Towaoc Journey

It takes nearly an hour of driving before you can really feel like you have left Denver. I was at that place, well away from Conifer and past Pine but not yet to the mountain towns of Bailey and Santa Maria. The road emerged from the tree-lined canyon into an open meadow and I saw something out of the corner of my left eye. It was the profile of a hawk, wings outstretched, flying parallel to my car. Then my spirit lifted. I was not in Denver anymore.

There were five mountain passes ahead of me. I zoomed over Kenosha Pass and down into South Park, heading straight south through that wide valley. Then came Poncha Pass which brought me to the San Luis Valley, the largest high-altitude valley in the world. In the northern half of this valley, there is no drainage. Water that falls, and snow that melts stays in this valley and nurtures the many crops and livestock growing there. 

The Southern half of the valley is home to the Rio Grande that flows from its headwaters in the San Juan Forest eastward creating a watery belt and then turning south at Alamosa to begin its journey to the Gulf of Mexico. I turned west and followed the river upstream through Del Norte. Before climbing over my last mountain pass, I stopped for the night in South Fork, a quiet fishing village. 

The next morning I set out to climb Wolf Creek Pass into Pagosa Springs. With delight, I spotted the profile of a hawk again in the same position, just to the south of the road, flying in the same direction as my car. A thought came to me: could it be the spirit of Dr. Jefferson, who died in July and who planned the conference I was going to? No matter whether the thought was true, it gave me confidence. 

Town after town flew by. Pagosa, Bayfield, Mancos, Durango. I could feel the stresses of city life fall away. I started to forget about the craziness of the national scene. The chaos of the world. I listened to music on the local radio stations: country western, gospel, jazz. The mountains were breathtaking. The water shimmered. The forests and canyons were dark and profound. I finally stopped at a rest area across from Mesa Verde and ate an orange while viewing its magnificent profile. 

When I finally pulled into the hotel parking lot in Towaoc, clouds were gathering and virga was hanging down from them. I was so busy setting up the conference room that I barely noticed it was raining. But later I went out on the balcony of my room and enjoyed the feeling of Earth breathing after her shower. The desert willows released their sweet fragrance. An imposing cliff shaded the landscape. 

It was a beautiful and rejuvenating time in Towaoc on the Ute Reservation. I planned to stay in South Fork again on my return to break the trip into two more pleasant legs. As I headed east out of Cortez, I didn’t see any hawks. Instead I saw a series of crows spaced apart on the roadside, all looking toward the south. I realized the hawks had been to the south of me as well. Why in the south? Native wisdom tells us that the south “stands for warmth and growing. The sun's rays are powerful in drawing life from the earth. It is said the life of all things comes from the south. When people pass into the spirit world, they travel the Milky Way's path back to the south — returning from where they came.”