[Libre started as an artists’ community founded on 360 rocky acres in the Huerfano Valley of Southern Colorado in in the spring of 1968;  Forty six years later there are still nine occupied houses, thirteen members, and various recurring guests, of which I am one, and have been since 1987.]

After two days on highways and motel carpets the dogs were definitely happy to have arrived…as were we

Following her month spent fruitlessly dismantling the lumber pile at Wall Spring in pursuit of bunnies Aguilar, dog of demented determination, was delighted to discover a convenient cache of rodents sheltering down the meadow in the ruins of one of Linda’s sculptures, although since they were sheltering in three inch steel pipes this proved to be something of a challenge.  The jury is still out on whether her teeth will outlast her obsession…

The porch here faces south across the valley of the Huerfano River to the Huajatollas above La Veta, a good spot for dinners if it isn’t raining, which for the last several years, it wasn’t…this July is another story, the local drought fortuitously broken after a very dry winter…

From my studio the Huajas remain conspicuous,

Mornings we walk Dry Creek, which lately isn’t, up into the forest, which I find hard to photograph, but, nonetheless…

 

Neighbors’ organic gardens’ early harvests and views of Linda’s organic architecture, begun in 1978 and added to sporadically from 1987 onwards…

Meanwhile we’ve been here just ten days, with two dinner parties in, one away and trips to town small and larger [like Pueblo] to interrupt the flow, but the ‘vacation destination’ aspect, now that we’ve finished the bear repair to the outside of the guest cabin, is about to kick in [cabin after bear; cabin after repair] as we head into a week of serial overnight visitors, some with dogs, some unknown…the cabino armored up just in time…

 

The Pueblo interruption, one of us rather diminished from that second dinner party, consisted of  whirlwind tours of Target, fruitless searches of thrift stores, long nearly pointless hallucinatory wanderings through Lowe’s vast aisles [where they, too, no longer sell the D-con,  nor insulation in manageable amounts for the bear repair, though we did bite the bullet on a whole roll of tarpaper], food shoppings, post office droppings, and lunch at Jorge’s Sombrero.  L. was devastated to find the new menu had no Tacos de Camarones…a mistake, the waitress said,  raising L’s spirits considerably.  Several cups of coffee before and during my excellent pork and avocado burritos proved restorative, as well and we were home, slipping in mud from a midday shower, by 2:30, the only picture saved from the day was of ambiguous graffiti in Jorge’s parking lot, a sort of Brice Marden avant le lettre thing had he done such things back in the day;

Midday and other showers persisted well into the beginning of our second week and unusually violent nighttime electrical storms – with torrential onslaughts of hail [or maybe frozen grapefruits hurled against the stovepipe] – punctuating attempts to sleep…at one point, stumbling gingerly around in the dark closing windows and unplugging computers i managed to hook my toe under an errant sculpture, fracturing it in a mild if painful way, but the long-absent downpours were welcome despite

The muds came, the woods were walked, and Dean, having survived the Sundance as well as, earlier, extreme medical adventures since we’d seen him last October, was in fine fettle and making endless new paintings in the dome;

Dean’s meadow with Linda’s “Atlas” [ca. 1987]and Mt. Blanca in the distance…

Linda with Dean Fleming, in front of the dome they built in 1968, and Lefty, found in a coyote trap on the Owyhee Desert, October 2002

Lefty under one of dean’s bonsai Russian olives, a long way from the Owyhee

Soon; historic houses of Libre!

Mushrooms!

maybe…

 

M