ZuMAg - Fall 2016 by Ballantine Communications

LIFE IN MONTEZUMA COUNTY FALL 2016

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VOLUME 1 - ISSUE 01

8 LIFE IN MONTEZUMA COUNTY FALL 2016

16 LIFE IN MONTEZUMA COUNTY FALL 2016

The Raven Narratives, stories of life in Montezuma county, told simply and unembellished by those who are living them.

Full Commitment

About the Cover

#ZUMAG: Candy Corn

Finding your way and learning the lessons of life in southwest Colorado.

Main Street Boom

Iron Maegan Metalworks

Montezuma School to Farm Project

LIFE IN MONTEZUMA COUNTY FALL 2016

DEPARTMENTS

Narrating Our Life

What’s old is new again. The people and places behind Cortez’s downtown revival.

ZUMAN: The Desert Trumpeter

A picture’s worth a thousand words.

The images and colors of southwest Colorado from our friends and neighbors.

The delicate beauty and subtlety of the desert are transformed to metal in artwork of local artist, Maegan Crowley.

A unique educational program captures national attention as part of the growing sustainability and local food movement.

EDITORIAL

CONTRIBUTORS

PRODUCTION

ADVERTISING

Editor Colleen Donley

Writers Sara Knight Rachel Segura Scott Robertson Gianna Farrell Sarah Seyverson

Production Manager Suzanne Duke

Vice President of Advertising David Habrat

Assistant Editor Claudia Laws Ryan Robison Design Director Todd Bartz

Photographers Sam Green Rob BonDurant

Advertising Design Jim Dodson Justin Meek, Christian Ridings Distribution Services Aani Parrish

Advertising Director Colleen Donley Account Executives Shawna Long Teressa Nelson Ryan Robison

CORTEZ || DOLORES || MANCOS

Chief Executive Officer Douglas Bennett Vice President of Finance & Operations Bob Ganley

© 2016. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Published in the United States by Ballantine Communications, Inc. 1275 Main Ave., Durango, CO 81301. Ballantine Communications uses reasonable effort to include accurate and up-to-date information for its special publications. Details are subject to change, so please check ahead. The publisher accepts no responsibility for any consequences arising from the use of this guide. We welcome suggestions from readers. Please write to the editor at the address above.

We know where you are going you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need roads. Have fun while exploring beautiful Montezuma County. if you need us, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re here. Close to Home

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Welcome

Montezuma County is a truly special place. Defined by its unique landscape and the people who have chosen to make this remote southwestern Colorado spot home, the entrepreneurial spirit thrives here. That love of life and hard work creates serendipitous connections that move between time, nature and culture. Living here is a beautiful and challenging adventure. People are scarce, the views are innumerable and the space between is measured in letters and numbers. And out here, there are shared beliefs: We live life on our own terms, we can do anything. Our community and our stories are important. We created ZUMAG to share those stories across this expansive space we call home. The articles you read in these pages highlight what happens when inspiration strikes the people who live and work throughout Montezuma County. Whether youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re a fourth-generation resident or a new visitor discovering the area, ZUMAG will show you the passion, beauty and joy of our land and the people who live here. We are grateful to our advertising partners and special contributors for making this magazine possible. Your support and talent is inspiring. We hope you enjoy this inaugural issue of ZUMAG.

Colleen Donley, Editor-in-Chief

LIFE IN MONTEZUMA COUNTY

Our Life NARRATING

By Sarah Syverson

A single microphone stands on the bare stage at the Sunflower Theatre on a wintry Friday night in Cortez. The lights are focused narrowly on Kellie Pettyjohn, a local farmer, radio personality, world trekker and traveler. She is nervous, shaking a bit. The audience leans in, like a soft cushion, to hear her speak, hushed and concentrating, not wanting to miss a word.

She’s telling a story. But not just any story–an essential one that changed her life–about her friend, Mehrab. It’s about a humanitarian trip she took to Afghanistan. How Mehrab took care of her and her team’s every need, how she met his two little girls who danced around him like he was their favorite person on the planet. And how he was eventually shot and killed in front of his home, most likely for the work he was doing for her and other foreigners in his homeland. It’s not an easy story for Kellie to share. In fact, she could have chosen a light-hearted, funny story that would have been much easier to tell. But she chose this one. “With all the craziness in the world right now, maybe this is an opportunity to highlight and celebrate a bright spot in what a lot of people would consider a dark corner of the world,” she said. She took a risk in telling it. But she wanted to tell it for Mehrab, for his family and for the hope he inspired in her. Those who were lucky enough to be in the audience that cold January night at the Sunflower Theatre and again at the Durango Arts Center two weeks later were the receivers of something rare and extraordinary for our times – a true story told by the actual person who lived it without fanfare and without gimmicks. Kellie was part of the first group of storytellers who broke new ground in Montezuma County as part of The Raven Narratives, a live quarterly storytelling event and production of KSJD Dry Land Community Radio that gives the stage to eight storytellers who share their tales, all of them driven by a common theme. That evening the theme was “Wild Places.” Among her fellow storytellers was Mesa Verde National Park Wildland Fire Chief Steve Underwood, who transported the entire audience to the scene of the first wolf pack release into Yellowstone National Park in 1991. Along with Steve stood Lindsay Dozoretz, an agile and lithe former Peace Corps volun9

teer who carried listeners deep into Africa and

into the coldest stars ever known. The night was spellbound as audience and storytellers trav-

elled together from one end of the planet to the

other, swooning and swooping in the drama and

majesty of life’s tiniest microcosms and grandest macrocosms.

