Up and Vanished - Insight: Crestone

Episode Date: September 21, 2018

Crestonians speak about the place they call home. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

experience basketball like never before with bet mgm an authorized gaming partner of the nba ready to shoot your shot we've made the bet mgm experience more immersive and fun for all types of basketball fans being on the sidelines is one thing this season experience basketball on the foul line exciting state-of-the-art live tracking technology and dozens of sportsbook selections await you at bet mgm sportsbook tap into every game on your mobile devices. Get up off the sideline and drive to the basket yourself. No matter which team starts popping off, you'll find out why there's truly nothing like laying up a W with the king of sportsbooks. Visit BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older. Ontario only. Please

play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone else close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. Up and Vanished presents a bonus episode series. This is Insight. We're lucky if we get one out of a thousand visitors,

and it's the kind of visitor that's a little out there anyway. I mean, we're kind of at the end of the line. You've got to want to come here. When people come to Colorado, they always go to the same places. They go to Leadville, they go to Aspen, they go to Telluride, you know, but they don't go in between those places. There aren't any towns that are left like this. They have turned into that thing, this kind of clone stamp, redeveloped mining town slash ski area, base area resort thing. I made a comparison between this place and Jackson Hole. There's many,

many similarities, except everyone knows about Jackson Hole and nobody knows about Crestone. From about 1910 until probably the 1960s, Crestone was a very quiet little place. Crestone was a very quiet little place. We have no traffic light and no McDonald's here. Crestone remained after the mines busted because we had the ranch, and the ranch employed a lot of people. The gold deposits down here are in what they call lugs, which are huge deposits. You can mine out a lug for 10 years, but when it's gone, it's gone.

This town almost became a ghost town a second time. I was just plotting this trend saying, in 20 years, there's not going to be anybody left in this town. But after 2012, when was marijuana legalized? After 2013, young people started moving to this town. So now we're in the Green Revolution. People have disappeared here before. Here, I'll tell you this.

This is something unique to Christown. If you walk around in the woods up here, this pinyon juniper forest, if you walk around enough, you will find abandoned campsites. The tent will be there. The sleeping bag will be in the tent. It'll look like it's been there for several years because the animals have been into it. The sun has faded it. It's been torn by the wind.

The cooking stuff is there. It looks like a person was camped out in the woods by themselves informally, not a campground, and just walked away from it and never came back. I've never seen that anywhere else in Colorado. And I've been in the mountains a lot. You know, I spent my whole 20s in the mountains climbing. They come here and then something calls them away and they

just walk away. They walk away from everything they own and we don't know where they go. But some of them have been reported missing later by their parents. They walked away up into the mountains and never came out again. When you talk to the National Park Rangers, they say 90% of our people never get more than 100 feet from a paved road. This is Perrin. She's from Colorado. People like to think of park rangers as the park ranger from the 1950s. It's like, come on, folks, let's go look at some bears. Now she works in Yosemite.

I am a park ranger for the National Park Service, and I'm a law enforcement park ranger, and sometimes that'll be referred to as a protection park ranger. Anytime something happens in the back country, which I think is officially considered a mile away from the trailhead, you're dealing with exponential logistics. Because at that point, if you need to get somebody to critical care, you have to get them to basically where you can access them by a vehicle. And if you can't do that, you need to get them somewhere where you can access them in some other way. When I show up with 911, people are like, where's the helicopter? I'm like, no,

like I walked here. You can't walk out with me, you know? And if you can't walk out, we gotta, we're gonna have to carry you out. We don't have helicopters for everything. So you have like a whole host of types of land that people could go out to recreate or do whatever on that basically isn't in an urban landscape. We don't get a ton of missing people where we're like fairly certain they're there, but we can't find them. But it does happen. I know as the park service, we have lots of cold cases, basically starting back since

we started keeping real records of them, of people that walked basically into the woods and didn't come back. I mean, part of the idea of wilderness, it's an area where basically people do not remain. People we pass through, we don't stay there permanently. But we want these places to be places where you can go and be a little further out there. You know, you're forced to basically make decisions that you don't necessarily have to in the modern world that most people live in. And we want that.

