On our way down to New Mexico, we stopped to eat in a little town in southern Colorado called San Luis. It consists of about 800 people and a couple of dogs that were running around in the street when we pulled up. We stopped there because a) we were hungry and b) the town rests at the northernmost edge of the culture that we would be living in for the rest of the week. After ordering a ridiculously large breakfast (meaty breakfast skillets, while tasty, are not good road trip food), I hiked with some of the others to visit a chapel on the top of a large hill that overlooks the town.

I wasn’t able to get a good picture of it, but along the side of the hill, large white rocks spell out “SAN LUIS - OLDEST TOWN IN COLORADO.” I can’t even think of how much trouble it must be to maintain that rock sign; any time it rains, you would have to go up there and spend half a day climbing along the side of the hill, putting the rocks back into place. Not to mention what would happen if you’re a bad speller.

Here’s us hiking along on this nicely kept path. I like this photo, but wish I had some way of capturing the way the air and sunlight felt after being shuttled inside a dark van for ten hours. Along the path to the top are several bronze statues depicting the various stations of the cross, such as this one:

Though it didn’t turn out as crisp and polished as I’d like it to have been, I like this photo of the bunch cause of the oh-so-clever setup. And no, I have no idea what that red cloth thing over the wooden cross is for. I assume it had something to do with holy week.

Madre Ursula greeted me from the bushes as I made my way back to the van to sit for a few more hours. The inscription on her chest roughly means (according to my dim memory of Spanish class) “Nothing is more powerful than love.”

As lovely as it was there, though, we had to continue on ahead to Ghost Ranch. After a slight mix-up in which three of the four vans got on the wrong highway (!), we finally arrived at the ranch.

Storm clouds, snowy drizzle, and different people notwithstanding, it was the same land I’d left a year ago. Maybe it’s because I had such a deep immersion experience with this trip last year, but going back and seeing the mesas and trees, and even the rickety staff house with paper thin walls, made me feel a strong sense of belonging. I can’t say that I’ve felt that way about a place for a long time now.

We drove back into Lawrence at about 1:30 a.m. on Easter morning, and I’ve been recovering since then - from the fourteen hour drive, from the sheer amount of soul-searching/cultural immersion condensed into the space of a week, and from all the stuff that I’ve been putting off until now converging upon me. There’s a lot of stuff that happened, + pictures, so I’m going to split up the experience into a few backdated posts (thanks to Blogger) as time allows. That way I don’t keep pushing off posting about spring break because there’s too much to say in one post, until a month later when it’s too late - and then I’ll never post about it.

Anyhoo - overall, I felt better about the experience than last year’s. When telling a friend about how I felt kind of isolated from the others during last year’s jaunt to Ghost Ranch, she asked why I decided to go again this time. I don’t really have a good answer. I suppose because the boy came again (though that sounds like a terrible excuse for an alleged feminist, I really do like spending time with the boy), and because…I don’t really know. There’s something about the New Mexican desert that just seems like home to me, as cliched as that probably sounds. I can’t think of how to phrase that any better. I’ve only been there for a total of two weeks in my lifetime, but I feel tied to the ground, with its strange red sand and dry brush.

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Some explanation: I spent the past week on an alternative spring break, which is a program designed to organize college students for volunteer work as an alternative (hence the name) to typically “fun” spring breaks like going to Cancun or Padre or something. Not knocking Cancun or Padre, but some of us aren’t really into the whole tourist thing but still want a break from school and Lawrence.

I went on one to remote Northern New Mexico, at a large Presbyterian conference center called Ghost Ranch. Culturally, the area we were in - outside the town of Abiquiu, an hour north of Santa Fe - is almost like a different country. Abiquiu is a Pueblo-type village comprised of descendants of both Spanish and Indian heritage, the Indian heritage primarily due to slave trade in the 1800s. People there speak a mix of Spanish and English, different enough from Mexican Spanish that a Mexican-American girl who was on the trip with us had some difficulty communicating with the people in the community. The county we were in is one of the poorest counties, if not the poorest, in the nation. There just aren’t any job opportunities in Abiquiu, so many people have to commute to Espanola and Santa Fe to get work. Abiquiu is also known for being the place where Georgia O’Keeffe lived and painted towards the end of her life. They get a little money from tourism, I think, but mostly tourists seem to annoy people. We talked to one person in the community who told us about tourists coming in and stealing crosses from the cemetary to take as “O’Keeffe souvenirs.” It never fails to impress me how amazingly stupid people can be.

The goals of our trip included not only helping out the people in the community (cleaning their irrigation ditch system, maintenance of libraries and churches), but also getting to know each other and ourselves. It’s a really scary thing to be thrown into a group of people that you barely know or don’t know at all - but also incredibly amazing when the group just clicks, like it did this year. Last year there were a few more people, and not as many interested in the community-building aspect of the trip, so subsequently there were more cliques and less cohesion among the greater group. There’s one guy that went on last year’s trip that I wouldn’t have recognized on the street, had the boy not pointed him out to me - I don’t recall exchanging a single word with him for the entire week. This year, though, was great, despite the fact that one of the group got dangerously ill and had to stay in the hospital for the entire trip. It was so unfortunate, because from what I heard from others, she desperately needed the time off. Too bad most of it was spent being so sick.

Another note about the trip in general is the fact that it snowed almost the entire time we were there. I came expecting something like last year’s weather - hot during the day, cool during the night, dry all the time. Not this year. On average the area receives about 10 inches of precipitation per year. In the past three weeks, they’ve gotten something like thirty. The sudden deluge of rain and snow has been great for the desert, which is usually so dry. It wasn’t so great for people (like me) who wanted to hike, but not in the snow and mud. I know it was selfish of me to wish for the desert to not get any wetter, but I really missed sleeping out on the mesa from last year, and wanted to see the stars at night. Seeing huge snowflakes drop from the sky while the sun shone brightly was quite a trip, though. Like Kansas weather to the extreme.

I almost didn’t go because of mixed feelings about last year, but I’m glad I did. I miss them all (except the one I’m dating, and the ones I see on a regular basis - but I’d miss them if I didn’t), especially hugs. I may sound like a five-year-old to those of you reading this, but I really miss the constant hugs given freely on the trip. Usually I’m very restrained and defensive of personal space with everyone (excepting, of course, the boy) - not just people whom I think might be creepos. I always forget how nice it feels to hug and to be hugged, until I’m forced to do it. Forced isn’t the right word - that sounds like our trip leader held us at rifle point, and he definitely didn’t have to, because people were ready to hug. It’s just that there’s not really much occasion to in my typical daily experience. I hug someone when I’m leaving or they’re leaving on a big trip, and that’s that. Maybe that’s me and the way I was raised, maybe that’s our society, who knows. In high school forensics, some orator from another school did her speech on the importance of hugs, and I remember distinctly rolling my eyes at that one. Now I can see where she’s coming from (although I still maintain that her speech was cheesy).