My Page: Tonya Poole

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SAN LUIS VALLEY

Maybe, but don’t let the locals hear you say it. It’s true, and you know it as soon as you arrive, that there are a great many things about Crestone, Colorado – a tiny town with an abundance of raw spirit - that fly in the face of even Boulder. The comparisons begin and end, perhaps, with Crestone’s astounding concentration of spiritual seekers, Buddhists, alternative healers, silver-haired hippies and barefoot, dread-locked mothers with baby backpacks. The small, progressive community of less than 100 people rests against the slopes of the Sangre de Cristos in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, with dramatic and much-photographed Crestone Peak presiding, and unofficially consists of the town of Crestone and the adjacent rural Baca Grande land grant development. Outside its boundaries, ranch land, jagged mountains and one-horse Colorado towns insulate it from the urbanization, and what many have considered bastardization, that has changed Boulder dramatically over the years.
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Animal House

When I was a kid, our house was an unofficial half-way house for just about every species of wild and stray animal in North America. My mom and dad were divorced, I was an only child, and despite the trouble I’d get in every time, I busied myself wandering around the neighborhood, finding and taking care of wayward animals while my mom worked two jobs to keep things moving forward. She’d come home from work at least three or four times a month to find the latest acquisition: a mangy, old dog on the kitchen floor, two baby kittens in a box in the bathroom, a canary, even an injured jackrabbit on the back patio. And every time, she’d pack me and the animal du jour up in the car, no matter what time day or night, and haul us down to the animal shelter, the pound or the animal control center and drop it off with a note – I assume in hopes that the repeated heartbreak would eventually make me stop bringing them home. [more]

New West Living

Historically, we’re not settlers. We come and we go and if I think about it, I might be able to come up with a house we’ve stayed in for more than two years since the day I turned 17. It’s not in my blood to grow roots and plant myself in a single pot, despite the frustrations that come with such a transient and unpredictable lifestyle. I’d long ago made my peace with that.

But this house was on the cusp: a 1914 brick craftsman bungalow in a charming, historic – even if a little rough around the edges – hispanic neighborhood in downtown Alamosa that we stumbled on, or rather that stumbled on us, back in October when we first started looking. It would be the house we’d unpack every box in, the one we’d tell everyone they can go back to using pen in their address books for under “T�. It would be the one we’d live in for the next three years until our straw bale house was finished and ready for us out in the valley. The last renter’s frontier before we took the leap into home ownership. Hopes ran high and bittersweet. [more]

New West Living

We arrived in the San Luis Valley stuffed into boots and anoraks a year ago in late November, hand-drawn maps perched up on the dash. It was the farthest north of Taos we’d been since moving to New Mexico a few years ago, and it snowed hard all the way to the Colorado border where, ironically, it quickly tapered off and turned to fog. A coyote, large for the desert, trotted across the road up ahead and then stopped to take a long and curious look at us before ducking under a fence and disappearing.

Jan’s directions were exact, and it took very little effort to find the single 330x660 parcel of land among the sea of homogenous sage and wintered threadgrasses. To be honest, we hadn’t expected much for $3,500. But there at the base of a fourteener we could barely make out in the low clouds that day, we fell in love. [more]

get your weekend on

Each year along New Mexico's Turquoise Trail, music fans of all ages gather in the dust and sun in the shadow of the Ortiz Mountains outside Santa Fe for a three-day desert music fiesta. Next weekend concert-goers will flock to the famed Eaves Movie Ranch, where they'll indulge in a long weekend of delicious food, wine, microbrew, arts and crafts... and of course... the gritty, earthy roots music the festival is known for. This year's lineup includes New Mexico's own Hundred Year Flood and the Alex Maryol Band, along with Rickie Lee Jones, Earl Thomas, Stan Hirsch and more. [more]

local getaways

Since late last year we've had a $200 gift certificate to Ten Thousand Waves sitting, wrinkled and untouched, in a pile of papers on the desk in the office - a gift from an appreciative client after a long project. I'm not much of a "spa" girl, I'd rather get dusty and dirty than roll around a mineral bath. But it's been a tough month and I had company over the weekend and it felt like a good time to do ourselves a favor. I pulled it out. We called Friday evening and, while were hoping to get a night tub (relaxing under the stars in the hills above Santa Fe sounded delicious), they were booked solid and we settled for an hour soak on Sunday at 10:30 a.m. in the New Kojiro- a communal women's tub room that's available for private use in the morning. Expecting a very relaxing but very typical spa experience, we drove up Hyde Park Road after breakfast, grabbed our gear bags out of the truck and headed up to check in. [more]

Wild News

Well, not quite: wrong epoch. But what scientists are proposing in some parts of the U.S. could one day mean sharing some of our open spaces with large mammals, some of them predators, like elephants, lions, cheetahs, even camels. The Pleistocene Park, or U.S. Ecological History Park as scientists are calling it, would re-introduce big game animals like those that roamed the continent many thousands of years ago, until hunted to extinction by humans. While the plan suggests that most of the animals would primarily roam the "prairie states", some animals, such as camels from the Gobi desert, would be introduced specifically to the American Southwest. The plan would help to save a number of species under great pressure to survive in Africa, and could replace an ecological diversity that vanished from the Great Plains more than 10,000 years ago. [more]

Out and About

Stop the car, get the bikes out and see the wonder of Valles Caldera from a new perspective next weekend. Mountain bikers of all ages and ability levels are invited to come out Saturday and Sunday, August 13th and 14th, to enjoy any of three different bike tours of the caldera, ranging from easy to difficult. The easiest of the routes, a 12-mile tour through the Valle Grande and History Grove, departs between 8 and 11 a.m. on both days from the Valle Grande Staging Area. The longer two routes, 26 and 32 miles, begin between 8 and 10 a.m. on both days from the Parajito Mountain Ski Area and tour areas of the preserve not normally seen by the general public, including breathtaking Obsidian Valley. [more]

Santa Fe Style

Santa Fe's 13th Annual Haciendas: A Parade of Homes event, sponsored by the Santa Fe Area Home Builder's Association (SFAHBA), is just around the corner and area builders are revving their engines to show off their best work for 2005. Thirty spectacular homes will be showcased during the event, which runs from August 13-21st, beginning with a kick-off ceremony and carnival on the evening of August 12th at the Folk Art Museum on Museum Hill. [more]

Community Building

Ruins and murals and puzzles... oh my! Santa Fe's newest art installation plans are well underway, but you won't find it in area museums, galleries or even along the plaza. The community designed-and-built Pueblos del Sol playground, which will occupy just under an acre at the corner of Governor Miles Rd. and Nizhoni Dr. on Santa Fe's growing south side, kicked off last month at a weekend design charette. Since then, the project has gained rmomentum and support in the form of donated materials, volunteers and backing from city council members and local government agencies. A design review meeting hosted this afternoon at the Chavez Community Center by Luciano Oviedo, the project's lead volunteer, unveiled the first sketches of the park design: a conglomeration of ideas from kids and parents gathered from the charette and synthesized into workable schematics by internationally acclaimed designers Leathers and Associates. [more]

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