Part III: Paradise without a PR Agent, The San Luis Valley

The West Less Traveled: The Holy Grail of Mexican Fare

By Ted Alvarez, 12-30-05

This is the third installment of "The West Less Traveled" writer Ted Alvarez's exploration of Colorado's storied San Luis Valley. To read the first section, click here and for the second, click here. To hear about the valley's fare, spirituality and UFOs, read on:

At 4:30 on our second day in Colorado's San Luis Valley, we barely had time to toast our summit of Blanca Peak or feel the ache in our legs--we were racing a late-summer sun to Emma's Hacienda, a legendary Mexican-food joint in San Luis, the oldest town in Colorado.

	Emma's Hacienda. Photos by Ted Alvarez.

Founded in 1851, San Luis looks its age -- when we creep into town, most of the stores are shuttered, and the main street is peppered with weatherbeaten cottages and barns hunched under the wear of generations. It possesses little of the quaint, storytime flair of most "historical" towns; instead, San Luis has the hardened spirit of an ancient settlement that waited for its boom time, never saw it come, and chose to cling bitterly to the mesas rather than fade away. The tourist centerpiece is a testament to San Luis's stoicism and Catholic history: the Stations of the Cross Shrine features nearly life-size bronze statues by local sculptor Huberto Maestas depicting "Christ's suffering" along a half-mile trail that winds up a dusty hill. Mel Gibson would be proud.

Had we arrived earlier or on a different day, perhaps the village would've revealed more of its charming side; nevertheless, San Luis still had a foreboding magnetism that stoked my fascination. But as much as I wanted to hike the shrine and go in search of landmarks, the rumbling in both our stomachs overruled historical exploration, and we stuck to the dusty main drag, scanning like sharksfor Emma's Hacienda and a potential Mexican-food Holy grail.

Like everything in San Luis except the gas station, Emma's looks closed. It's dark inside and the blinds seem drawn, but we try the door anyway, and we're in luck. The drab exterior opens up to a dark, smoky den; our disinterested teenage hostess seats us in a corner, neglecting to give Jeff a spoon. Built into the remains of a former inn, I can see up an ornate spiral staircase to a railing above, where one can imagine senoritas of ill repute standing and fluttering their eyelashes. In fact, with all the dark wood accents, velvet trimmings, and occasional errant flies, Emma's Hacienda has all the ambience of an old Spanish bordello, circa 1856. "I feel like I'm at someone's house," Jeff says.

All this "character" might scare off potential visitors, but the most incredible aromas wafting from the kitchen will keep the leery firmly affixed to their seats. Even inexperienced Mexican food gourmands can identify the scent of fresh green and red chile, roasted pork, and homemade masa and preparada being rolled and baked into tortillas. As a Tex-Mex snob, I had yet to find anything in the Rockies that could equal my beloved haunts of old, and I wasn't keen on getting my hopes up, but the sheer intensity of the spices and scents had me salivating. A realtor in nearby Ft. Garland told me that ordering Emma's Special was mandatory, so we followed instructions when our waitress returned, possibly refreshed from a nap.

My brother and I (other than debating who was the hungriest) had exhausted nearly all topics of conversation on the hike, so we turned to eavesdropping on the other tables. In the opposite end of the restaurant, three leathered ladies sat with a teenage girl, all in front of clean plates. One of them had flyaway, silver-streaked black hair and was dressed like a gypsy; she was stage whispering animatedly about something the teenage girl had seen off the highway in the valley, explaining that even though it might have looked like a Tasmanian wolf, it clearly couldn't be one, because it walked like a man. The teenage girl nodded in grudging consent and adjusted her wolf-print shawl; the gypsy woman went on to explain that she was devoting a chapter of her next book to this exact phenomenon. It would be easy to write this off as the musings of a few local eccentrics, but a few minutes later, one of the other ladies, completely silverhaired, conservatively dressed, and likely in her 80's, proposed the theory that perhaps the black helicopters she'd seen circling Blanca Peak had "intensified their search." The third older woman proceeded to list off all the bizarre phenomena consigned to the valley: UFO's, ubiquitous government coverups, cow mutilations, vortexes. The gypsy lady assured that all issues would be addressed in her forthcoming literary endeavors. I always thought outsiders impressed these mysteries on the San Luis valley, but it would seem discussion of the paranormal enjoys a healthy life within the valley as well.

Before I could get over to talk to the ladies or find out where I might be able to purchase previous and forthcoming masterworks, they beat a hasty retreat and our plates arrived. As our waitress set them down, an elderly woman came from the kitchen and berated her from the register. "Nena, what are you doing with customers, get them water!" She scurried over before the waitress could even process the criticism and refilled our glasses, asking if we had everything we needed. We assured her that we did, as soon as she left, we attacked. Emma's Special consists of a beef taco, a green chile enchilada, a red chile enchilada, Spanish rice, beans, and sopapillas, and each item was positively transcendent, if quite spicy. The further I got into the meal, the more my value system crumbled: With each bite, the food at Emma's Hacienda gained ground and eventually surpassed all of my Texas benchmarks. I remain humbled to this day by the accomplishment.

