Crestone, Colorado in Peril

Crammed in between the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the San Louis Valley, The small town of Crestone, Colorado rings with the essence of peace and natural wonder. You can find the little town just east of the Baca National Wildlife Refuge, an 80,000 acre natural aquifer system that collects snowmelt and rain from the surrounding mountains North, West and East. It sits just north of the Great Sand Dunes National Park in the largest sub-alpine valley in the world. Crestone is a place where the wild and great energy of the cosmos has a tendency to become one with you. The silence and openness of the land here has the ability to transform and overshadow the mind itself.

I know from personal experience. Wedged somewhere between an American dream life and the loony bin, I’d come here a couple of years back to renew myself and find reality again. Through time spent at a Buddhist retreat center here. I had a miraculous moment of clarity. I woke up to find I’d been eating the proverbial shit sandwich, day in day out, hoping that at any moment it would magically turn into steak. In my pursuit of collecting the solid commodities of the material world I’d been failing to experience a few key elements of my existence: my life, the moment and my heart; basically, reality.

Through some contemplative time spent in the silence here I found I’d been doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. I was insane, and frankly, pissed off about it I’d come to Crestone, to one of the many spiritual retreat centers here, in hopes of finding the essence of Ommmm that I’d somehow lost in a mix of a life way to busy to be sustainable . I’d been told by many that Crestone sits on top of an energy vortex and I’d found that to be true. Like a piece of stale white bread dipped down into a bowl of kerosene, I was able to suck up the cool essence of an energy lost. It was a turning point for me. Here against the mountains, that shoot to the sky in a Swiss-Alpian explosion of reverie, I found a place where water turns to wine. In the shadow of the cedars and pinyon pine, I found a voice that spoke to me from the emptiness deep within. The energy spurred my soul and shot up my spine like a dog track rabbit. It transformed me somehow and I’ve never been the same since. Stepping out into the valley here, the first thing that hits you is the silence. It’s almost like stepping into the belly of the mother herself: warm and empty. The atmosphere has a pressure to it that seems to press against your body until your barriers actually give way and you become fertilized with its essence. In the summer, when the light is right, the mountains swing up off the valley floor as if regurgitated through a blood stained hue. (‘Sangre de Cristo’ means “ blood of Christ”) It’s absolutely stunning. The town is home to some twenty-odd spiritual retreat centers that are filled with lamas, monks, yogis and spiritual practitioners. They come here from all over the world to renew, pray, meditate and soak up the juju in this special place. And now it seems it’s all being threatened by another entity that wants to come and soak up the energy of the valley as well.

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It was sometime last September, whilst scrolling through endless e-mails, that I ran across a white flag in the heap of my usual Yahoo non-sense. The letter was from Christian Dillo, head bottle-washer and monk at the Crestone Mountain Zen Center. What caught my eye was the email’s subject line……. -YOUR HELP IS NEEDED- URGENTLY!!! The email stated that Lexam Explorations, a wildcat Canadian oil company with mineral rights to Colorado’s newly approved Baca National Wildlife Refuge (the largest in the state) was threatening to drill through the pristine and protected aquifer system, just outside of Crestone. They wanted to get at a natural gas supply that might lay beneath the refuge. The odds seemed slim that they would find anything, but they were willing to risk polluting the delicate water system that sustains the whole valley in order to get what they wanted. They were also threatening to disrupt the peace and economic livelihood of the small community that thrives and sustains itself on attracting spiritual seekers to the serenity of its wilderness retreat centers. They were threatening to pollute the greatest energy sources in the largest sub-alpine valley in the world— the Water and the Silence. And the folks that lived there were quite understandably –freaked out! I thought- what could I do? How can I help?

