How does the light shine on the road to Crestone

Everyone is helpful, everyone is kind

On the road to Shambala
Everyone is lucky, everyone is so kind
On the road to Shambala

___ Daniel Moore

Don Luis Maria Baca Ranch. 

Top of cockscomb peaks rise above "Shambala"

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Crestone, a small village near the bottom, on the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo Range, at the north end of the San Luis Valley, was originally part of Navajo country, and is still considered holy ground by the Hopi and Navajo. Today, it has also been called Shambala, as it has risen as an international spiritual center.

Crestone is named for the 14,000-foot peaks that lie just east of the town: Crestone Peak and Crestone Needle. The Crestones, as they are known collectively, in turn, took their name from the Spanish word crestón, which, according to Walter Borneman and Lyndon Lampert's book A Climbing Guide to Colorado’s Fourteeners, means: “the top of a cock’s comb”; “the crest of a helmet”; or, in miners’ jargon, “an outcropping of ore”.

It developed as mining town around 1900, but little pay dirt was produced. In the 1970s, a large land development, the Baca Grande, was established to the south and west where several hundred homes have been built.
The Crestone area, which includes the Baca Grande and Moffat, Colorado, is known as a spiritual center with several world religions represented, including: a Hindu temple, a Zen center, a co-ed Carmelite monastery, several Tibetan Buddhist centers, and miscellaneous New Age happenings. Much of this spiritual development was catalyzed by the couple Hanne Strong and Maurice Strong in the 1970s, who set out to make it an interfaith center, and who established the Baca.

The song, 'Road to Shambala,' written by the songwriter Daniel Moore, and first released by the Texas songwriter B.W. Stevenson, was ultimately made popular by the band Three Dog Night.

Moore told Songfacts: "Regarding the song, 'Shambala,' it was written entirely by myself, Daniel Moore, in the fall of 1972. It was recorded by Three Dog Night in December of 1972. It was recorded by B.W. Stevenson in Late February, 1973 and released two weeks before the Three Dog Night version was released. During those two weeks B.W.'s version sold 125,000 single 45s. Then Three Dog Night released their version and sold 1,250,000 single 45s."

The word "Shambala" has a spiritual meaning in the Buddhist religion, and some Tibetan Buddhists believe that it is a mystical land hidden somewhere in the Himalaya mountains. The song's writer, Daniel Moore, told Songfacts the following story:
"In 1972 my brother, Matthew, called me and informed me that he had received a letter from Dorothy Beg at Lake Pleasant, Massachusetts that told him where and who he had been in his past lives. He had sent a letter to her requesting this information. After recounting several past lives the letter ended with, 'My messenger tells me to tell you, 'Let your light shine in the halls of Shambala.'' In the phone conversation at that point Matthew said, 'Shambala, what the hell is that?'
So I did some research and found dozens of references to the word Shambala, the 5000-year-old word originating from Sanskrit. Some were weird, some were goofy but the one I liked was found in Alice Bailey's Treatise On White Magic. It basically said that there was a gigantic cavern under the Gobi Desert that has a replica of every evolving human being. And when that replica begins to light up or glow (meaning you are cleaning up your act and becoming more spiritual minded or raising your consciousness to a higher level), there is point where your replica gets bright enough to warrant a spiritual teacher being sent to you.
I remember getting excited about the sound of the word, 'Shambala.' Before I wrote the song, I called a friend, Eddie Zip, who I'd been working with and telling him, 'That word Shambala has a magic sound to it, you ought to put together a band and call it Shambala, you couldn't lose.' We had just recorded one of his songs titled 'Don't Make God's Children Cry.' We were getting - ELEVATED!
I wrote the words and melody, a cappella, driving on the Ventura Freeway in about 10 minutes. I got home, picked up my Martin guitar and had the music finished in five minutes; a pretty good 15 minutes.
The recording session of my demo in 1972 was with Dean Parks and Jim Varley. Dean (playing bass) was sitting with me (I was engineering, playing the acoustic guitar and singing live) in the control room. We were wearing earphones with the speakers turned off, and 50 feet away at the other end of the studio on the other side of the glass with earphones, was Jim Varley playing drums. Twenty-eight years later I had Greg Beck overdub an electric guitar and that is what you hear on this recording. That's the only time Dean Parks and Greg Beck have played together, according to Greg.
Three Dog Night heard the song through a publisher, Lindy Blaskey, who was working at ABC Dunhill Publishing. He called me and was very excited because he had gotten such a positive reaction from Three Dog Night and their producer Richie Podler. Anyway, they cut it, it was their single and it was a hit. Bless all of their hearts.
In the Guinness Book of World Records, under Prophecies, there is a reference to Shambala where it says, 'Any one who furthers the name, 'Shambala' shall be rewarded 100 times.' And so it is."