When the waitress came to clear the table, the old lady came as well, correcting and snatching things out of the befuddled waitress's hands. When she finally whined, "Jeeez, Emmaaaaa...", I realized that the Yoda of Mexican Food had been in our midst all along. I congratulated her on creating what I believed to be the Mexican meal of my life, and she humbly thanked me and rolled her eyes, complaining that "it was hard to find good help." Emma Espinoza, 87 or 88 (she declined to share her age, though she did mention she was born just over the border in New Mexico in 1917), started making bowls of red chile out of a small one-room restaurant in San Luis in "the latter part of 1936." She toiled in relative obscurity for the better half of the century, until the late 80's, when word of her phenomenal cooking began to spread to the valley and beyond. She still feels the need to run the kitchen, "because one of my daughters doesn't like to manage."

Espinoza is shockingly spry, and in between chats she zips back and forth from the kitchen, greets friends and customers, scolds the waitress some more, and scuttles back to answer more questions. Her lined, elfin features make her look perpetually bemused, and I ask her how she keeps her youth and enthusiasm. "You saw that mesa back there outside?" she says, pointing. "I climb the mesas every day--that's how I keep in touch."

She partially attributes her success in both cooking and life to the valley's residents. "People around here are just really good people," she says. "I just enjoy cooking for them, and I hope they enjoy it. Did you boys enjoy the Special?"

We exclaim profusley in the affirmative, and she just laughs, smiles, and shuffles back towards the register to greet a customer. "Alright, well you boys have a blessed day. Make sure and send me a copy of your paper for my wall," she says, pointing to a bulletin board near the entrance plastered with accolades.

ET and the Spiritual Center of the Universe

	The UFO Watchtower.

We left Emma's and San Luis in an opiate haze, still under the sway of the Special, and crashed out in a motel in Ft. Garland. When I get up late the following morning, my joints are still creaky and sore, but I feel well-rested, and I'll need it: On our third day, we shall tackle the supernatural forces of the San Luis Valley.

Our first stop is the famous UFO Watchtower in Hooper, a tiny speck along Highway 17. Local Judy Messoline established the geodesic "observatory" in 2000 mostly on a lark, after hearing local farmers toss around stories about UFO sightings. "One farmer said, 'Quit jokin' and just do it,'", says Joshua Messoline, her grandson. "Soon as she did, we started seeing as many as 50 people a day in here."

Crude, life-size plywood cutouts of classic bug-eyed aliens mark the turn for the watchtower from the highway; it's raining in torrents (again), so when we slam on the brakes and turn in to visit, I'm not surprised to see an empty parking lot. Though the odd, half-soccer-ball-shaped building certainly stands out against the paper-flat desert valley, it's a bit underwhelming. Homemade scale models of flying saucers and alien debris are strewn about the grounds. The watchtower itself is just a metal mesh deck wrapping around the dome about ten feet off the desert floor--I would've paid the $2 to go up and observe, but I've heard aliens cancel appearances on rain days. Inside the dome, Joshua Messoline sat on a stool at the register surrounded by a hive of brightly colored souvenirs, looking exactly as any teenager would if grandma left them in charge of the store. Messoline was polite and answered my questions, but he insisted that his grandmother was the expert on the bright-light sightings, vortexes, and the like. Judy Messoline reportedly isn't a pure UFO believer, but judging by the press coverage all over the walls (The New York Times, MSNBC, every Colorado paper in existence) she is a savvy public relations manager. I contemplate buying a shot glass, but ultimately decide against it, as I've got plenty of potential weirdness ahead of me, and I'd like to choose wisely.

Crestone, deep in the heart of the valley, is hard to find. It isn't on many maps, and there's only one sign for the highway turnoff--miss it, and you'll zoom straight out of the valley through Poncha Pass without a second look. But the legend of Crestone as an alternative lifestyle/spiritual mecca is well known, and if you mention Crestone to a San Luis local, their eyes will widen and they'll sigh "Ooooohhh," before describing it as either 1) the most enlightened town on earth or 2) an A-1 haven for yahoos. The 2005 Crestone Visitor's Guide describes the town as having "largest interfaith ecumenical community in North America;" another passage in the guide claims that "Feng Shui experts" say that Crestone and the surrounding areas sit in an idyllic position, "perfectly protected by land formations known as a northern Green Dragon, an eastern Black Tortoise, a southern White Tiger, and a western Red Raven." All of the electrical lines in the area are buried, and this supposedly allows for a greater concentration of the Schuman Resonance--the 'pulse' of the earth itself. To my ears, it doesn't matter whether you're a crystal-carrying New Age devotee or the blackest of black-heart skeptics--this place is going to rule.