I opened a new e-mail and started to type my urgent reply, and upon spilling a fresh cup of Darjeeling into my computer keyboard, picked up the phone and dialed. Christian Dillo himself picked up the phone and said hello in a soft spoken German accent. I took a hit of a fresh cup of Darjeeling. “What are you going to do?” I asked. “Do you have a plan?” (I’d heard monks didn’t really make plans.) “No,” He said. The town was organizing on various fronts to battle the insurgents. He said if I came down for a visit he’d give me the lowdown. I agreed, and then, playing the devil’s advocate, asked him the question that had been banging around my skull. “If everyone else can come here to soak up the energy of the valley why can’t Lexam?” “The drilling is likely to have severe environmental, cultural and economic impacts on the community and valley,” he said, without pause. People come here from all over the world for the peace, quiet and to meditate. The town relies on that financially. Who’s going to want to come here if it turns into an industrial zone and you can hear drilling rigs day and night?

It would be basically the end of Crestone as a spiritual retreat center. Environmentally, it could be a catastrophe. We all know what sustains us here and that’s the clean water from the aquifers. (an aquifer is a water bearing stratum of permeable rock; the water that collects there in that valley basin sustains the whole area for hundreds of square miles ) No one knows what will happen when Lexam starts breaking through the ancient rock barriers of potable and non-potable water that lie deep below the surface of the wildlife refuge. We could have a geothermal lake in the middle of the valley. They could pollute the water with the chemicals they use to fracture the rock. (Chemicals like benzene and diesel fuel are commonly used in this process) A group called the Manitou Foundation donated all this land to these spiritual centers here in Crestone to establish a unique opportunity to live in harmony with nature, develop sustainable living practices and teach environmental stewardship. The oil industry hasn’t really developed and maintained a record consistent with that philosophy. I took another hit of my tea and said,”Well, OK …that makes sense.”