As people left the theater, there was a collective,

Suddenly, the whole being becomes transfixed on releasing the imprisoned yarn from its solitary confinement. This process of unfolding the story in us is simultaneously excruciating and exhilarating. This is where The Raven Narratives steps in to lend a hand, becoming a kind of midwife to develop these untapped stories of humanity.

deep exhalation that could be heard as shoulders

How it Works

up. A mysterious experience had occurred, both

Storytellers are given a short list of guidelines:

erful. Stories were connecting people to them-

minutes without using notes, relate meaningful-

air was profound. There was no mistaking it.

person and must be true, among a few other

relaxed and postures toward one another opened astonishingly simple and extraordinarily pow-

no rants or raves, stories must be told in eight

selves and to each other. The feeling in the night

ly to the theme of the night, be told in the first

The Power of Unfolding a Story “Stories work with people, for people, and

always stories work on people, affecting what

people are able to see as real, as possible, and as worth doing or best avoided.“ – Arthur Frank,

Letting Stories Breathe (2010)

It is a deeply human endeavor to be both on

the telling and listening ends of stories. After

all, we’ve been collectively honing the craft of

the tale for thousands of years. From the initial

pictographs on fire-lit cave walls to the develop-

ment of our intricate linguistic prowess, humanity has been sculpted, defined, inspired and be-

deviled by its stories. It is one of the first things we experience as children bonding at bedtime

with our parents and one of the last things we

crave from our loved ones before they are gone from this world.

Some of us may balk at the idea of telling a story

requests. These guidelines, borrowed from the nationally acclaimed Moth Storytelling series, set the tone and temper for The Raven Narratives events and subsequent podcasts. Potential storytellers are asked to “pitch” their true account in a kind of draft run-through. The true accounts range from off-the-cuff, often hilarious tales of life’s best (or worst) moments to harrowing details of the most dramatic experiences in a storyteller’s existence. Some of the best narrators The Raven Narratives has seen are the ones where people are literally shaking in anticipation of the telling their tale out loud. It is almost as if the body is participating in the energy, force and thrust of the story. After the “pitch,” potential storytellers are given feedback, usually in the form of an animated conversation that is often punctuated with questions like, “How did you do that?!” or

in front of a captive audience with rebukes of

“What were you thinking in that moment?!”

is we all have deep repositories of rich tales to

ry is a flash of aliveness where time stands still

accounts of our lives that are begging to be told

the senses. The eyes see more clearly than ever

dogs, bellowing for attention at every turn in

with absolute clarity, and the body senses the

“What on earth would I say?!”. But the truth

That “moment” that occurs in almost every sto-

tell when we start digging. Once uncovered, the

and there is an utterly pristine recollection of

start following us around like hungry hound

before, the nose sniffs out the faintest scents

the road.

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A Storyteller’s Perspective For Jane Dally, a storyteller at May’s The Raven Narratives event, the experience of participating has been a transformational one on many levels. She carried the audience with her to a summer spent in Wyoming as a novice horse wrangler. During that summer she also learned that her mother’s cancer had come back and the prognosis was terminal. On being asked to tell a story: “I really dropped into remembering the details of that time in my life. So many of the details became really vivid. And owning the experience more–that was really rich for me. Some of the highest highs and lowest lows of my life were in that story.” On what surprised her about the process of telling her story: “I rarely think about my mom. We had a very complex relationship. Telling that story actually resolved something in me about her and our experience. There was resolution, and what arose to the surface was a sweetness in remembering her. That was a gift. The experience was huge for me. It was a milestone in my life. It moved me forward.” On the experience of being on stage telling her story: “The emotions of all it – the wow-ness of the experience really came alive to me – and the shock and the grief came alive. It came to a culmination on stage in the telling of it. There was also a sense of pride in owning my story and telling it. What happened with us [storytellers] and the audience was an experiencing of the rich complexity of life, a fullness of this life. It wasn’t just a telling of a story and a listening to a story. Everyone present was experiencing the rich complexity of life in that very moment. One person’s story became every person’s story.” On what occurred after The Raven Narratives event: “There was an overwhelming experience of people I knew and people I didn’t know coming up to me and saying that that was an amazing storytelling performance. Somehow it was very rich for them. It brought up for them various experiences mentally and emotionally in their 12

own lives. And there was an unexplainable deep connection between us – and I may not even know the person. A deep connection developed between the other storytellers, the listeners and myself.

For more information on

It also has created a connection between people in our communities – Cortez, Mancos, Dolores and Durango. A piece of magic happened.”

podcasts, go to

Advice to potential storytellers: “We all have rich experiences to share. A really important piece for me in the storytelling is that I developed that story and I told it exactly how I would write it. Dropping into the sensory details so that I am reliving that fully and the listeners can really be living it in the telling. That makes a rich story. Go back and describe the sensory details. It becomes a reliving of the experience for everyone.” On why it’s important to tell stories: “This is so needed at this time on the earth in the midst of so much confusion and conflict. It’s a healing balm of connection for these times.” “Live storytelling events are fast becoming a popular way across the country to spend an evening out. Perhaps playing a counterweight to the over-infestation of reality TV shows. Through a simple set of guidelines, stories are brought onto the stage in a way that gives audience members and storytellers alike an opportunity to appreciate, resonate and digest what is being spoken. Be alive.” And this, my friends, is where we all have a seat at the table. We all want to be alive to the world, to our lives, to each other. And The Raven Narratives gives us the opportunity to do that collectively, as a unit, as a community.

The Raven Narratives, upcoming live storytelling events or to listen to the latest storytelling ravennarratives.org.

