetime of wisdom if your energies blend and he decides you are someone he would like to meander with. I consider time with an elder such as this one of the greatest privileges. They are my favorite people. They do not need to tell you everything they know, and they are in no hurry. He gave me little tidbits of treasure that lie in wait there; stories of shamans and aquamarines—my spirit stone—and sacred mountains. I told him about how I have been waiting for a particular stone for many years but I thought they grew only in Peru, and now here is one in his shop, from the land nearby, and I would like to acquire it. What a surprise! It now lives with a piece of smoky quartz from Mt Antero in a coyote bag and since I have been sleeping with it my dreams take me to that mountain. There is always a snake there the color of this epidote that winds between my feet as I walk. The wind blows so cold from snow and ice 14,000 feet in the sky, but the snake, my dog, a coyote, the sun, and me are all warm with fire while ravens fly overhead. He told me he will be there when I come back.
—Oct 24, 2017
Colorado finally hit me in all the right feels today, it just took a really long trek on a cold cloudy day to an 1800s ghost town inside of 14,000 foot mountains. I want to live there and write a book. Curiously, more than one person remarked “Oh, you could be a ghost.”
—October 7, 2018
