Pet rocks and new dreams in new places

This week we are making pet rocks. Why not? For two little kids who make pets out of paper, this seemed like a good project.






We are also learning about insects and pollinators. I am eager to finally land and really begin to build a flower garden. And bees...I have wanted to get bees for about four years now.

7 yr old daughter's pollinators

5 yr old son's pollinator

On Tuesday we are going to close on a piece of land near Alamosa. 37 acres of sand, salt bush, rabbit brush and cactus. Plus wide open blue skies, the towering protection of Mt Blanca, mountains in every direction you look, and pure silence. Until we get there with the kids anyway.

Mt Blanca

Land near Alamosa

Let the plan be reborn in a new place. We are planning on building an Earthbag house. The benefits of this location are the shallow water table under our feet, the close proximity to town, passable roads, and the affordability of such a large piece of land. Plus, we can grow hemp here, if we figure it out. Hemp is supposed to help marginal soils, which is definitely what we have on this new piece of property. Hemp, in my opinion, has the potential to save the planet. Hemp can replace petroleum in every way, and then some. It will replenish the soils, can be used in building materials, can be used as medicine (hemp seed is powerfully nutritious) and grows fast. Cannabis is good too and has its benefits as well, but industrial grade hemp is the answer to a lot of the problems facing the planet and humanity right now.

I have been scouting out rvs, trying to decide between a trailer and a motor home. Some of the trailers are really big and will be hard to tow, even with our old van. But, depending on what we choose, I'd like to be able to use it in the future to travel around a bit. I still want to go to Mexico, even if only for a visit. We are debating the rv as a potential living space as we build. As we have learned, it is too hard to build if you are not living there too. There just isn't the time, and so much energy is lost in commuting. Plus, it's just easier to stay home if the motivation is waning.

We will hold onto our Taos land for a while and perhaps we will build there too in the future. I can collect sage there and maybe the energy of the NM mountains. It is a beautiful place, but so hard to get too. I think maybe the road is seasonal, and not passable in the Taos mud seasons. Or maybe we will sell it and let someone else carry on the dream. It is a nice, peaceful place.

The wind is back. It is spring, isn't it? Everything not tied down or inside is blowing away. Wind season has just begun. I need to make my peace with the wind. Still, there is excitement in the air and so much potential blowing around. I welcome change and new opportunities.

Home school projects, spiritual school lessons

 This week we finished up our home school unit on volcanoes by making paper mache volcanoes that we "errupted" with baking soda and vinegar (and some elderberries for color).

paper mache volcano erupts

We then began a unit on weather, which allowed us to make windmills.

paper windmill

But the most interesting was (or is, ongoing) our arts and crafts project on dream catchers. This was a little more time consuming. We gathered willow reeds from down by the Hondo River, tied them in a circle, let them dry for a few days, and have been wrapping them with some yarn I've had for years. We garnished with some beads resurrected from a homemade bead curtain from many years ago. We have an abundance of feathers...chicken, turkey, duck, guinea and some found feathers, which added the finishing touches.

craft dreamcatcher

my son's dream catcher

The kids were looking forward to hanging them above their beds. Legend has it the dream catcher allows good dreams to pass through, but catches the bad dreams in the web. The morning's light takes the bad dreams away, clearing the dream catcher for the next night.

So we hung the dream catchers. And my five year old son was up early into the night with some weird night terror thing...angry outbursts, non-responsive, and I was up with him, wondering if we had angered the spirits with our crafty dream catchers?

This comes at an interesting time as I am beginning a Shamanism training course, so naturally I am thinking in more spiritual ways. Perhaps our dream catchers are a mockery to the spirit world and the Native American Traditions. Perhaps people should not mess with things they do not fully understand. I suppose we can re-make our dream catchers in ceremony, following specific rituals, with all natural materials, which might appease the spirits. Of course taking down the current dream catchers will cause my kids a lot of strife and me a lot of stress, so we will see how the rest of the week goes.

I think I will ask the spirits for forgiveness in a sage cleansing ritual, and hope last night was a one time event. We had so much fun making the dream catchers...surely this is all an innocent misunderstanding. Maybe I need to reconsider. As a student of magic, perhaps I no longer have the luxury of making psuedo spiritual tools. Consider my hands slapped, and now I will have to learn the true and honorable way to make a dream catcher......Or something like that......

Volcanoes

We are working on a science unit with the kids on volcanoes. So, being in the land of dormant volcanoes, we decided to take a field trip.

First we tried to find a road to Ute Mountain, a large shield volcano, which is behind our house. That proved more complicated than we anticipated, so we headed deep into the southern San Luis Valley to explore other neighborhood volcanoes.

The first dormant volcano we visited was Mesita Volcano, which was turned into a quarry for scoria and volcanic rock, but has been abandoned for some time. It was fun. We got to walk around and pick up the super light lava rocks.

Scoria pile at Mesita quarry/volcano

The center of the volcano and mined area

Collecting lava rocks. In the background on the left is Ute Mtn, and on the right is San Antonio Mtn (shield volcanoes).

We found another small dormant volcano up near highway 142 and the Rio Grande river called Culebra Volcano. We did not explore the remnants of the blown volcano though as my ears were too cold from our last expedition. (Beautiful day with a cold wind.)  We plan to return when the weather warms a little more.