Jane Dallly (left), Sarah Syverson & Tom Yoder, (bottom left), Kellie Pettyjohn (bottom right)

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Full Commitment

By Scott Robertson

Adventure is an interesting concept and an overused word. Some believe it lives only in the most harrowing experiences and exotic locales on earth, possibly involving pirates. Summiting Everest, exploring the Amazon, the poles, thru-hikes, ironmans, big mountain skiing and ocean-bound sailing, these are the archetypes of adventure. Adventure lives in moments both tiny and great; its recipe satiates the connoisseurs of relativism. The aforementioned pursuits not only fit the mold, they are the mold. Adventure is also opening a new business, riding your bike to work or traveling somewhere new without a companion. Some people find adventure in unfamiliar dishes on a menu, some find it at the finish of a marathon, others find it trying to walk again. Adventure is scalable and relatable. It is necessary. Adventure is nothing more than taking a vacation from your comfort zone Someone once said, “a comfort zone is nice, but nothing grows there.” that willingness to jump into cold, dark and scary places in life is what brought me to Montezuma County. Moving to a new place over a thousand miles from your familial home and closest friends felt like adventure when I left Portland, Oregon, well over a year ago. You cannot get much further from your comfort zone than leaving everything you have known and cherished. In Montezuma County, drawn to these uncertainties as I am by virtue of the lessons that adventure affords, I have found nothing short of riches. Dolores. A picturesque Western town complete with unpaved streets, absent mailboxes and a small brewery that acts as the town hall. This is home now. I have lived in small towns before. Towns with one store which housed the diner and post office as well, but no produce unless you count chips as corn. Forget Wi-Fi, I have lived in towns without cellular service where the fire tower was 9 miles closer than the grocery store. There, I recognized the value of a quieter, not a simpler life. Urbanites like myself dream of leaving their “challenging” corporate realities for the “simpler life.” In my experience, simpler does not equate to easier, and the idea of simpler in itself can be the result of romantic naiveté. Small towns are only a part of my past. I grew up just outside the relatively small city of Portland, Oregon, moved to Denver as a teenager, and graduated from college in Northern California: a consequence of family moves, wanderlust and randomness. Portland is my favorite city in the world. Everything great you have heard is true and anything negative is false. Everyone wears flannel and drinks cold-brew coffee while riding double-decker bikes to unique and singularly artisanal jobs like “Master Craft Beard Stylist” or “Latte Portrait Artist,” I swear. Portland is an eclectic, vibrant and engaging city with seemingly unlimited outdoor recreation opportunities, but no matter how mesmerizing the emerald-canopied arboretums may be, your mind cannot erase the buildings that interrupt that soothing backdrop. I left my friends of a caliber I never expected to deserve but have found even better here. I left my family, who 17

literally, at the request of my brother and myself, moved back to Portland because “we were all there” and once told me that if “I moved back to Colorado they would kill me.” I left Nike to move here and work in an area where I can fly fish after work and forget my troubles in one of the many landscapes that we visit after drives measured not in hours, but in minutes. Both the smallest towns and most glorious cities–if you agree there can be such a thing–can provide us with periods of incredible peace and solace, as well as professional challenges and cultural engagement, but rarely all of the above. I am searching for that combination here. Montezuma County, an incredible intersection of small town quality of life, unlimited and unspoiled recreation, and professional opportunity. While I have yet to find the true balance between career and “real-life,” I am starting to see where the path starts.

I broke my ankle an hour or two before dusk in early June when agreeably warm temperatures had yet to give way to the sweltering heat of summer. A light breeze touched the tall, green grasses as my eyes followed fine-grained sandstone undulations and fractures, from the low starting holds through the opening sequence and then the long blank space leading to a horizontal crack, which offered committed but safe passage to the upper moves. The light had softened. Sleeping Ute Mountain loomed directly to the west, watching. If we had thrown a rock out of the canyon we could have easily hit a house, but our view was obscured by short canyon walls, that world so close in reality, never seemed more distant. An exhalation and a nod of intention, walking the few steps while dipping fingers in chalk and pausing for a moment to feel the stone under my hand before engaging static stone in battle. The gap above interrupted only by the freshly torn scar of a broken hold, but all that fixed my gaze was the crack above. Full commitment, no doubt. My right hand shot upward, a brief moment of human-powered flight, and my hand confidently grasped the dark edge above. Only it didn’t. Instead of taking a moment to replace the chalk left behind and contemplate the route ahead, I found myself complying with the laws of physics and while still flying, going opposite the direction that I had originally intended. 18

Have you ever broken your ankle? Sprained it terribly, or your wrist perhaps? Then you will find the following sequence of events very familiar: Confidently announce or quietly decide to commit to something. Your steely gaze a sure indicator of success. This series of events may also begin with daydreaming while doing something that should require your attention, like running, skiing, or operating a chainsaw. There is not a doubt in your mind, or there is nothing in your mind, this too can lead to problems other than successful meditation. You are making whatever “it” is, happen. However, “it” does not happen. Just when you expect flash bulbs to fire, someone throws a cream pie in your face. The most hilarious and unfortunate part about breaking my ankle was shaking my head when asked if we should move the crash pad closer to the wall. I had already tried and failed the move twice without consequence was overly confident that I would make it on the third. I tried harder that third time, fell further, and just landed wrong. For the record, after a few minutes of grimacing, I sat down below the start hold, pulled into the first move, and sent the damn route. The absurdly pink cast on my left leg is a constant reminder of both a mistake and an opportunity. I have spent the last 14 years satisfying my soul running and climbing, and however temporary its removal what I thought reality was seems very different today. Athletic pursuit cannot be the sole source of personal fulfillment, and we will not find it unless we accept are willing to accept risk in some form. The risk of professing love, the risk of failure, injury, ridicule, pick your poison, in the end they all go down smooth. I would never have thought of moving to Montezuma County if I had not happened to overnight in Dolores on one of the greatest adventures of my life: cycling across the west in 2008. I would never have moved to Montezuma County if I did not exercise the same willingness to accept risk in my personal and professional life, as I do in the outdoors. I would never have built the strength to accept taking risk in my personal and professional life, if I had not first learned those lessons while climbing or running into the unknown. These days, I absorb literature with vigor, I contemplate more and I look for the richness of life somewhere outside of the physical pursuits that I never thought would leave me wanting. Life is about balance and there is no single recipe for success. The only recipe is the one that tastes best and never leaves your plate empty. I am looking forward to finding my balance here in Montezuma County.

