Medano-Zapata Ranch and The Great Sand Dunes

Bison













The Sangre de Cristo mountains rise to the East of the Ranch, the Great Sand Dunes have formed just below them in the San Luis Valley. The Valley is an agricultural haven, with the mighty potato being the major cash crop around here.
















..Where the Buffalo, or are they Beefalo?, roam....














Read about the ranch here:
http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/colorado/preserves/art535.html




The wilderness of the Sangre de Cristos is vast and wild, and with very few acess roads and trails, it is hard to get into. Natural and artesian springs sprout up all over the land with cotton wood groves forming small communities across the ranch's 150,000+ acres.

Just us and The Chairman

Neil and I just spent a weekend in Leadville fishing at a private fishing club, lets just say that we both caught rainbows that are no joke....about 18 inches, and i learned a new way to clean fish, that is really cool, but really gross. The perks of having new friends in CO. The cabin came into his family, ironically enough, through the Maytag family. It looks jsut like my grandparents cabin in Baldwin, which owes a lot to the Whirlpool family. It was like a time warp. Probably not weird to anyone but Neil and I.

Now we have arrived at our housesitting gig in Boulder for yet another new, and very trusting friend. Yup, its just Neil, me and The Chariman. Who is the The Chairman you ask? Well, Chairman Mao is a fat striped cat that I will pretend I like for the next week while we cohabitate in a 400 square foot condo; this place is small. Real small.

I'd send some new pictures, but our camera broke again. We have a full week of errands ahead of us.



Pedicularis grayii

Camp Recovery

Thought I’d hit you all with a picture of when I feel and hurt the old arm – that’s Kat and her brother Wes acting the fool in the background.















Another picture of the Sub-alpine meadows from out trip from Ouray to Durango. I love these meadows. We camped for 5 days just south of here.

















The Camp Recovery Center















Here is Neil holding up the tops and the root of Osha (Ligusticum porterii) – a major medicine of the region and world wide. Bears love this root; it is their medicine as well and hence has many spiritual properties for many of the native tribes. The aromatics are excreted through the lungs and are a classic remedy for cold, dry chest conditions that need moisture and heat brought to them.

















Osha Root














For the last two weeks Neil and I have been homesteading in the San Luis Valley – right near the great sand dunes. Neil has been cowboying around– I hear that he was born to ride and that he makes a great hand. I haven’t been able to do much riding with this arm; I can’t pull the reins hard enough to control these work horses. This place is owned by the Nature Conservancy and is 150,000 acre working ranch with one of the only free ranging bison herds in North America. What that really means is that we’ve been eating some buffalo burgers and elk stake.


We’re heading down South to the Conejos river today to get in some fly-fishing and camping. We’ve become masters of cooking over the open flames; just cause you’re camping don’t mean you got to rough it….




















Poppies in Ouray

Keep your eye on that grand old flag.

Hops To it My Pretty


Oh, my heart beats true for that red, white and blue,
where there’s never a boast or a brag,
let old acquaintance be forgot,
keep you eye on that grand old flag!
Happy Birthday America.

Salsify aka Oyster Root



After a week of camping and caravanning around the state with Kat and Amanda we are on our own for the new month of July. We drove throught the most beautiful mountain passes from Ouray, CO to Durango. We made it, in one piece, almost. Last week I had a little fall, I will spare you the details, only to say that falling face first off rocks into a few few of ice cold Animas river is about what its cracked up to be. Haha. I can type again after 6 days, but still cant twist my arm much.
Here are a few things I learned:
1) Rocks can look rough and yet be worn to a slick consistency; look carefully before you bound down to the first bath you’ve seen in a week.
2) Your brain works amazingly fast in situations like that. I had time to think about hitting my face on the rocks below and time to decide to break my fall with my right arm.
3) That all that herbal mumbo-jumbo is a little more than just magic and hippies picking flowers; it can really save your life. If you all had seen the way the swelling of my arm went down in just a couple of minutes, if you could see the lack of bruising, the way the color came back to my blue lips, then you would be in awe and know that arnica is truly a miraculous herb.
4) That I was lucky to be with people who had cool heads and listening to me and held me up on the rocks while I got over the shock. Good frieds make all the difference in crisis. Thank god for people who don’t want to rush you to the emergency room, but trust your knowledge of your own body and how to heal it.
5) That money is better spent on a nice hotel room with cable and a hot tub rather than on x-rays that tell you something you already know and splits that you could make yourself.
6) That a first aid kit is something that you really should have if you happen to not be traveling with every possession you own in your car.
7) That I was luckier than hell to have only hurt my arm and banged up my legs.

Anyway, enough of the tragedy. I can’t find the camera cable or I would gift you with some pics of the mountain views or at least of my huddled in the folding chair post trauma. An old plant picture from the field trip will have to do. Neil and I have been camping north of Durango, in the San Juan Mountains for 4 nights now and are about to start heading back toward Alamosa and the Great Sand Dunes where we will meet up with Crissy in a day or two. I haven’t been to the rest of this state, but from what I have heard and seen this is a place not to be missed. The Southwest corner of the state is awesome, full of national forest and BLM land, and not over populated.
We are gathering plant medicine, cooking over fires made of aspen and sleeping soundly in the honey wagon. Life is good, hope all of you are too.


One of the last classes with the illustrious MM.