We want people to have those experiences where things are a little more wild. And I think people make the mistake to think that something wild is dangerous. Wilderness is dangerous or hiking is dangerous. And that's not inherently true. I find driving in cities to be much more stressful than spending like two days in the backcountry. National parks, a place like Yosemite where there's entrance booths and there's hotels and you can like rent bikes and go ice skating and all that. Those are areas that are very different than you know like a swath of forest in the middle of Colorado. Lots of different people use those types of land for different

things but if you wanted to basically walk somewhere and disappear there's better types of land to do that on than others. And when I say better, I mean like it's not as easy to disappear somewhere where you're driving through an entrance booth. If you were looking to like escape the crowds, be it because you want to meditate or be it because you're doing something nefarious, it would obviously probably behoove you to go somewhere where it's harder to access and there's less people. Looking for somebody who's died while recreating in the backcountry is a lot different than

looking for somebody who was murdered and hidden in the backcountry. You know, if somebody is hiding a person back there, you're probably not gonna look upon like, hey, here's their purse. You know, that's probably not gonna be back there. You have all sorts of people that are using areas that some people would think are in the middle of nowhere. And just because somebody's been out there

for an extended period of time doesn't actually mean that they just disappear. You know, it doesn't mean that they're not recognizable as this is a human body. But animals, they will clean up a lot. up a lot. The weather in the mountains is pretty extreme. In the winter you have wind chill, you have snow. In the summer you have thunderstorms with lightning. Lightning is a huge danger when you're on mountaintops. Also as you get higher you're more prone to like elevation sickness. There's elk, there's deer, there's bobcats. Yeah, it's beautiful state and there's a reason why people are captivated by it. There's a variety of reasons why people would walk into the woods and not want to be found.

They go into nature to heal. We have people with terminal illnesses that go into nature, and that is where they want to stay. And that's a mindset that I've never had to place myself into, but I've dealt with several people whose plans were basically to come to whatever area to end their lives. They want to do it because they resonate with that space in a way that makes them happy. And for every person that we see

that's kind of just blissed out of their mind, there's like an equal number of people, I think, in that area who's having an extremely emotional experience. For a lot of people, it's probably exactly what they need. Just a chance to kind of let go and see the world through a different set of eyes. It's one of the reasons why I like being a park ranger. Get ready for Las Vegas-style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos.

Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas Strip excitement MGM is famous for. When you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette with our ever-growing library of digital slot games, a large selection of online table games, and signature BetMGM service, there is no better way to bring the excitement and ambience of Las Vegas home to you than with BetMGM Casino. Download the BetMGM Casino app today.

BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. BetMGM.com for Ts and Cs. 19 plus to wager. O-N only. Please play responsibly. IfMGM.com for T's and C's. 19 plus to wager. ON only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600

to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to any operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Want visibly glowing skin in 14 days? With Nuole Indulgent Moisture Body Wash, you can lather and glow. The 24-hour moisturizing body wash is infused with vitamin B3 complex and has notes of rose and cherry creme for a rich indulgent experience. Treat your senses with Nuolite

Indulgent Moisture Body Wash. Buy it today at major retailers. If you're used to life in a bigger city, it can be difficult to imagine how you could end up in a place like Crestone. We talked to Michael Beyer. He's originally from Chicago, but his family lives in Crestone now. He spent a lot of his 20s there and in the nearby town of Salida, a big change from the city where he grew up. It's hard to live here and not have a connection with nature. The reason I love living here is because it's just in your face wherever you are. My way of connecting with it was dirt biking.

I would just take off on trails going north and south of town, you know, just trying to get lost in the woods, basically. It's like this kind of end-of-the-road community of really interesting people set in this beautiful mountain town. It's kind of a mixture because it's only been in the last 30, 40 years that these religious retreat centers have moved in, and most of it, you know, less time than that. So before that

you had kind of these old Colorado ranchers, much more rural conservative crowd. These kind of more liberal minded people started moving into town and you still have this interesting juxtaposition between the two of like the original people that were here and then the people that have moved here. I think a lot of people are solitary here. There's a lot of like hermits. I noticed that when I was working at the market, you know, people would come in a grocery shop and you'd get the impression that you were the one interaction