Boom! Main Street

By Sara Knight

Every community has a heartbeat, a cadence kept alive by the rhythms of the people who live there. Generations come and go, ebb and flow, and with their movement businesses live and die, and the face of the community is ever changing. Thus goes the story of Cortez.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s the hard work-

“And these were all locally-owned businesses on

dead by any means, but the heartbeat seemed to

our childhood and of the town. We always had the

ing town of Cortez in southwest Colorado wasn’t be fading as the younger generation moved onto

greener pastures and their parents and grandparents retired and closed up shop.

Maybe it was something in the water, or maybe it was something in the air, but on Jan. 1, 2005, things started to change. That’s the day that

Mitchell Toms, an ex-real estate agent from Virginia, moved to town.

“Cortez at that time had a lot of vacancies on the Main street area,” Mitchell said. “A lot of the

families that had been here and had run busi-

nesses here for many years had retired or wanted to retire. I think when they retired a lot of these

storefronts just closed up. So that kind of gives you a setup of what it looked like when I moved here.” While Mitchell was getting settled into his new home in Cortez, Melanie and Darrin Dennison

were living in Midland, Texas, and dreaming of

how they could get back. They had moved to Texas about a decade earlier for work and school, and

had always planned to return to the Main Street of their childhoods.

“Darrin and I grew up here in the time of Coast

to Coast, The Toggery, Vita-Kist Bakery, Howard

and Jerry’s Sporting Goods,” Melanie remembered.

Main Street, and Main Street was a big part of

intention of coming home. We just didn’t mean for it to be so long.”

Time is a funny thing though, and it will sneak

up on you. Melanie and Darrin had opened up an organic grocery in Midland, and Cortez stayed a distant dream.

Meanwhile, back in southwest Colorado, Mitchell was making plans of his own. He had been

intrigued by an old stone building on the corner of Main and Market streets. The building was

constructed in 1889 and had become known as the Wilson Building, after the family who owned it. It was a landmark in Cortez, and Mitchell immediately saw potential.

It took more than a year of back-and-forth before all five members of the Wilson family who still

owned the building came to an agreement. But

finally, in 2007, a little over two years since he

had arrived in town, the deal went through. Mitchell, along with Montezuma Partners, became the proud new owners of a dusty, old stone building,

half empty, with a lot of old wires, old lights and old ceilings that needed some love.

The building underwent extensive renovations,

and as the dropped ceilings were removed to re-

veal the original corrugated tin and the flooring was pulled away from the beautiful, hardwood, something started stirring in the heart of this weary little Western town. Appropriately enough, in a story about revitalization, the first business to set up shop in the Wilson Building was a ballroom dance studio called Come Dance Tonight. And that’s just what people did. That same year, Melanie and Darrin finally made their first step in the long journey home. They purchased the building right across Main Street from the Wilson Building. They had decided to relocate their grocery store and bring it right back with them to their old stomping grounds. Before it could house rows of organic goods though, this building too would need some love. “We did a major remodel, inside and out,” Melanie said. “We wanted to make it more modern. It was a major undertaking, especially living in Texas and doing that here.” Melanie and Darrin were on the road home, Mitchell was starting to find his place in the community, and the heartbeat of Cortez had taken on the rhythm of hammers and ballroom dance music. It turned out, that beat was contagious. **** Pete Montano, a retired third-generation restaurant owner in Cortez, and his wife Laurie started going to Come Dance Tonight pretty frequently. That’s where they first met Mitchell, who was intrigued when he found out about Pete’s past as a restaurateur. It was 2008 and Mitchell had just bought another building at 34 West Main St., just down from the Wilson Building. Previously home to a book store, he thought it might make a nice restaurant. “I got to talking with Pete,” Mitchell explained. “Saying you know you used to be in the restaurant business. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a restaurant right downtown that was open at night so people could eat then go to dancing, or vice versa?” Pete had previously owned Francisco’s in Cortez, and while he had been there, done that and didn’t want to run a restaurant again, Pete was happy to give Mitchell some advice. So one night after dance class the two men walked over to the alley behind the bookstore to chat about

the plausibility of putting in a kitchen when Fate herself, in need of a smoke, walked out the back of the building next door. “What are you guys talking about?” asked Angel Simons, the owner of a bar called Angel’s End Zone. Mitchell explained his plan to install a kitchen on the back of the old bookstore and Angel just said, “Well my bar is all set up for a restaurant.” Mitchell then asked the next obvious question and five minutes later the three of them were standing inside the dusty, unused kitchen in the back of the black and purple bar, making plans and discussing options for buying the place. In the end, Angel decided to move her bar over to North Broadway and Mitchell started trying to find someone to open up a restaurant in the newly free space. Mitchell would not have to search for long. Shortly after Mitchell bought Angel’s bar, Pete’s daughter Tess came home to Cortez to spend Christmas with her family. Thanks to a classic case of sub-par airline management,Tess missed her flight back to Italy where she was working and finishing up her master’s degree. She ended up tagging along with Pete while he ran some errands. That day, Pete was meeting with Mitchell to further discuss the restaurant idea. Pete still wasn’t sold on the plan, but as Tess listened the wheels started turning in the back of her mind. “I knew I needed to somehow create a job for myself so I could come back,” Tess explained. “I really was sick of flying back-and-forth and I felt like my heart was still in the states.” Tess and her father continued the conversation after that December day, and by March, Tess had convinced him to go through with it. She would run the business side, with all the paperwork and the spreadsheets, and Pete would get to enjoy the fun parts. In November of 2009, less than a year later, Tess and her father were opening up Pepperhead. The work done in the brand new restaurant transformed the old building so it was no longer recognizable as the long, beer-stained cowboy bar with 23