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I’m grateful to finally find myself heading for Crestone again driving alongside the Arkansas River. “Iron and wine” is blasting through the car speakers. The song is- “Pagan angel in a borrowed car,” The car is mine but I can relate. Lately, I feel I’ve been cut off from the source again. I’m hoping a bit of time in Crestone will give me a much needed boost. Everywhere we go in Colorado, it seems, we follow some kind of ancient water trail. It’s the energy that links us to the heavens here. Its flowing essence makes us vibrant and healthy as a state. Like the spittle of the Gods, it somehow moistens the spirit within, so we can swallow even the most dry and indigestible parts of our daily lives and climate. All we have to do is find it, follow it up, and it always inevitably leads us to a place of beauty, peace and spiritual hydration. It’s raining, and as I plow my way up the driveway into the Crestone Mountain Zen Center, my Honda CRV bucks and shimmies through the mud. I’m greeted by Christian and another Zen monk named Dan in the kitchen who’s slaving over the midday meal of miso soup, rice and salad. Dan shakes my hand and says, “Did ya make it up the drive Ok?” “Barely,” I said. “It’s slicker than hen shit on a pump handle,” he says with a grin, and then goes back to stirring his soup Christian leads me on a tour through the grounds, the Zendo ( meditation room) , the guest cabins and a somewhat large dining room that is decorated with large colorful Tibetan and Japanese wall hangings. Statues of the Buddha grace the space, and a wood stove crackles in the corner next to a small library full of books on Buddhism, Yoga and Spirituality. A Cathedral ceiling stretches out above a sprawling tile floor draped in rugs and a large dining table. I said ”This is pretty nice. “Not the abode you would expect of humble monks.” Christian laughs and agrees. “I have a friend who says to me when he comes, “This is not the middle way – it’s more like the “upper” middle way.” We laugh just as Dan starts putting out lunch. Everyone gathers round the table and we all bow to each other and say a traditional prayer of thanks before serving the food. The monks are not what I expected at all. They laugh, tell jokes, and carry on jovially. The topics of conversation, to my surprise, have nothing to do with Zen, enlightenment or the Buddha. The main dilemma today is the compost pile. It seems it almost takes an act of God to get the rotting process going at 9000 ft of elevation in 12 percent humidity. Plates are clanking and mouths are slurping soup while a plan involving nitrogen rich alfalfa is discussed. The monks immediately make me realize I’ve spent way too much time thinking about God, Nirvana and Enlightenment and not enough time thinking about something sensible like putting some polish on my shoes. After lunch I walk outside into the silence again. Strolling down the path, a small stream of water runs down the hillside toward the great basin below and I have to step over it to climb into my car filled with fossil fuel. I wonder to myself what it would be like to hear the sound of drilling rigs off in the distance night and day. I wondered if it was important to keep the flow of silence and emptiness moving here. I also thought it ironic that after all my years of trying to collect concrete things from the outside world in order to find happiness, that I’d come to find silence and emptiness as the one commodity I could not do without. Everything important in my life started from there. I’d actually found the most precious gift and experience in my life came from nothing. I laughed out loud at even the thought of it. Driving into town I pull up outside of the local coffee shop to a wild-eyed, angry local, screaming at a dog that tried to bite him in the entrance way of the place. “If I’d had my knife I would have sliced that bastard”, he says to me. “Nobody’s gonna take a swipe at me and not get cut. I don’t care who it is. Goddamned dog” , he says walking away. I think to myself, ‘that used to be me’. It’s a sharp contrast here in town to that of the Zen center. It’s like I’ve come down the hill and back into the Old West. Beat-up old trucks line the dirt streets under ancient cottonwoods and drainages outside the coffee shop. Women in print prairie dresses and dreadlocks hang outside the old western store front, draped with colorful prayer flags, smoking. It’s a strange, typically rural Colorado, mix of hippie and cowboy. The one thing unique about Crestone, it occurs to me, is that there is really nothing here. Unlike other supposed spiritual centers I’ve been to, that are filled with tourist stands and plastic, smiling, glow in the dark Buddhist swag, Crestone is etched out of the wilderness. I can’t imagine Jesus wanting to go to Sonoma for his 40 days and 40 nights stint in the desert , but I could see him hanging out here. I figure out I’m at the wrong place for my scheduled meeting, and I ask a bearded man sitting in a beat-up old Dodge if he knows where the right one is. He points me in the right direction with a crooked finger, and I off-handedly ask him what he thinks about the drilling that might happen out on the Baca. “Damn shame,” he says. “They are gonna come in here and ruin this place – mess it all up.” “There’s no hope,” he said in a quiet voice, “they’ll just do what they want and leave. They always have and always will,” he says. “They might be able to bring it to a halt,” I say optimistically “If it was a different time,” he says with a wry smile,” we’d a run em’ off with guns.” I finally find a local restaurant, The Desert Sage, and sit down with some new friends Hob and Kyrena. Hob is an 89-year-old channeler of the dead and ex -Wall Street tycoon that somehow had a stark moment of clarity some years back, and wound up trying to lead a spiritual life. His wife Kyrena, is a healer who heals by using colors. A cute mop-topped Tibetan girl in Go-Go boots brings me a Yak burger and a chia tea as I ask them what they think about the proposed drilling. Their happy faces suddenly turn serious and sullen like someone has just threatened to kick their dog. “I don’t know,” says Hob,” we’ll see what happens but it doesn’t look good.” “It’s been on our minds a lot lately,” Kyrena says. I ask what brought them here to this remote region of the country. They tell me they had always looked for a place like this that was peaceful and quiet in nature where they could live and practice . They had tried other places but the remoteness and beauty of Crestone caught their hearts right away. “We love it,” says Hob, “there’s an energy to the land and people here that is almost indescribable.” After a great dinner and conversation I ask Hob if he could Ccannel someone from the dead for their insight on the drilling. I told him I needed some input from “the beyond.” He said, “Do you have any requests?” “I don’t know,” I said, “I’ll let that be your call.” He smiles with glee at the thought of the task, and says. “I will report back upon contact.”