President Grant’s cabinet established the second Baca Grant and is pictured in Harper’s Weekly.

First settlement in Crestone area occurred after the American Civil War with the granting of the Don Luis Maria Baca Grant No. 4 to the heirs of the original Baca Grant at Las Vegas, New Mexico. Title to the grant at Las Vegas was clouded by a second grant of the same land. The Baca heirs were offered alternative lands from the public lands of the United States. The square tract selected is 12.5 miles (20.1 km) on a side south of Saguache County Road T south of Crestone. The Bacas deeded the land to their attorney, but it soon passed by tax sale to a third party. The ranch headquarters were on Crestone Creek to the southwest of Crestone. The Baca Grant was one of the first large tracts of land to be fenced in the West and in its heyday was the home of prize Hereford cattle.
In addition to ranching there was some mining in the area to the east and south of Crestone of small shallow iron oxide copper gold ore deposits. In 1880 the town of Crestone was platted by George Adams, the owner of the Baca Grant.

In 1900, with the help of Eastern investors, George Adams ignited a minor boom, reopening one of the more promising gold mines and building a railroad spur to the town and the mines along the Range south of town. However, lacking good ore, the boom was short lived. A long period of decline followed.
By 1948 Crestone had declined to its post-war population of 40, mostly retirees and cowboys who worked on the Grant, as the Baca Grant was called. Many of the old cabins were used as vacation homes. By 1971 the Baca Grant came into the ownership of a corporation which subdivided a portion of the Grant, creating the Baca Grande, a subdivision originally platted for about 10,000 lots. At great expense, underground utilities were installed and roads built. However, sales lagged and by 1979 the development was considered a liability by the corporation. Maurice Strong, owner of a controlling interest and his fiancée, Hanne Marstrand, visited the development and "fell in love with it." They were inspired to create a world spiritual center and began granting parcels of land to traditional spiritual organizations.
The population gradually began to increase and by 2006 several hundred homes had been built and a number of small spiritual communities had become established. As the Baca Grande contained no provision for business uses, Crestone became the business center of the community and having enacted a small sales tax was in a position to finance further improvements.

Animal friends and fame, with a touch of craziness

Henry the Colorado Dog, and his furry camping companion: Baloo the Kitten. 

Pets and celebrities are what people really care about

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

An earlier post recently, and a story I heard last night, got me thinking (which is dangerous enough) but I have arrived at the conclusion that what people really care about on various forms of social media is: Pets and celebrities.

"Not all who wander are lost, especially if they have a friend roaming with them," says Kelli Bender of "People."

"After spending some time traveling solo, Henry the Colorado Dog now has a furry camping companion: Baloo the Kitten. Both of these adventurous angels belong to Cynthia Bennett, a Colorado nature lover who also adores documenting her pets’ astounding wanderings on Instagram."

And Instagrammers love them, too: Henry and Baloo have more than 2.2 million followers, as of a recent check.

With that in mind, my next post combines those two elements, with my own tastes and agenda:
• George Washington (perhaps the country’s first celebrity) had American Staghounds named Sweet Lips, Scentwell and Vulcan. But the father of the country loved his brew art and his favorite animals were his black and tan coonhounds named Drunkard, Taster, Tipler and Tipsy.
• President Andrew Jackson reportedly had a parrot named Pol that cussed in both Spanish and English, at all the improper times. Several reports suggest that the bird attended “Old Hickory’s” funeral but was then asked to leave because of its foul mouth and inappropriate outbursts.
• Ernest Hemingway was fond of six-toed cats and upon his death in 1961, his former home in Key West, Florida, became a museum and a home for his cats and it currently houses approximately fifty-plus descendants of the originals. About half of them have six toes.
• And there is a lot of other craziness out there, as you might expect. For example: Tori Spellings’ fluffy pet chicken Coco Chanel. Nickolas Cage’s king cobra Sheba, Steven Tyler goes fishing with his raccoon. Vanilla Ice has a kangaroo. Salvador Dali owned an ocelot named Babou. Audrey Hepburn had a deer she called Pippin. Lord Byron, the famous poet, was disappointed that he couldn’t take his dog with him to Cambridge because of their rules, but fortunately discovered a loophole that allowed him to bring a bear, which lived in the dorms with him and took walks around campus.