the black and purple walls and ceiling with the pool tables in the back. The cadence of renovation continued and grew down Main Street as more and more businesses and people of the community joined in. In 2010, the year after Pepperhead opened, Brandon Shubert and his wife Mel also returned to Cortez. After six years living in Arizona managing a number of restaurants around Lake Powell, Brandon had done his time in the corporate world. Having worked for Aramark, first at Mesa Verde and then down in Arizona, he wanted to start a restaurant of his own, and what better place than in southwest Colorado where he had grown up and where he had met Mel. “Cortez was where we spent our 20s and 30s,” Brandon said. “It was pretty much home for us. This is where we put down roots and where we wanted to move back to.” Maybe the Shuberts were always going to move back, but the timing couldn’t have better. Pepperhead was alive and well, and the dance studio, after outgrowing the space in the Wilson Building, had moved down the block into the Millennium Center. The Shuberts would have a place to open up their sushi restaurant and Mitchell would have another restaurant in his building on Main Street. “We built up the kitchen, and we made the benches and sewed the pillows and made the 24

cushions,” Brandon explained. “We did it all. We’ve created a really fun space. We wanted people to walk in and say ‘Wow! This is cool!” As Brandon thought back about how things had changed in Cortez from when he first lived there, he admitted that Stonefish Sushi would not have been possible at all before. “When we first moved here back in the 1990s it was kind of everybody out for themselves. It was really hard to find anyone who worked together,” Brandon recalled. “When we got back here though, I really relied on Pete to help us out. He was a great mentor and a great resource for me and my wife.” In fact, collaboration became another trend working its way down Main Street. The rhythm of the community started syncing up as more and more locals, both new and old, started tearing the paper off storefront windows and opening up new shops and restaurants. “We all work together,” Tess said about her fellow restaurant owners on the block. “We make each other better. It’s very community oriented, and that is what I felt like I was missing so much of when I lived in Italy. I wanted to belong and I wanted other people to belong. That’s really what I was looking for when I created Pepperhead with my dad.” That elusive sense of belonging can be a trickster, taking you out of town and around the world

before plopping you right back down where you started. Tess and Brandon, and Melanie and

Darrin were certainly not alone in their full-circle journeys back to Cortez.

“There are a ton of us who grew up in the area

and then came back to take over businesses or be in business,” Tess explained. “Just like me, they

left, they went to universities, they experienced

things and then they chose to come back. But we

are doing things a little bit differently and I think that makes a huge difference.”

In 2013, Desmond Calhoun joined the ranks on

Main Street, doing things a little different with the newly revamped Blondie’s Trophy Room.

Previously a biker bar, Blondie’s had been transformed as Desmond mounted trophies shot by

friends and family and turned the place into a hunters’ haven. Anybody and everybody welcome!

When Desmond left town after high school, he

thought he was gone for good. He worked all over the country for Aramark and Levy restaurants, even spending some of that time working for

Brandon at Mesa Verde and again at Lake Powell. Once again, the corporate life wasn’t all it’s

cracked up to be, and Desmond had thoughts of owning his own place one day.

There are a lot of little towns across America

where a corporate chef can find a niche and build a place of his own without coming home. But Desmond had a different reason, besides just work, for returning to southwest Colorado.

“My sister always wanted me to move back,”

Desmond said. “And, I always wanted her to have kids, so we made a deal: I’d move back if she had

a kid...Well, then she called me one day to say she was pregnant, so family pretty much brought me back.”

Patty Simmons was selling Blondie’s around the

same time Desmond was looking to return home so he jumped at the opportunity and the rest is history.

That year, 2013, was also the year that Melanie and Darrin’s dream finally came true. They had

“From the time we put into motion our coming home, and how long it took us from 2007 when we purchased the building to 2013 when we opened the business, that’s how much we loved Cortez and we loved Main Street,” Melanie said. Since 2013, the trend has continued with new, local businesses filling in the spaces left by the previous generations. “It’s fun to see it all come full circle,” Melanie said, about the way down town has evolved. “It’s always changing. It’s supposed to. Long after these new business are gone, something else will be in here. That’s what makes it so fun.” In addition to Pepperhead, Stonefish, the new Blondie’s, and Flatbelly Organics, many other places have opened up too. The Farm Bistro has set up shop in that book store next to Pepperhead. The Loungin’ Lizard opened in 2014 in the old Wilson Building. There is a yoga studio, a quilt shop and an outdoor store, as well as a few Main Street staples like Pippo’s and the movie theater have stayed alive through it all. And as a final testament, to the change that has swept through in the past decade, in 2014, the every-man-for-himself community banded together to bring the local radio station, KSJD, onto Main Street, just across Market Street. This led to the birth of the Sunflower Theatre adding one more element to the changing face of downtown. “I feel like our Main Street is kind of classic Main Street America,” Melanie said. “And I think it has always thrived, due in part to the locals. Whether you are new to the area or coming home, it’s always been anchored by the locals.” So maybe there is something in the air or the water, or maybe it’s the spell of the Southwest, but the younger generation has returned to Cortez from the not-so-greener pastures, and the cadence of the community has picked up again. Main Street is practically hopping, and it’s all because of timing, collaboration, commitment and a lot of hard work. It’s because a community of people decided to take matters into their own hands and to work together to build the home they wanted.

sold the grocery store and had moved back to

Cortez to open up a Flatbelly Organics on their

hometown Main Street. It had been almost seven years since they purchased the building, and

almost two decades since they had moved away. 25

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IRON maegAn By Gianna Farrell

