Up Bear Creek / 21feb26013 / Pati Temple (1951-2013)

Pati Temple

Wild mustangs and McElmo Canyon progressives lost a great advocate with the passing of Patricia Ann Draheim Temple at Trail Canyon Ranch in Montezuma County this past January. She and her devoted husband David were partners for 38 years and together ran Trail Canyon Ranch.

Wild Horse, Spring Creek Herd, photo by TJ Holmes

Pati and I served together on the BLM’s Southwest Resource Advisory Council, and we became friends – both for our shared care for wild horses and environmental sanity, as well as our love of Colorado’s open spaces and wildlands.

I know I speak for a lot of good people in Southwestern Colorado when I say that’s she’s going to be dearly missed.

Overflow

-for Pati

She whirled a big lasso

& roped us all in

Took a shine to wild

mares & mustangs

Loved Trail Canyon

Ranch & its mysteries

Gave David a full mug

& most of her life

Shared the overflow

in McElmo & beyond

Her love a gust of wind

galloping through your hair

 

Up Bear Creek / 21feb26013 / Poetry & Writers on the Western Slope

Cally Conan-Davies performing, David Mason listening

David performing at Cortez Library

DAVE MASON … Colorado’s accomplished Poet Laureate and his dynamic Aussie wife, Cally Conan-Davies, were the featured readers at a well-attended poetry reading at the Cortez Library last week. Montezuma County residents turned out in force to hear the duo alternate readings as they inspired the crowd with personal vignettes, narrative delights, lyric love poems and playful interactions … Kudos to librarian Kathy Berg for once again making Cortez a magnet for poetry performance in the Four Corners.

ERICA OLSEN … In attendance at the reading and the potluck reception for the poets afterwards was emerging Four Corners writer, Erica Olsen. Her first book is newly out from Torrey House Press, Recapture & Other Stories … As author Kevin Canty explains, “Erica Olsen gives us the dream life of the Southwest in this striking collection, a landscape told in language as spare and pungent and exacting as the desert itself. A swift and lovely debut from a writer of real gifts.”

Erica Olsen

ERIKA MOSS GORDON … Speaking of new writers, this intriguing Ridgway poet with a similar first name has a great website, “unlearning through poetry”, and is coming out with a chapbook soon, Of Eyes and Iris … Watch for it.

Erika Moss Gordon

Up Bear Creek / 21feb26013 / Regional Recycling at Critical Juncture

Recycling bales at SMARTS Park (San Miguel Area Resource-Recovery Transfer Station)

After taking up Jonathan Greenspan’s invitation to visit Telluride's SMARTS Park single-source recycling center in Illium, I have to say I was impressed. No, it wasn’t a slick, glitzy sight. It’s an industrial park, and sorting trash into recyclable components is anything if not messy. Plus, citizens regularly drop off all manner of unwanted trash after hours, some of them thinking it’s a county facility, which it is not.

But clearly it’s an essential public service. If our county and the communities of Telluride and Mountain Village are serious about reducing carbon impacts, keeping our waste stream out of the landfills and re-using what can be salvaged is critical. And it’s a focus for more than a handful of jobs – scarce commodities in this economic climate.

Still, trying to do the right thing environmentally is expensive and difficult in our isolated region, far from major shipping points. There’s a chance to get some major grants to upgrade our capabilities for recycling in the region, but the community needs to figure out how much it wants to deal with trash as a major focus of reducing our carbon footprint

Greenspan has put a lot of time and money into keeping our recycling options open in the region. But it’s not going to survive without financial support from county citizens.

We’re at a critical juncture in our ability to do more than landfill the waste we produce in this county. And we’re also at the most dismal point in 30 years for local government funding. How we’re going to afford to do the right thing is by no means certain. But to take a step backwards in regional recycling would be a terrible shame, even as we claim to want to work towards a sustainably resilient mountain community.

The Talking Gourd / 14feb26013 / Mary's Chapel Yurt

Clumped snow on canvas

makes a full luxurious slide

behind & above me

like a zipper’s sweet tug

resistance, sparking

fricatives of liquid ice

until teased over the

precipitous edge’s leap…

Slipped silk, cut short

Up Bear Creek / 14feb26013 / Hope for the Elephants

Jo Norris at the 2005 Shroomfest parade

Trout Lake homeowner Jo Norris of long-time Shroomfest and Arizona’s Rim Institute fame will be special guest facilitator for a learning journey to Kenya with the Foundation for Global Leadership, entitled “Hope for the Elephants,” Aug. 23-30, 2013.