We headed over to Antonito to pick up some locally made tamales and drove around in the valley near San Antonio Mountain, another very large shield volcano.

At home we are working on paper mache volcanoes that we can "explode" with baking soda and vinegar.

paper mache volcanoes

I think we are all enjoying these home school field trips. School without walls...is awesome!

Monte Vista Crane Festival 2014

Monte Vista Wildlife Refuge

Yesterday we went to see the cranes. In Monte Vista, they have an annual Crane Festival to celebrate the arrival of the Sand Hill Cranes to the San Luis Valley, and more specifically to the Monte Vista Wildlife Refuge.

Cranes in the sky

The cranes come twice a year to the area...in the early spring (or mid February to mid March) and again in the fall (October, November). They stop over on their way north as the weather begins to warm, and they stop again on their way back south as winter closes in.

Cranes in a field on the refuge

The cranes will fill the farmers' fields from Monte Vista, through Alamosa and even over into Blanca on the eastern side of the valley. They come to eat the Barley seed heads from the fields. They will plant the fields in the Monte Vista refuge as food for the cranes, but the cranes will pick through fields throughout the area.

They are amazing creatures. They have been migrating through the area for centuries, before people came to the San Luis Valley. Now, there is fear of taking the water that is funneled through the wildlife refuge because water has become so scarce in Colorado. That seems wrong, doesn't it? We can find water to frack and poison our planet, but we can't let the water continue to run through the wetlands of the San Luis Valley?

Humanity has reached the point of absurdity. Without the diverse ecosystems that inhabit our planet, we will begin to lose all life as we know it, including human life that is ultimately just as dependent on the natural ecology of this planet as every other living creature. And, although the Wildlife refuge has created a massive wetland system by using the irrigation systems of the San Luis Valley, already the area is wet as the water runs from mountains and down into the basin of the valley. Drive around and you can sit standing water in a lot of fields. This water seeps into the aquifer at some point, but I imagine the birds have used these "wetlands" for centuries before humans stepped in to help them out.

The issues arise when we use the water foolishly, like to grow alfalfa for cows living in the deserts of NM. Maybe we could all eat a little less meat. Maybe we could raise cows in areas that don't require supplemental feeding (if that's even possible). Or, let's all stop flushing our drinking water down the toilet, shall we? There are alternatives (gray water, composting toilets). Or, and here's a big one....stop fracking!!!!! That is an enormous use of water that all life forms need to survive. Yes, let's all cut back on our energy consumption. Turn off the TV for a few days. Make one less shopping trip. Take one less traveling vacation. Whatever. Most people won't give it up, will they? We have to change our lifestyles, and we have to change our minds if we want to change the world.

Great Horned Owl

As part of the Crane Festival, there was a presentation on owls and also on raptors. We missed the raptor talk, but made it to the owl talk. Unfortunately the kids could only sit through about half of it and so we went to another building to see the live birds, which included some raptors and a few owls. It was pretty cool to see the birds up close, although it's always better to see them in their natural setting.

Home school was fun for all of us yesterday. We definitely need more field trips!

Searching, searching...

I feel like I have been around the world and back and still with no place to land and call home.

Abandoned adobe south of the farm

We spent yesterday driving by properties around Alamosa and north of, hoping to find something that felt right and that offers owner financing. As we look and look, at least our options narrow down to a small handful that is easier to deal with.

It turns out we still can't qualify for financing due to our foreclosure not being two years out yet. As you may know from previous posts, we abandoned our house in Fremont County, Colorado because of the fracking happening around there. Recent research has shown me 16 fracked oil wells around that house now. 16. Within 3 miles or so.

I'm not sad we left, but rather relieved. I hear there is a woman my sister (a nurse) works with who lives in that town we fled. Her four year old has cancer. Yeah, I'm glad we chose life over our credit.

But still, it makes things challenging, or more interesting, as it may be. I just think it gives the Universe more opportunities to create miracles for us. It sure steers me in the right direction as the choices are few and far between.

We have some ideas, still, and are working on them, as far as land ideas. It seems a house is out of the question for a while, unless we can find an owner finance house on land. Those don't happen very often, and they usually want so much money down...money we just don't have access to. So, we can continue to save, or we can buy another piece of raw land a little closer in to a bigger town, which is why we are looking around Alamosa.

Yeah, it's cold here, but it seems it was cold everywhere this winter. Really, really cold. Welcome to reality and the new climate. In this high desert, arid, frigid winter environment, I think we have to be smart and adapt to what is happening. We are reconsidering building an Earthship style house with Earthbags to fight the cold and to utilize the sun. The building codes around here are more open to experimental housing (Kelly Hart built his Earthbag house in Crestone, just one county over from Alamosa). At least the building department knows what an Earthship is, which is a bonus and a step in the right direction. There is no time limit on building either. We just need an engineer stamped set of plans to work from. Fine. We can do that. We can build it. We can even live in a camper while we do it. (Yep, searching for a camper again.)

Isn't life interesting? And even entertaining as we bounce around like a ball in a pinball machine. Where will we end up? In the unknown lies the excitement and the adventure.