that they'd have with another human like that day or that week. You see people that are just kind of like in their own world. There's way more job opportunities in the cities, but you have to be, you know, you have to be creative around here. Because it's so isolated, you can easily spend more time alone here. Like it'll kind of either put you in your own head or if you want to get involved in the community, you can, but it's an intense community too. Either way, it can be really intense for people. And so I've known a lot of people that just don't fit in here. But the people

that live here and that have made it home, there's no other place that they want to be. One of those people is Christopher Long. He's a palm reader, among other things. He came here when he was in his mid-twenties because of that sacred connection to nature that seems to draw so many to Crestone. I lived up in the mountains for about a year. I wanted to live up in the woods

and that was my wish to like be up there and I came here when I was what 24, 25. Kind of involved in the Native American church and started going to Sundance and sweat lodges and yeah and then I became a road man and became a Uwipi man. Probably about 40 Uwipi men in the world. So I'm one of 40 people that is able to do this ceremony. Here in Creston? Yeah. What's the name of the church?

It's called the Singing Stone. Singing Stone. Yeah. So I'm part Choctaw. I went to a bilingual school, Choctaw, an English school in Oklahoma. So I was exposed to Native culture that way through my family. I'm really all for religious freedom. Because some people will be like, well, you're not full blood.

You shouldn't be doing that. Well, you know, I did the work for it, you know. Some of these ceremonies are severe, very severe. Going without food and water for four days and even being staked to the ground through my arms and legs or hanging from a pit from my chest and from my back in there. And I say this too with humility too, you know. I'm not bragging or anything. I'm just saying that I received all of that by doing some severe stuff, you know.

When we go to a Sundance, it's on the reservation in South Dakota, there's like two or three native leaders out there and everyone else is white or black or Chinese or something. Or from other countries, you know, there'll be like 35% of them from Germany and Italy, Spain and France. It's all about being at the ceremony. The spiritual leaders on the reservation, they're not prejudiced. They see somebody who's like has a knack for spirituality, oh good, you know. There was a guy yesterday, he said, well I would come to your ceremonies but I only deal with full bloods. I'm thinking to myself, well 90% of them are

Catholic, you know, and that's kind of like saying, well, you know, I would never confess my sins to a Catholic priest unless he was Italian, you know, which makes no sense because Jesus was Jewish and it all got mixed up right away. Jesus was Jewish and it all got mixed up right away. But I do feel bad that there isn't like this established thing for native peoples here, for native culture. Because there's Tibetan culture and there's like the Christian culture, there's a Hindu culture, and there's all these other cultures and they're all from other countries and the one that's here is like not really represented. Kind of shameful because very ceremonies that we practice here are the ones that were

done here for so long. But one of about 300 people that has a prescription license for peyote. So I'm registered with the DEA and the Department of Narcotics and all that. So I have a prescription license like a doctor or a pharmacist. And so we do peyote ceremonies, and then we do Vision Quest out here and different things like that. Hearing about Christopher's experience with the Native American church was inspiring, and so were his views on religious freedom.

But truth be told, we'd initially sought out Christopher for his palm reading abilities. Probably one of the best palmists in the world. It's real competitive in India and Pakistan and stuff, but I'm real popular over there. Okay, so I can see you react very quickly with your mind. Christopher read my palm. It was the first time I'd ever done anything like that. And I can truly say, his assessment of my life thus far was strangely accurate. Your own plans, your own ideas, you can be very headstrong. And yeah, and so you're also

very intuitive with your mind. And yeah, everything has significance. Like looking at this table, you know, I can see there's patterns and designs. We're all around the same table and I might see this tree on one side and you might see the star and you might see something else. Is this still your card? Yeah, yeah, that's still my phone number. Okay. Do you ever remember people's palms you've read? No, I read a lot of palms. I found this.

Do you know there was a girl that went missing here two years ago? Yeah. The family gave us a box of her pictures. I found this in her box. Wow. We were wondering if you'd ever read her palm. I just guess you never got the chance. It seemed like something she planned on. Yeah.