The trip will feature visiting with traditional Masai people and witnessing elephants and their threatened habitat first-hand, along with the amazing wildebeest migration.

At 80, Jo is an elder, wisdom keeper, leader of ceremony and an expert in facilitating groups to connect the depth of the journey experience to the deeper aspects of one’s soul. Jo has spent her life focused on healing the planet and humanity.

For more info on this experiential adventure, contact Jo directly at <cjnorris@cox.net>

Up Bear Creek / 14feb20613 / Taking a Winter Poetry Tour

In rural communities, we all wear lots of hats. One of my many, in addition to public servant (or politician, if you don’t particularly like my service), potato farmer and basketweaver, is as Poet Laureate of the Western Slope (a title that I will relinquish at the end of March when a new Laureate is named at the Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival in Carbondale). This last weekend I got to wear the poet beret a lot, with a Green Party nod to my role as rural elected official … Thanks to my lax attention to many things in the wake of Mary’s leaving, I double-booked a student lecture in Boulder last Thursday in the afternoon, together with a poetry reading later that night in Colorado Springs with Wendy Videlock of Grand Junction. Which meant the Wends and I had just enough time to make it to the venue, while negotiating rush hour traffic on I-25 – always dicey … 

Dr. Patricia Limerick

It all worked out. We got to Boulder’s Center of the American West in time to lecture in Dr. Patricia Limerick’s history class on New West/Old West settler conflicts (cell tower, gun control, uranium mill) … Then we rushed to the Springs, making it just in time for a well-attended, paid Visiting Writers gig at Colorado College’s Palmer Hall. The most gracious Colorado Poet Laureate David Mason invited Wendy and I, and he hosted us for a lovely after-the-show dinner at Jake and Telly’s Greek Taverna. The Numæan wine was superb, and the table talk exquisite … Friday morning we spoke at Dr. Genevieve Love’s Colorado College poetry class … 

David Mason at Karen Chamberlain Fest

Although not before we’d made an en route impulse stop at Montague’s Parlour on Tejon St. (easily one of the best coffeehouses in the state). A coffee break that stretched into deeply absorbed thoughts, and we were promptly late for class … Love had done amazing prep. The kids had read selections of our work and written up questions. It was great fun sharing our thoughts, the two of us, Wendy sitting in a chair, speaking softly like the Sibyl of Cumae, and old Paleohippie pacing and pontificated like a mad beatnik bard … Wends and I next repaired to Wooglin’s Deli for an outdoor madcap chat & chew with Dave and his new wife, the amazing Cally Conan-Davies – a wildly wonderful Aussie poet herself … They both will be appearing this Friday, Feb. 15^th at 7 p.m. at the Cortez Public Library – a reading I’m planning on attending … And then the adventure took us to Salida, where Barbara Ford and Laurie James sponsored Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer , Danny Rosen, Wends and me as “Birds of a Feather” for a lovely performance that drew a good-sized crowd and lots of friends – a nod to the sorely missed Sparrows Poetry Festival of years past, a Salida institution now defunct … 

Wendy Videlock in action

Former Denver Poet Laureate Chris Ransick attended, along with Denver’s Kit Hedman, Crestone’s Peter Anderson, former Tellurider Doann Houghton of Nathrop and the usual Salida crew of Craig Nielson, Lawson Eddy, Lynda La Rocca, Felice and some impressive new voices (an open reading preceded the show, and three special guests came after) … By the time Wendy and I made it back to Montrose, and headed in opposite directions, I was driving into a blizzard, Dallas Divide blowing horizontal, the tarmac snow-packed and dangerous.

 

The Talking Gourd / 7feb26013 / XLVII

Off to watch the Niner-Raven matchup

Ulama on the big screen. A spectacle

Coliseum style. Live video clash

of East Coast versus West Coast

Old Word European versus

New World Post-Mayan

Oglesby’s Cowboys versus Yankees

The Illuminati versus Anonymous

Taking a silly macho entertainment

break from the daily diet of disasters

Rooting for gladiator proxies

after skirmish within battle after war

where the winner takes all

& the rest are liars & terrorists

Like all the faithful -- sometimes winning

& sometimes learning how to lose

Ulama players