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Established in 1994 by Maurice and Hannah Strong, the Manitou Foundation was established in Crestone, Colorado with a mission to preserve wildlife and protect the natural environment through developing and supporting programs which promote environmental awareness, Earth stewardship and sustainability. Its other goals were to advocate and support the preservation, teaching and practice of the world’s wisdom traditions, sacred arts, ancient healing and medicinal sciences. They established the Foundation and started donating land to various Spiritual lineages from around the world. The Catholic Carmelites, Japanese Shumei, Tibetan Buddhists, and Zen Buddhists are among the traditions that have monasteries here. Maurice Strong’s history, though, is as long a walk as contradiction itself. In 1992 he orchestrated the United Nations Earth Summit, and has been labeled the “father of the environmental movement” by some. But before that he seemed to have made billions in a vast array of big businesses that dipped their hands into all kinds of things. This mixture of do-goodism and self-interest ironically got its start in the oil business. By his 30s, Strong had made millions in small energy companies, rising to become president of Power Corporation, a Montreal holding company. In 1976 he ran Petro Canada, the national oil company. By 1981 he had moved on to Denver oil promoter AZL Resources. As head honcho and largest shareholder, he was sued for allegedly hyping the stock ahead of a merger that eventually failed. Nonetheless, Strong came out a winner. AZL, which owned a number of western ranches, merged with oil refiner Tosco Corp. in 1983. When Tosco unloaded some AZL ranch land, Strong bought the Baca Ranch – 160,000 acres in south central Colorado. (Which eventually became Baca National Wildlife refuge) In Crestone, he later founded American Water Development Inc. to grow high-protein grains. Soon the plan became a scheme to pump water from under Baca to the Denver suburbs, an idea that the locals said would harm the ecosystem. Caught between his reputation as an environmentalist and his pocketbook, Strong bowed out. He was quoted as saying his partners labeled him “softhearted.” So it seems ironic that the same hands that were dipped in oil bought this beautiful place and are now tied to folks in the fight to keep the oil industry out. Ah, but hey, redemption is every mother’s son, someone once told me. At least it seems that way in this case. From what I’ve seen and heard, the commitment at Manitou seems to be spiritual and environmentally pure to the core. They don’t seem to be doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Which made me wonder about Lexam, and I made a call to them. I wanted to know if they were planning on making any special efforts to protect the sustainability of what was already here in Crestone. I got the company voicemail, left a message and waited. Silence. Was it the same silence that seems to move in waves out across the Crestone basin? What was it telling me. I called back several times and got the same thing. Silence. It told me a lot about Lexam. Just like sitting meditation does – if you sit long enough in the silence, it speaks to you in profound waves.

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Back at the Zen center, the fire is roaring and I settle back down for another conversation with Christian Dillo. His office is clean and organized, his face a happy glow of contentment, despite the talk about the drilling. We conjure up another conversation, this time more about spirituality and our own experience. I ask him what brought him to his spiritual practice and an eventual place of peace. He paused and said, “Well, a traumatic experience in my life wracked with a whole lot of pain.” I said, “I can relate man, for me, pain has always been the touchstone to my progress. I asked him if he thought “a whole lotta pain” was what it was going to take solve the drilling dilemma here. “I hope not but maybe so”, he said, with a shrug, “I guess time will tell.” There seems to be a whole lot of pain and uncertainty going on here as a result of the proposed drilling, the pain of the community to survive, even the potential pain of the Drilling through the aquifer system and silence here is like drilling through the heart of the community. It’s the life blood. It’s the equivalent of open heart surgery. One mistake and we all die on the table. Not just Crestone, but a little piece of Colorado, the country, and the world as a whole.

Driving out of town, I’m finally able to get cell phone service, and there’s a message from Hob. He’s laughing hysterically on the other line and telling me he’s channeled from the dead none other than Henry David Thoreau. Passing a hand painted sign on the highway that reads “Stop the Drilling on The Baca” I listen as Hob reveals Henry’s quote from the great Walden pond in the sky. He says…..“All will be better served for bypassing the truly historic San Louis Valley, with its richsoil, large body of pure water, beneath its “well”-farmed surface, and let remain what Mother Nature has provided for all to enjoy and benefit from.” I hung up the phone and laughed out loud into the seemingly endless nothingness and silence that surrounded me, and as if on cue, it actually laughed back.