Crestone is best-known for its Hindu ashrams and Buddhist temples, and unconfirmed rumors note that even celeBuddhist Richard Gere might own land in the area, so I don't know what to expect of the town center. When we pull in to town, a perfect blue sky holds back the storm from Crestone; even I have to wonder if the Black Tortoise has something to do with it. The gravel and dirt streets contain an incongruous mix of well-appointed cabins and hippie shacks adorned with bright colored paint, and the townspeople or visitors ambling by seem to match their surroundings for the most part. Most of the homes have well-tended gardens filled with religious figurines, rainbow flags, and the occasional junked car.

When we step out of the car, the air does seem somehow stiller, more peaceful; if you take the Birkenstock ethos of Boulder, isolate it, focus it, and make more tangible, you might have something like the Crestone outlook. For instance, after eating a fantastic burrito as thick as a section of firehose at local diner Mac's, I strike up a conversation with resident artist and father Amir Hess, who fled the Denver/Front Range area for Crestone twelve years ago. I ask him what might be the can't-miss attractions of Crestone.

"Well, I can't say what would be the best thing for you...I can only describe what's best for myself and the people I know."

But before I can roll my eyes, he continues.

"I like to head up into the mountains with my kids, and we'll make sculptures out of anything -- rocks in the river, changing leaves are excellent. We talk about leaving it as a gift for other hikers, knowing that it can't last forever, and then we'll go back and make new ones."

His sincerity softens me, and I want to head up into Willow Lake trail, deep into the mountains, and see if I can find one of Hess's pieces. But then I get excited by his next suggestion: the Tashi Gomang stupa.

Stupas are spiritual monuments filled with religious relics, a symbol of the spiritual mind of the buddhas which Buddhists often visit to focus their contemplation. Hess described it as a place of perfect beauty and serenity, and luckily he gave us great directions for finding it. After passing Twenty-First Amendment Liquors and what looks like the town witch, we turn onto a twisty sand road that laterally climbs up the Sangre de Cristos looming over Crestone. It's beautiful, but too arid and rugged to be calming or spiritual for me.

During the first five miles of road, we pass a smattering of holy sites within the area: an Ashram, the Bhutanese Yeshe Korlo Retreat, and the mysterious Japanese Shumei Institute. Per Hess's instructions, we continue for another few miles until we arrive at a grove of trees and a parking area. Jeff and I hop out of the car, anxious to stretch our legs. This area, the entrance gate to the Karma Thegsum Tashi Gomang area, feels completely different: it's lush and impossibly green, and a rushing waterfall runs through the middle. We walk past the yellow and red wooden signs and follow a trail to the fall's edge. Here, even the placement of stones seems chosen by nature for calmness and contemplation, and as the multicolored prayer flags flap in the wind, for a moment I'm almost overwhelmed by the sheer serenity of it all....

"I feel like I'm being watched by ninjas or something," Jeff whispers.

	The view from the stupa.

His profoundly deep and mystical observation brings me back into the present. We haven't even technically arrived at the stupa yet, so we hop back into Subaru and continue up the road as it gets even skinnier. It finally opens up to another parking area, and we find ourselves at our destination.

The golden spire of the stupa dominates the vista, jutting forty-one feet straight up out of its white, multi-tiered throne towards the sky. The Tashi Gomang stupa is symbolic of the 84,000 paths taught by the Buddha to reach enlightenment, and a golden representation of the Buddha housed within the base faces west across the San Luis Valley. In 1980, His Holiness the XVI Gyalwa Karmapa, supreme head of the Kagyu Order of Tibetan Buddhism, visited Crestone and had a vision: because of the area's spiritual and physical similarity to Tibet, he foresaw the creation of an entire Buddhist community. In 1981, eight years after Karmapa passed away, his primary disciple Jamgon Kontrul Rinpoche instructed his followers to build the stupa, which is filled with chipped juniper, gold and silver, food, medicinal herbs, jewels, musical instruments, silks, brocades, and other precious offerings.

Though it resembles a small temple, there is no entrance to the stupa; followers recite mantras and pray as they walk around the base in a specific ritual. As Jeff and I walk down the stone steps to the base, we notice a bronzed, shirtless man sitting on a bench near the edge of the cliff staring out west, so we proceed quietly so as not disturb him or any other visitors.

After we take a few moments of silent admiration and contemplation in front of the Buddhist monolith, we noticed that the bronzed man has vanished. But within a few minutes, three people come walking down the steps toward us, quietly talking to themselves. Since they didn't seem to be in active pursuit of enlightenment, I decide to risk insolence by starting a conversation.