Ernest Hemingway and one of his six-toed cats.

If you can sing in thin air, you can sing anywhere

Every night I'm lying in bed
Holding you close in my dreams
Thinking about all the things that we said
And coming apart at the seams
We try to talk it over
But the words come out too rough

I know you were trying
To give me the best of your love

 __ Don Henley, Glenn Frey and J.D. Souther.

Eagles play first concerts in Colorado

When the iconic L.A.-based California band of the 1970s, the Eagles — lamented their own, and others excesses in tunes like Life in the Fast Lane, Hotel California, and Take it to the Limit — they may have also have been recalling some early activities right here in Colorado. 

The band first played at a long-gone club known as the Gallery at the base of Little Nell, in Aspen.

Original band members played their first extended appearance as The Eagles at the Gallery in 1971. Founding member Glenn Frey recalled the time for the late Stewart Oksenhorn in a Sept. 3, 2010, article in The Aspen Times.

“I remember the first night, there were 40 people for the first set, then 80 people for the second set,” Frey told Oksenhorn. “By the fourth show of the night, it was packed. The word spread pretty quickly.”

Frey’s recollection was that they played several shows in October 1971 and then returned to Aspen the next month, according to the Aspen Times.

Longtime Colorado writer and music historian G. Brown, of Colorado Music Experience, recalls the bands's Colorado ascent this way.

"In the summer of 1970, Linda Ronstadt’s manager had an idea for a supergroup to back up his star singer, coming up with the combination of Glenn Frey (a guitarist and singer from Detroit), Don Henley (a singer and drummer from Texas), Bernie Leadon (a multi-instrumentalist previously in the Flying Burrito Brothers and Dillard & Clark) and Randy Meisner (formerly the bassist in Poco and Rick Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band)," says Brown, who spent years covering the music scene in Colorado with articles in Denver Post and others, and was  an online personality for several radio stations.

"They eventually left Ronstadt and took shape as the original Eagles. In 1971, David Geffen (the head of Asylum Records, home of Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell) got involved as manager. He provided expense money for the guys to leave Hollywood and get their act together so that they could come back and blow minds rather than develop in front of everyone’s eyes.

"They went to Colorado and got gigs in local bars. In Aspen, “Eagle” played two stints at the Gallery (four sets a night, legend had it) and the whole town got behind them. Eagle was then scheduled to perform December 11-15 at Tulagi, the nationally famed 3.2 beer nightclub on Boulder’s University Hill. It was finals week at the University of Colorado, limiting attendance to 15 to 50 people a night. The band got paid $500 for the five nights."

"Yet Henley and Frey sat at the bar drinking pitchers of 3.2, confident to the point of insisting that they were going to be huge stars. “Oh, yeah, we were cocky little bastards,” Henley said. “Those gigs were sort of our coming-out party,” wrote Brown.

Frey said they were matter-of-fact over the inevitability of success. 

“We had it all planned. We’d watched landmark country-rock bands like Poco and the Flying Burrito Brothers lose their initial momentum. We were determined not to make the same mistakes. This was going to be our best shot. Everybody had to look good, sing good, play good and write good. We wanted it all. Peer respect. AM and FM success. No. 1 singles and albums. Great music. And a lot of money,” says Brown.

The members dressed in the fashion of the time, ripped jeans with paisley patches. One particularly cold night, the heat went out at Tulagi and Leadon played with gloves on. The gigs drew small but voluble crowds. A beered-up patron kept screaming, “Play some Burritos, ma-a-a-an!” “We’re a new group with our own songs,” Frey earnestly explained from the stage.

Those songs served as an audition for British producer Glyn Johns, whose work with the Beatles, the Rolling Stone and other music giants had made him a legend. “He was this superstar producer who none of us had ever met,” Henley noted. “He agreed to fly over from England and listen to us when we played Tulagi. I got designated to drive to the airport to pick him up.

“It was a horrible, cold, snowy night, and nobody was at the concert. We were nervous and not very good, and Glyn passed. Later, he came to Los Angeles on a more casual scale when we weren’t so keyed up about performing. He listened to us rehearse, singing harmonies with acoustic guitars, and that’s what got him.”