In the Ayurvedic tradition, people are distilled into three distinct types, called doshas. The types are based on elements found in nature: air, fire and earth. Since recently becoming a case study for a friend studying Ayurvedic medicine, I find myself meeting people and trying to figure out their doshas. Maegan Crowley is an easy one: she is definitely fire. She is quick to laugh and doesn’t hold back, she’s sharp and perceptive and, well, fiery. It makes sense, then, that she became a blacksmith because she uses fire in her craft to shape and bend metal to her will. When spending time with Meg you notice the easy way that she moves in the world and her physicality. Her laugh is full-bodied and her voice is a self-assured. Using heat and her own physical strength she transforms iron and steel into to something useful, something beautiful, or a combination of the two. Meg’s shop is called “Iron Maegan Metalworks” and is located on Central Avenue in Dolores, Colorado. She came to Colorado by way of New Jersey and although I only very recently met Meg, she grew up in the town next to my hometown. In one of those weird coincidences that seem to punctuate life, it turns out that my dad was her vice principal. Meg is an old friend of my husband and we share many mutual friends, but I only really properly got to meet her while visiting Dolores a couple of weeks ago. We grew up perhaps a mile apart, but only got the time to talk to one another 2,000 miles away in an entirely different part of the world. I’ve found that that’s how life operates, it’s usually a series of swirling coincidences and happenstance. You may have a plan, a dream, or a narrative you wish your life to take and, certainly, you can shape it, but don’t expect it to turn out exactly as you imagine. I thought about this while interviewing Meg. For instance, how does a Jersey girl wind up in Colorado with a shop of her own, a successful business and an exclusive commission with Amangiri Resort, a fancy-pants resort in Canyon Point, Utah, that charges between $2,000 and $4,000 a night and features suites that have private terraces with open-air desert vistas and private plunges. Part of it is hard work, for sure, lots of hard work, grit and determination. But, why did Meg choose Dolores as her home base? For love, of course. Meg met her husband, Gene, while she was working as head of the blacksmithing department at Peters Valley Craft Education Center in Llayton, New Jersey. Gene was from that area, but had already been living in Dolores. She came out to visit him and decided that this was where they would lay down their roots. Meg describes her moving out as “uncharacteristic,” because as she puts it she is someone who usually does her own thing, but she is very happy that she did so. She not only has a successful shop in Dolores, but a house outside of town on a hillside, and a small and lovely family, complete with Gene, her husband, Stella, her inquisitive 5-year-old daughter, and Weezy, the dog. This may sound idyllic, but make 31

no mistake, Meg has worked with ferocity to make her dreams come true. Of course, running her own business, being a mother and a wife, and having to travel to complete commissions makes Meg an extremely busy person with little free time. Take, for instance, the work that Meg has done for the Amangiri Resort, a project that lasted a year and a half in 2009-2010. She forged everything from toilet paper roll holders, to room numbers, to fireplace screens and water features. Imagine the hard work and time that comes with outfitting a 34-room-hotel with individually crafted metal fixtures, candleholders, hinges, hardware, hooks, and fireplace tools. Meg didn’t just have the skill and vision to do so, she put in the physical labor required for the job. Meg still does work for the Amangiri, they are expanding, and she takes on a number of different clients, both corporate and private making, everything from address plates to fireplace grates for them. Imagine doing that kind of work all day only to come home to mother a small child while doing household chores. Only a person with fire in their veins could do that. Meg isn’t simply a craftsperson, she’s also an accomplished artist. He first love is sculpture and there is something deeply present about Meg’s work. The thing that strikes me immediately about Meg’s sculptures are the purposeful disconnect between medium and subject—a seedpod forged in steel or a flower in iron. There is a permanence and a weight to these ephemeral and transient things. In nature, things change daily: a seed sprouts, grows, flowers, forms new seed, and withers up and dies within a period of weeks. Meg manages to capture these very liminal things and make them permanent and present. A flower forged in metal, think about that for a second, she takes something small, beautiful, and delicate enough to be blown away by a heavy wind and makes it large, heavy and permanent. Any hiker who has mourned the passing of the seasons can appreciate Meg’s work. That flower you glimpsed last week in the woods has become something you can return to and study, taking in the rich detail and complex intricacy. Meg’s sculpture is not something that will be blown away in a heavy wind. Although, custom work has kept Meg busy recently, and she has not had the time to focus on her sculpture in the way that she would like, she just scored the coup of selling two sculptures to Colorado Mesa University. These sculptures are classic Iron Maegan. “Inflorescere,” means to begin to bloom in Latin and captures a yucca flower on the cusp of its’ bloom. Her other sculpture, “Full Bloom,” captures a large and showy flower in just that, full bloom, rendered vibrant and alive in forged and fabricated steel. The dichotomy between the transience of her subjects and the permanence of her medium leads me to ask Meg about what drew her to iron and steel. She answers immediately that it is the “physical aspect of it.” She explains that she comes from a jeweler’s background and that there is a lot of “squinting and sitting down in jewelry-making,” but with blacksmithing Meg takes advantage of natural inclination to move around. Her first experi32

ence with blacksmithing was in a jewelry-making class where the class had to heat up iron and hammer it out in order to make their own chasing tools. She liked the movement it required, that act of hammering, and she tells me she likes feeling that she worked hard. When visiting Dolores my husband and I met up with Meg and Gene for beers at their hillside house. I could see that Meg had been working hard on a commission, she was tan and fit and moved with ease and confidence, navigating both motherhood & friendship after a day spent hammering and forging. She was tired that night, but not the fuzzy-brained, city-tired that I’m used to, she was bone-tired after working so hard. Since Dolores seems a world away from the Jersey town where Meg grewup, I ask her how Dolores has influenced her work. She feels lucky to have found Dolores and, “I can have my shop and no one bothers me. It’s harder to make a living here, but it’s easier get your name out.” The scale of Dolores is something that Meg references several times. On one hand, it is a small town, the kind of town where the second you arrive people notice that there is a new kid in town which makes it a little easier for someone who wants to get their name out there. On the flip-side, because Dolores is a small town nestled in a big space, you have to travel more to find work and make a living. Meg’s work is so impeccably wrought that she gets a lot of commission work for private clients, but she has to travel a long distance to meet with clients and complete her work. It’s not a matter of hopping on a train and traveling 15 minutes as it would be on the East Coast, but driving through vast terrain in order to meet with clients, whether it’s the mountains of Colorado or the lunar desert-scapes of Utah. This is something that anyone new to Dolores has to understand about making it in Dolores or its surrounding area. Traveling is a necessity, work will not come to you, but you have to seek it out and travel to where the work is. That might mean driving four hours to Canyon Point, Utah. Dolores, the town itself, also helped Meg out quite a bit when she first arrived from New Jersey by commissioning a series of signs that you probably will recognize if you are familiar with the area. The signs for Riverside, Joe Rowell, and Flanders Parks are all Meg’s work. She also created the sign for KSJD in Cortez and the cross with flame for the Methodist Church in Dolores. Meg makes sense in Dolores. It’s a place where she can have a shop and work on her own without being bothered by the distractions of a big city. It’s also a place where nature abounds, so it provides plenty of inspiration. She’s forged (pardon the pun) quite a life for herself in Dolores. A couple weeks ago Meg and her family welcomed my husband and I to her house, we sat on her front porch and watched the sunset while having beers and laughing. Weezy, the dog, got a chance to chase a hare in the twilight and Stella told us about her favorite baby dolls. Meg was tired, but happy to catch up with old friends. The next day she had to drive back out to Utah to work for the Amangiri Resort. She will be doing physical, tedious work and walking that fine line between making a client happy, but remaining true to her aesthetic. It was a pleasure getting to know Meg and realize that at the intersection of hard-work and happenstance you can find yourself in a place like Dolores, making your dreams come true.

