The Society Turn Spur … These days they’re fixing the highway southbound just before you drive into the town of Dolores. Sometimes long waits there … I, for one, am beginning to long for winter, when CDOT can’t do construction projects.
RICH GRIMES … Let’s all give a cheer for the great job Rich has done bringing a New West flavor to an Old West tradition – the Norwood Market … I know, it’s called Clark’s now, and it’s part of the chain. A chain that pays its Norwood workers less than its Telluride workers – as tacky a situation as can be imagined. But that’s what we’re stuck with … Rich made the market a focus for a raft of new foods that hadn’t ever appeared on Norwood shelves. It meant I didn’t have to go to Ridgway or Montrose to get all my organic supplies.
SPEAKING OF ORGANIC … More cheers for Indian Ridge Farm & Bakery for making it through their second season as a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) operation. Barclay and Tony Daranyi have done a terrific job providing wholesome, non-chemical, local produce, meat and baked goods for a dozen or so local families … And a final cheer for Cooperative Extension Agent Yvette Henson for pulling off the first season of the Norwood Farmers Market. It started small, but it was consistent, and it will become increasingly valuable as a local outlet for local farm and ag producers.
TRI-COUNTY SOUTH … San Miguel County held its quarterly meeting with Dolores and Montezuma counties to our south recently. Former Commissioner Dewayne Findlay of Montezuma and I started these meetings to make sure we had open lines of communication and could deal with shared issues in a formal way. San Miguel County also has Tri-County North meetings with Ouray and Montrose counties on a regular basis … Tri-County South usually meets for lunch at the Ponderosa Inn in Dolores (Montezuma County), only this month no one from Montezuma County showed up, although Dolores County was there in full force – Chair LeRoy Gore, Julie Kibel, and Ernie Williams. Joan May and I came from San Miguel, along with our administrator Lynn Black … It was a good meeting. We gave an update of the Greager Road (CR 40J, FS 534). The Feds are completing a survey that should help define what actions will be necessary to reclaim this historic right-of-way which the Colorado State Land Board sold out from underneath local control, handing it over to private owners who barricaded the route shut – in effect, cutting off easy access to the west side of Lone Cone. The county is committed to getting that road back (although it’s costing you, the taxpayers, $200,000 or more to do it – thank you State Land Board). Because of a convoluted series of issues, it looked like we couldn’t do that without Dolores County’s help, and they’ve been exceedingly helpful. However, the Fed survey may show that we may not need their help after all. Stay tuned on that one … Dolores County told us that new developments along the Norwood-Dolores Road (what we call Lone Cone Road, or Miramonte Road, in our county – or CR 44ZS) are leading to repeated requests to open the road by snowplowing from the south. Dolores County is recommending folks form a road improvement district, if they want to do that, as the county can’t afford to do it … Dolores commissioners were OK with San Miguel County going for wilderness within its county boundaries, so long as the shared areas (McKenna Peak and Dolores River) don’t spill over into Dolores County, and promised not to oppose a San Miguel County wilderness bill, should one be developed.
WEEKLY QUOTA … “Journalists are supposed to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” - Joseph Pulitzer
LAUREL LUDDITE #1… This phantom anarcho-herbalist has words of wisdom to share with some New West rural folks who’ve settled into the niches and hideaways of Wright’s Mesa. Too much to unload all at once. So I’m running her thoughts in installments. With permission … “My medicine chest is a council of bioregions, with representatives gathered together as I make my way around the world west of the Rocky Mountains. The Coptis root was picked out of the churned-up scar left by an excavator, at the retreating edge of [an] Idaho wilderness. The tiny amount of Pipsissewa leaves came from an ancient grove above the Klamath River just feet away from where the District Ranger sat on a stump talking about his plans to cut it all down. I am drying Nettles from the California creek where salmon die in the silt left after a century of industrial logging … Every jar holds a story (often a ghost story of dying ecosystems and places gone forever). I am honored to have known the plants in their home places and to have studied their uses as medicine. But for people not lucky enough to roam throughout the wilds, purchased herbal preparations such as tinctures may be the link back to this sort of healing … Like so much in this consumerist society, it is easy to ignore the connections between a bottle on a shelf in some store and a living, growing plant out in the world somewhere. It can be hard to know if the plant grows a mile away or on another continent. There is much to be said for reconnecting, for educating ourselves about the herbs we use and [for] gathering our own medicine when we can. That's how we will be able to build a whole new system of healing -- one that can support our movement away from the corporate power structure that medicine has become.”
THE TALKING GOURD
Driving Washboard
The secret is
take it at a good clip.
Don’t go slow
& instead of rock & rattle
you’ll roll
Post a Comment