Within weeks, Eagle became the Eagles. The band went to London to record its first album, produced by Johns. Eagles, released in 1972, was a huge success, helped by the hit singles “Take It Easy” and “Peaceful Easy Feeling.” The Eagles went on to become the most successful American music act of the 1970s with sales of more than 50 million albums worldwide.

David Geffen, who was introduced to Frey by Jackson Browne bought out Frey's and Henley's contracts with Amos Records, and sent the four to Aspen, Colorado, to develop as a band. Having not settled on a band name yet, they performed their first show in October 1971 under the name of Teen King and the Emergencies at a club called The Gallery in Aspen, 

According an article written shortly after Frey's death in 2016 in Aspen Times, by Scott Condon, news of his passing hit those who knew him hard.

"Frey and his original band mates played their first extended appearance as The Eagles at the Gallery in 1971."

“It was all because of Irving Azoff,” said Tim Mooney, who got to know the members of the Eagles while bartending at the Hotel Jerome.

Azoff, also the manager for Jimmy Buffett, knew the scene in Aspen and brought the Eagles in to develop their live show, said Condon in the Times article.

“They basically rehearsed a lot of songs when they got together here,” Mooney said. “They were as green as the audience was.”

Tim Mononey told Condon how he got to know the band members when they started coming to the Hotel Jerome hoping to meet Hunter S. Thompson. A few years later, Buffett hired Mooney as a roadie. Buffett opened for the Eagles, who were on their way to super stardom.

“We started partying and hanging out with those guys,” Mooney said.

Bobby Mason, the dean of the Aspen music scene, also met Frey when the Eagles first played the Gallery. Mason was a regular player there with the group Black Pearl. He had a chance to sit in once with the Eagles, he said.

The Eagles had a fast rise and then an implosion. Squabbling among the band members led to a breakup in 1980, but Frey, a guitarist, singer and songwriter for the group, retained ties to Aspen, as did drummer, songwriter and singer Don Henley, says Condon.

"Henley purchased a home in Woody Creek and got immersed for a time in local politics. Frey purchased a home on Snowmass Creek Road next to his buddy Buffett. Buffett made a reference to his neighbor in the 1985 song 'Gypsies in the Palace' about caretakers who throw legendary parties."

Frey was a frequent visitor to Aspen in the 1970s and 1980s and part of the party scene.

“Everybody was into Bordeux red wine and blow back then,” Mooney told Condon.

Frey confirmed to Oksenhorn, in the earlier Time piece, that his 1982 song “Partytown” was partially inspired by Aspen.

Frey also got involved in the local golf scene. Tim Cottrell, the former proprietor of the Smuggler Land Office restaurant and bar, said the joint was the headquarters for celebrities in Ed Podolak’s High Country Shoot-out golf tournament and fundraiser. Buffett was initially the big-name star in the event. Frey later took over, Cottrell said. He recalled ribbing both Buffett and Frey at some of the tournaments for being on the wrong side of the ball, as they were lefthanders.

Buffett and Frey also met competitors on the softball diamond, sort of. Buffett sponsored a team in the Aspen recreational league called the Downvalley Doughboys. Their logo resembled the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Frey was more competitive. He sponsored the “Werewolves” in Aspen’s A League, Mooney recalled.

“They played to win,” according to Oksenhorn's 2010 article.

Frey eventually purchased Buffett’s house on Snowmass Creek Road, but as the years went on, he spent less time in Old Snowmass. Both properties are listed for sale through Aspen Realtor Craig Morris.

Frey played with Joe Walsh, who joined the Eagles well after their earlier appearances in Aspen, in a 2010 show at the Jazz Aspen Labor Day Festival. Oksenhorn had an excellent interview with Frey before that show.

Mooney was shocked to hear of Frey’s death.

“He was a sweetheart. He was really kind and really happy. He knew he had a gift,” Mooney said. “He knew they were destined to be the biggest rock band on the planet.”

Mason said Frey’s death is yet another reminder to live every day like it’s your last. 

“I’m sorry to lose a friend,” he said.

Henley maintained a residence in Woody Creek, near Aspen, for decades. “I fell in love with the place. Colorado was great back then, but it’s changed a lot now. It’s getting a little glitzy up there.”