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the montezuma School TO Farm project By Sarah Syverson and Rachel Segura Kemper fourth grader Christian Rebaza leaned

into the First Lady as they cut broccoli in the garden at the White House. She returned the childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sentiment, resting her head onto his. Michelle

Obama stood among several children, all wearing bright green T-shirts with the words Montezuma School to Farm Project emblazoned on the front.

They chatted and smiled as they prepared lunch. The moment was sweet and lovely, captured live by ABC cameras documenting the harvest, and

aired nationwide. Christian was one of five children (Gael Garcia, Trinity Tillahash, Miles Frost

and Cecilia Thom), all of Cortez, who ventured to Washington, D.C., on June 6 for the second time. They previously flew to the Capitol in April to

plant the same food they would later harvest. All five children attend Kemper Elementary School, where their school garden has become a place

of sanctified learning and humbling experience. 37

garden beds, weeding, watering, harvesting and

turned into a respected and recognized program throughout Montezuma County.

pass over Christian’s face. All the hard work

Planting the Seed

The time countless volunteers spent on building educating was worth it to see the serene look

Montezuma School to Farm Project volunteers, staff, students and teachers had put into the

community gardens was being revered at that very moment.

“It makes me teary-eyed every time I think about

it,” said Sarah Syverson, former executive director of the MSTFP. “That was an experience they

will never forget. It was heart-warming to see

how that visit empowered and impacted them. It wasn’t just about growing food. They grew

themselves too. They were conquering different

feats individually as well – flying for the first time, speaking up in public, trying new foods, learning how to swim at the hotel pool. It was like they

did something that seemed so far from them and all of a sudden they felt like they could do all of these other things too.”

What started as a small effort to engage and

educate area children on food production, water conservation and healthier eating choices, has

In 2009, an AmeriCorps volunteer named Nadia Hebard was doing part-time water conservation work for the Mancos Conservation District. She spent her time off wondering what else she could do for the community. How else could she impact residents? Nadia’s work through the MCD was giving her insight into the agricultural community. She stumbled upon an idea of bringing kids face-to-face with the source of their food. Using her connections, she approached Jack Burk, owner of Burk Beef and Stubborn Farm who also sits on the MCD board, about her idea. Under his guidance and mentorship, Hebard secured $5,000 in grants to fund farm-to-school field trips in Montezuma County. The first trip was to Burk’s farm with 40 school kids from the Mancos Valley. There they learned about watersheds and food production and participated in a taste test, comparing grass-fed beef from Burk’s ranch to Walmart beef. Once the trips started gaining traction, many area small farms and

ranches were on board for tours. At this time, school-to-farm programs were cropping up all over the nation. By 2008, schools in Michigan, Connecticut, Iowa and California had bills passed to establish farm to school programs or Farm Fresh initiatives. After Nadia’s AmeriCorp’s service year was over, Laurel Foster was hired on as the first part-time director of the program. Under her leadership she developed relationships with Livewell Montezuma and secured a grant through the Colorado State Conservation Board in order to begin planning the installation of school garden programs as pilot projects in both the Mancos and Dolores school districts. It was Laurel who connected Sarah Syverson to the project initially as a volunteer. Sarah had volunteered to host school trips when she and her partner were running a small 3-acre subsistent farm in the Mancos Valley. It was this first interaction with MSTFP that later led her to apply for the executive director position for the program in 2011. “The program has advanced so much now that if I applied for the job today, I probably wouldn’t have been hired,” Syverson quipped. At this time, the Mancos School District

had one of the first school gardens up and running. It was small, with only two raised beds in a designated area next to the elementary school. There was also a set of benches for classroom interaction. It was a place children came in order to learn in a tactile, living laboratory. Erin Bohm, the former garden coordinator for Mancos schools and was hired along with Sarah. In the same time period the Dolores School District agreed to allow the program to place a garden near their elementary school. Megan Tallmadge was hired as the garden coordinator for that district. All three women were part-time at 10 hours a week. When she took the position, Sarah had no previous director experience. However, the importance of education in food production was something she adamantly supported. “I grew up on a homestead in Montana. We had an apple orchard and a huge garden and every day I would grab four or five apples, a few carrots and a handful of peas on the way out the door. That was my breakfast. My family hunted and my mom made bread from scratch as a matter of saving money. Knowing the source of our food was something I grew up with, without thinking twice about it, but for many kids they don’t have that opportu-