Yeah, I think she had, like, dreadlocks, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I might have. I don't know. I don't recall ever meeting her. You know, I think you guys would have more of a chance to get to the bottom of some of it than the cops around here. I know what's happened in the past with the small town and police and drug dealers or drug manufacturers.

Well, because I had a meth lab next to my house for about three years. And they wouldn't do a thing about it. And it was clearly a meth lab. Because these guys are just like wandering around, walking into my house in the middle of the night. Yeah, there's a lab over there. But that was the previous sheriff. But some of those guys are the previous sheriff. But some of those guys are the same people.

They're distracted anyway. They've got their own things going on. But yeah, I think just talking around to people, I think you get more of an idea of what really happened. Before leaving, Christopher gave us a little bit more background on Crestone's land. This is a big burial ground. There's like bones everywhere. People were buried here from Tijuana and all the way. They even

found a grave, a Mayan grave here. I talked to elders in the Navajo Res and that said that they collect herbs here and have been collecting herbs here for thousands of years for certain ceremonies. Also, all the way in Tijuana, Mexico, hanging out with those Indians out there.

They had records of coming up here. And the evidence is here, too, because there's caches of shells that people offered here. If you look like in the ant hills you'll find little chips of arrowheads and also grinding stones. It was mainly the Utes that lived here year-round at the hot springs. They had like thatched houses over the hot springs and stuff. But thousands of different people would come through to pick the piñon nuts and to meditate and pray. And also practically because it's cool up here. So everybody from New Mexico and Arizona, Sonora Desert, and even into California would come all the way up here and spend the hot time of the summer and then come back down.

Yeah, and that's like that Hopi, Pueblo, Zuni, Arapaho, the other youth bands, and who knows who else. But, yeah. There was the migration routes, and this was the eastern mountain, so people would come here for burial, and they would come here for meditation and prayer. So they would do vision quests, like you see on the movies where you know the tribe is moving and grandma's like too old and so she's going to stay behind and so they would do a vision quest ceremony they would make this like sequestered area where she would sit and then just not eat or drink until she died and And that's one of the things they would do here. And so people would come here from all over the United States to do that, to die here.

We'll see you next time. fries pocket and double stack taco. Discover the new cravings value menu only at Taco Bell. Order now at TacoBell.ca or your closest store. Paulette is involved with the Crestone End of Life Project. It really is like Death Valley here, but in a good way. I think it seems like there's a lot of focus on death with our death cafes and Cresto and End of Life, but it's very positive. I asked her to explain what they offer. The only legal non-denominational open-air cremation. I fell into it very naturally. I fell into it very naturally. Sometimes things just fall into place so easily that you feel like this is your destiny.

It's so effortless. Like, I just showed up at a death cafe meeting, and then they said, Oh, we're having a meeting for Christ on End of Life if you'd like to come next week. So I said, Oh, okay. and End of Life if you'd like to come next week. So I said, oh, okay. Every place was too big, except Cresto. We're so small. You know, one bank, one liquor store, one of everything. But we have everything we need, except Taco Bell. But there's so much to do. It's like a spiritual playground here.

Once or twice a year they'll do a death cafe, and those are well attended. People sit around in subgroups talking about death, all aspects. What they fear about death, how they're embracing death, all subjects about death. People are embracing death. Our society is embracing death more in this age. I think we're a template for the rest of the world and the rest of the country. You know, we're like the first or something and I think it's going to grow. It's very simple, but that makes it even more beautiful.

The smoke is purifying, it's sacred, because the Native Americans used to do open air cremation. And so what I do is I do keep the flame, the coals built up when they're about to bring in the body and the procession, when I hear the dong, then I start putting juniper on it so that as they walk in, it's a beautiful smell. And then I fan them to make it fire again because I need to have a flame so that they can light the torches. But everything runs so smoothly. the torches, but everything runs so smoothly. It's like a symphony, just really each one is special

and different, like I said, it's something you have to experience. The first time I did it, this woman walked up to me and she said, grandmother fire. And I said, oh, is that what you call it? You know, I thought she was calling the fire and the whole censor thing. I thought that was the term, Grandmother Fire. She said, no, not that, you. That's how I see you as Grandmother Fire. And sometimes when I cry it's just I can't help. I'm such an empath. I'm crying so much. I'm crying more than anyone you know. But it's very silent you know but I can't help the tears from falling because I can sense the energy and if it's a very sad energy, they just fall.