Frey continued to live in Aspen until his passing in 2016. “After the shows at the Gallery, I swore if I ever made a dime in the music business, I wanted to have a house there. It’s a good place to practice. If you can sing in Aspen’s thin air, you can sing anywhere.”

Fires of hell burning south of here

 Patty Hearst Not At Crystola

A mysterious telephone call early Tuesday morning temporarily put the Teller County Sheriff''s Department into kidnap/fugitive investigation and search for missing California newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst.

Undersheriff Robert Allen said a Colorado State Patrol radio dispatcher in Colorado Springs received a call after 1 a.m. from a man identifying himself only as "Chuck."The caller said he was "heavily armed" and he had Miss Hearst "cornered" inside a cabin at Crystola near the Teller-El Paso county line.

The patrol dispatcher relayed the information to the Sheriff's Substation office in Woodland Park. Deputy Royce Dean, with assistance from the Woodland Park Police Department, then went to Crystola to investigate the report.

Dean was able to determine the armed and inebriated caller had mistaken a motel tenant, who somewhat resembled descriptions and photographs of the missing heiress , had been living at the Crystola cabin since early April.

__ Courier, Thursday, May 23. 1974 -Page 3

Certain things "capture" you, over time and distance

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

For most of my life, certain news stories have seemed to reach out, grab me by the collar, and shake me for attention. Not surprising, I guess — as I spent an inordinate amount of time in the business. But it seems weird how certain things "capture" you, over time and distance. Steve Plutt,  from the Pikes Peak area, sent me the preceding clip recently, when he noticed a blog story I wrote about — among other things— the unfolding saga of kidnap victim turned bank robber Patty Hearst and Sybionese Liberation Army.  The story tied all the way back to my childhood. And this was not the first time Steve was able to pluck seemingly unrelated snippets that turned "profound," when slipped into my own little history.

Waiting for the paper was a pretty regular thing for the folks on my paper route through that summer of 1974, as President Nixon faced possible impeachment and eventually resigned in early August. Among other events, there was the Dixie County sighting of a Florida Skunk Ape in July that year. It really wasn’t what you would call a slow news period.

But the Patty Hearst story was compelling.
“Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people,” was the slogan of the SLA and a seven-headed cobra snake its symbol. The members of the army were known on occasion to use cyanide-laced bullets.

Patty Hearst’s conversion from the straight-laced heiress of the Hearst newspaper fortune to a bank-robbing “fundraiser” renamed Tania, sporting automatic weapons at various robberies and car jackings with the terrorist group was a hot topic. In May, Patty (a.ka. Tania) fired a series of warning shots at a storeowner that was trying to detain SLA members, Bill And Emily Harris, when they were caught shoplifting in sporting goods store in Los Angles.

The next day, in a two-hour gun battle between the SLA and 500 Los Angeles police officers, where nine thousand rounds were fired, and six SLA “soldiers” were killed, the SLA sealed their international notoriety. Hearst was eventually arrested in 1975 and brought to trial in a sensational legal event, in which she was defended by superstar lawyer F. Lee Bailey.

Nesting in the weirdness of Steve's pass-along of the clip, was the relationship to big news happenings that  over time,  pushed around my life.  For years, on two separate stints, I was publisher of the Courier, and the account resurfaced crazy stories I had encountered at that operation with tangents and fragments my own history there.

It had a familiar ring, as it had been more than 20 years since members of “The Texas Seven,” a group of prisoners who escaped from the John B. Connally Unit near Kenedy, Texas, on Dec. 13, 2000, and later killed Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins on Dec. 19, 2000, were arrested about a month later on a cold January Monday, right in Woodland Park. 

While I was considering that,  massive wild fires began destroying large portions of the Colorado cities of Superior and Louisville in Boulder County.  I was reminded of coverage of three successive "largest and most destructive fires in Colorado" I had covered, while at the Courier.  First the Hayman, then the Waldo Canyon, and then on to the Black Forest Fire. The trauma witnessed of all three was still a part me.

I also had reservations in Boulder, for New Year's Eve. 

Talking with survivors of Hayman and Waldo Canyon, and the Black Forest Fire, hearing about their experiences still brings back images in my mind of that weird pink, smoky glow on ridges above Woodland Park, and separately Manitou Springs. And then to the east of my one-time home in Gleneagle.

And now, the fires of hell burning over the ridges just south of here, in Boulder County.