nity. When Megan, Erin and I came on as staff members for MSFTP, we knew we could make a difference and provide exceptional education opportunities through school gardens. We wanted to find a way to make it integral for the students and teachers versus an extracurricular activity.” When the gardens were first implemented, the children would spend time each month in the growing space. The coordinators were able to teach experiential learning techniques in the garden, which soon developed into integral learning with coordinators and teachers banding together. The gardens became as important to teachers as they were to the students. Instructors were making an effort to engage with the garden coordinators in order to meet their teaching standards. They were adapting their lessons with the changes occurring seasonally in the gardens, creating a cohesive learning experiences that children were thoroughly enjoying. Alongside the educational component, MSTFP has been a proponent for fresh food choices. The gardens are planted, watered and harvested by the students. They are taught about the different foods they are planting and various growing processes for each food. MSTFP staff and nationwide fresh food initiatives, have found that children who plant food are much more likely to choose that food after its harvested. This was noticed in the Mancos cafeteria as cooks saw children eat greens and other veggies emerging from the garden, things like kale and collard greens. The school gardens in both Mancos and Dolores prompted more spaces to bloom around the community. In 2012, in collaboration with Joy McHenry, the Cortez Recreational Center received a summer garden that is used for the facilitation of Playground Days. In August 2013, the Cortez Middle School Educational Garden was next in line. What initially began with four raised beds donated to the space, transformed slowly to include a plethora of raised beds and a high tunnel. By 2015, the CMS garden development continued with a shed build, additional fruit and berry bushes, additional row-crop areas that tripled the growing space, a geothermal composting system to heat the high tunnel in the winter and a pond water catchment system. This garden boasts the largest production of food regionally from a school garden. The school now has a 2-plus-acre production area that yields thousands of pounds of produce used in the school cafeteria, in student taste-testings and cooking classes, do40

nated to local food banks and sold at the summer Cortez Farmers Market as part of the MSTFP Youth Farmer Apprenticeship Program. They also planted 100 heritage orchard trees in conjunction with the Montezuma Orchard Restoration Project and installed drip irrigation with the help of a Mesa Verde Kiwanis Club donation. “The gardens have become a source of pride for the community,” Sarah said. “When it was developing, people were wondering what it in the world we were doing. MSTFP staff and students were laying down cardboard and planting cover crops. Folks would drive by and honk or ask what was going on. As the months ticked on, they could see the trees developing, corn stalks growing, and pumpkins peaking out from all the greenery. MSTFP is easily one of the top 10 rural programs in the nation. It’s remarkable to have seen it grow from serving 40 children to more than 2,000.” These living learning spaces have now become the norm in Montezuma County with several schools requesting more startup information. The gardens have become more than a learning opportunity, but a necessity to the children in the community. A way for them to grow personally, alongside the foods they plant.

Bountiful Opportunities Zoe Nelson, current executive director of MSTFP, has been in the role less than a year. Still getting her feet wet, Zoe is seeing firsthand the effects the program has on the community. This summer they broke ground on the Mesa Elementary School Garden and Wildlands Area, which will include a space for heritage orchard trees, also in conjunction with the MORP. Interaction with various organizations such as the orchard project, as well new staff, dedicated volunteers and parent involvement is helping to rapidly produce a more proficient program. Not to mention the many doors of opportunity opening to MSTFP that will create more education in the schools such as a farmer apprenticeship program through the CMS garden. This is an opportunity for children to earn wages, but more importantly, for them to learn about trade and commerce through working at the Cortez Farmers Market. “In the main scheme of things, having gardens in the schools feeds into our local foods and local food systems in our community,” Zoe said. “It directly impacts the community in recognizing that our youth need to appreciate and learn new skills. Some farm families in the area have

that agricultural background but many do not. This is helping to revive that strong local food movement. Our area thrives on building the local economy and our food is linked in with that.” Zoe has a background in experiential learning and worked in charter schools prior to MSTFP. She is currently working on her Ph.D. in sustainability based on mentorship and local resources. She feels that this style of education is beneficial to anyone at any age. Children who are getting their hands dirty are pursuing more than just basic concepts. They are pursuing better socialization skills, critical thinking and independent exploration. One of the most interesting concepts MSTFP will be considering in the near future is how learning in the garden is translated through other areas of a child’s life. Not just elementary children, but teenagers as well. Many children are growing up with the gardens, but that experience stops at the high school level. However, Montezuma-Cortez High School could be next on the list. “What we want to do with the high school is turn it into a mentorship opportunity,” Zoe said. “We want to help create relationships with students and ranchers, so they can have even more handson learning that will hopefully help them in their future endeavors. You would be surprised to see what students are interested in agriculture as a career. This will be an opportunity where we can help that become a possibility by putting them in direct contact with our area professionals.” There is no doubt that the Montezuma School to Farm Project has made tremendous in-roads in developing experiential education facilities and experiences for the youth of Montezuma County. What started as a simple dream to connect students to the source of their food through a few farm field trips has turned into a thriving program that continues to evolve with the times and with the many strong collaborations the program cultivates. Take a few minutes to stroll through one of the many school gardens strewn across the county in Dolores, Mancos and Cortez and see the veritable fruits of students’ educational experiences coming to life. Through time and many seasons, students will continue to grow with their gardens, learning about all aspects of life through this abundant lens.

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ZUMAN

Eriogonum inflatum, the desert trumpet is a perennial plant. The

plant possesses very small yellow or pink flowers and an inflated stem just below branching segments. But the desert trumpet around here is in the empty restrooms scattered around the public lands of Montezuma County. A very small, bright sound comes from behind the cold brick walls that give way to outstanding acoustics. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a trumpet player and his passion. Although he remains anonymous, we thank him for this photo and for hitting those notes so well.

THE COVER

“I love the sublime beauty of the high desert at last light.”

This image is a true melange of its parts. Below, scrub brush, rock and desert blooms. Above, the sun’s last rays give way to the universe longing to pour itself over the desert night. To quote the great French aviation designer and philosopher Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away.” To that I can only say c’est la vie St. Antoine, c’est la vie.

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