We cry for those who can't. You know, experience that grief but turn it into something creative to get through it and to heal from it because if you don't, you keep on experiencing that grief. You know, people are so appreciative of the service that we provide. People say, oh, do you do anything special? Or, you know, when you light the fire, this and that is, but it's more, I think I try to keep my energy pure the day before I'll fill my baskets and get them ready and I still keep that pure intention.

I got, this is, we got this basket from Africa. This basket I got from our annual yard sale. The Buddhist nun brought it and I happened to be volunteering to put out stuff and she put it down and I grabbed it. I like it, it has nice energy. These are juniper boughs and that's handed out to everyone who comes in.

I like to get the wood that's cool, like see how this is so natural, like that, and it looks pretty when you have fire coming off of it. It's visually good. And I try to do things with intention, and I think people notice that. This is frankincense. They're sacred scents. They purify, heal, and I'll let them fall or I'll play with my fire. And basically what I do the whole three hours or so is just smoke it.

And basically what I do the whole three hours or so is just smoke it and then when the smoke kind of starts to, I fan real hard and then it blows up again and then once I let it burn just to make the coals hot, then I layer it, put two Palo Santo chips there and then I sprinkle it. I come home smelling really strong. We keep like a calm and almost like an invisibility. I think we all love what we do. You know, I think that's what makes it special is we see the value in the service that we provide and we feel fortunate to be in that position to provide that service almost as if we were chosen.

We just have a really awesome thing going on here. It's a very special, I always tell my husband, oh I can't wait. He's like, yes you can. Because it's hard not to picture this is going to be me someday. It's not the end, it's just a passing. I think we do a great job. I know we do a great job. Yeah. Yeah. Up and Vanished is an investigative podcast told weekly, produced for Tenderfoot TV by Payne Lindsay, Mike Rooney, and me, Meredith Stedman, with new episodes every Monday. Executive producers Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright. Additional production by Resonate Recordings, as well as Mason Lindsay, Rob Ricotta, and Christina Dana. Our intern is Hallie Bidal.

Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set. Our theme song is Ophelia, performed by Ezra Rose. Our cover art is by Trevor Eiler. Special thanks to the team at Cadence 13. Visit us on social media via at Up and Vanished, or you can visit our website, upandvanished.com, where you can join in on our discussion board. If you're enjoying Up and Vanished, tell a friend, family member, or co-worker about it. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening.

Also, Michael Beyer from this episode works at Western Mountain Real Estate in the Salida and Crestone area. If you too are looking for a deeper connection with nature, you can reach him at michaelb at westernmtn.com. I started dating a girl who was connected with a Native American church here, and that's how I got introduced to sweat lodges. Is this the Singing Stone?

The Singing Stone, yes. We met Christopher Long. Yeah, he's the medicine man. I did a couple peyote ceremonies. It's not like a recreational drug by any means. It's medicine and it's used to like help you heal through things that you're working with. So you get sick and they call it getting well when you throw up. I ended up getting a tattoo that was inspired by a peyote ceremony. It's a ridiculous story.

Back in 2009, the summer of 2009, I was invited to this peyote ceremony. All night, you're in a teepee, lots of like drums and singing, and like, I remember at one point during that ceremony I like had my eyes closed I think I was laying down with my eyes closed just seeing some intense stuff going on and I saw my back with a tattoo on it like right at this one spot on my back in my head I was like oh that's where I'm getting the tattoo and then the next morning after the, we left the teepee, and I went and took a pee in the woods.

And I was looking at it, and I was like, oh my gosh, that's something in it. And I went back and I took a picture of it, and I redrew it and decided that that was what I was going to get tattooed on my back. And so I did. And I'll show you the picture because I've got it in here. I can't tell you what it is because there's no meaning to it really. But... I have to see this one. That's what I drew from it.

And I'm happy I got it where I did because, you know, I don't have to look at it every day. I'll forget that it's there for like months at a time. But, yeah. to look at it every day. I'll forget that it's there for months at a time. But, yeah.