One of them is a Crestone local who declines to name himself, claiming he's been "burned in the past" by the press. Another is a 27-year old law graduate from the University of Denver named Ashley Johnson. The third compatriot is Tharchin Bhota, also 27, a Tibetan refugee who was recently granted asylum in the U.S. After being driven from the monastery where he studied by the Chinese, Bhota first fled from Tibet to India, and then came to Boulder nearly two years ago. Johnson was assigned his human rights case as part of her external studies. "He was persecuted and he fled to India, and after he was granted asylum, he managed to get his GED," Johnson remarks. "Isn't that amazing?"

"I'm in Boulder now," says Bhota in heavily-accented but perfectly understandable English. "But I will attend Front Range College in the fall."

After chatting for a few more minutes, Bhota rises and walks to the stupa, first kneeling, then prostrating himself before it. He walks once around the stupa and repeats the process, quietly reciting mantras as he goes. As he follows this cycle multiple times, the spiritual energy of the stupa and the valley crackles to life, made real by Bhota, who has traveled very far indeed to practice his faith.

As the afternoon gets late, we exchange farewells with Ashley, Thar, and their friend, who shares a few parting insights as only a pre-enlightenment Crestone native can. "It's changed a whole lot," he laments. "It's more...city." As for all the recent spiritual emigres, he thinks they're "alright." But what about all the "spiritual center of the universe" talk? "I don't know about that," he says, shaking his head. "But I guess there's gotta be something here."

The Penitent Man Will Pass

If there's a recurring motif to our travels in the valley, it might be us racing across the deserted expanse, chasing the fading daylight to reach some damn fool adventure before sunset. After loading up on nuts, dried fruit, tea, and gasoline at gas-station-cum-natural-foods-superstore Curt's in downtown Crestone, we confront our dwindling chances of reaching Penitente Canyon, near the San Juan range on the western edge of the valley. But the unfortunate second recurring motif for our San Luis Valley trip -- brutal rainfall -- seems to be covering that same area.

In a hurry, we pass two robed Krishnas on our way out, and they make small, unsmiling gestures at our waves of goodbye (perhaps they sense our unenlightened state). Once we leave Crestone, I don't have a lot of faith that the Red Raven will help a brother out with the rain.

Penitente Canyon is one of Colorado's premiere rock climbing destinations, but because of its isolation, it's rarely crowded. While many sport and trad climbers are content to frequent their hometown crags, pilgrimages to Penitente promise new and fantastic routes.

	Penitente Canyon.

The canyon got its name in honor of Los Hermanos Penitentes, a shadowy sect of ultra-devout Catholic brothers that grew out of this area; in search of illumination, they became known for extreme acts of physical piety, including flagellation, mortification, and ritual death. In the past, on Good Friday one of the members of the brotherhood would choose to live out the passion play and actually be crucified -- the first report of a man dying on the cross for the event dates to the 1890's. Seeking to further recuse themselves from a morally corrupt society, many of the brothers retreated to the canyon that now bears their name. The brothers still supposedly exist today, but they've gone underground and assimilated into the community at large, where they still meet to practice in anonymity.

By the time we reach the canyon, the sun has gone down behind the mountains, but the rain has stopped, so we wander around to admire the sledges of orange rock for the few minutes of available light left. Piles of boulders bubble out of the still-soggy earth, forming steep columns and cliff faces as we move deeper into the canyon. White chalk marks line the cracks and ring the handholds, and my brother has to physically restrain me from roping up. There was an empty van near the front of the park, but nobody remains in the park. We continue walking until we see the famous Hermanos de La Penitente route, which is right next to a faded old painting of the Virgin Mary painted high on the rock wall by the Hermanos themselves. It's beautiful in the blood-orange light, but as the sky turns to purple, the surrounding bushes close in, and it starts to get creepy.

Time to go. We arrived too late and too wet to climb, but legends of the Hermanos Penitente are bogeymen enough to get me going. We get back in our trusty steed, Sue the Subaru, and head north towards Poncha Pass and the end of the valley. Soon the traffic will pick up, the mountains will fill with summer homes and ski areas, and our chances for spotting "fire in the sky" will reduce exponentially. Our chances for enlightenment, I suspect, will probably stay the same.

But visiting all the wonders of the valley is itself a form of exquisite nirvana. While we were eating at Emma's, I also spoke with Denver artist Evelyn Martinez. She grew up in the San Luis Valley, and she had returned with a friend, as she does every year, to paint. We spent a while extolling the virtues of the valley, trying to explain its "otherness," its intangible attraction and miraculous relative anonymity. Maybe the San Luis Valley just needs a good PR agent, or a catchy, sound-bite nickname like "the SLV."

But before parting, she begged me, "Please, please, please: Don't spoil the secret."

And so I now ask you, dear reader: Don't spoil the secret.

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