Car Trip/Pilgrimage to Southern Colorado

Pilgrimage: in which I drive hundreds of miles into a pastoral land to visit a prayer labyrinth, and search for spiritual answers on how to live, and, perhaps, the meaning of life.

There are various spiritual journeys that one could go on, and among these the pilgrimage has a long history. Pilgrimage is usually tied to a specific prayer intention or something you want help with, and consists of traveling, often in a slightly uncomfortable way, to a faraway spot where prayers can be offered and perhaps even guidance sought. There was something of that in my trip to California in 2024.

But some trips have to be accomplished on a single day. Thus it was that on a recent Saturday, with a friend as company, I traveled to Southern Colorado (the San Luis Valley to be exact) to visit the Oldest Church in Colorado which offers a prayer labyrinth based on the mysteries of rosary. 

What is a labyrinth you ask? The term goes back to Greek mythology, to the labyrinth King Minos built for the Minotaur. This labyrinth was a maze in which the Minotaur, a monster half bull and half man, was confined underground. Sacrificial victims were introduced into the labyrinth, where they were unable to find their way out and had to wander aimlessly until captured and eaten 

Mythologically speaking, this cycle continued until broken by the hero Theseus who, by using a spool of thread and the help of Minos’ daughter, found his way through the labyrinth, killed the Minotaur, and then got back out.

How the labyrinth evolved from this into a prayer exercise isn’t clear to me, but by the medieval days, during the construction of Gothic cathedrals like Chartres in northern France, labyrinth-type patterns were built into cathedral floors. Guide books of the time suggest that these labyrinths were slowly walked, perhaps as a substitute for doing an actual pilgrimage from one city to another.

In the 20th century, labyrinth walking gained in popularity as a prayer and meditation practice, and now there are labyrinths in many places and according to many faiths. The metaphor in which life itself is a labyrinth is perhaps operative.

My labyrinth pilgrimage begins

Back to the labyrinth in Southern Colorado. It so happened that late in the summer, I had a prayer intention that seemed quite important, and given my interest in labyrinths in general, and in prayer labyrinths in particular, this seemed like an opportunity to take a long car trip, a quest, a journey of reflection.

Planning the Journey 

The drive seemed likely to take about 6 hours each way and so I decided that we would make a couple of stops at interesting places which would break up the monotony. 

And perhaps because on the Monday after this trip I was going to have to return to work, I resorted to the use of a website called Atlas Obscura on which a person can find various unusual attractions in places all over the world, some thousands altogether, and quite a few in Colorado. 

Denver and the Marijuana Church

Using Atlas Obscura I discovered the International Church of Cannabis, in Washington Park West, that the website said had tours hourly (at 20 past the hour, naturally). I planned to try to be there for a quick tour of the church. 

The fact is, this church building was not constructed by the cannabis devotees but rather by the Lutherans, a denomination which has seen a drastic decline in  membership, losing people to the Bible churches and those who, when asked about the religious faith, check the box that says “no religion.” 

This old Lutheran church has apparently been revitalized by those who smoke weed, and from the review I read, the Cannabis Church painted the inside with rainbows and has a family friendly laser light show in there.

Unfortunately when we got there, just before 10 am, a sign said the church was open starting at noon on Saturday. We were two hours too early to get inside so we took a picture of the outside. I thought, you know, cannabis smokers wear life lightly. They get up late.

We decided we would come back and look for them later, on another day, when they were open, and take their tour then.

It did look very cool.

 

We Stop and Visit the Bardo

At that point it was coffee time so I turned my attention to a web search: “coffee shop near me.” This turned up several possibilities and we chose, on the basis of its name, the Bardo Coffee House on Broadway two blocks away.

The bardo, you know, according to Tibetan Buddhism, is a kind of way-station between death and rebirth, where souls have to hang out while they wait for a new body to become available. It seems like a particularly appropriate name for a coffee shop, where people are often “killing time.” 

This kicky little slot in a building of Victorian details offers a range of coffees, including espresso drinks and juices and some sandwiches and sweets. We  had something called a ham and cheese croissant which had been baked in a muffin tin and was covered with Everything Bagel seasoning. Slightly spicy and very buttery, it was unquestionably good. 

In the Bardo Coffee Shop, you sit at a table in the back and look around and see photograph art of Denver scenes and people, like one of a man with tattooed face, and a chalk drawing of a woman drinking coffee. Sitting around the many tables, because the place was busy, were people of Denver. You know, the ones with the slightly unusual clothes. Wearing a bright red motorcycle jacket, or pants with patches upon patches upon patches, or a girl wearing nothing but a halter top and some short shorts with a word on the back which said “Saint–Something,” sitting next to a young man with the round and simple features, expression and body of a roly-poly Ken. There was a guy with a scraggly beard and those gauge earrings extending his earlobes, and he was with another guy who wore granny spectacles and had meticulously plucked eyebrows. There were two ladies sitting behind us with cornrow braids,  the kind of braids you can’t get in Fort Collins and Greeley, so I’ve heard. These people were careful about their appearance.

Denver.

Coffee was good, though you shouldn’t expect to get out of Bardo Coffee House without paying a full retail price. It’s probably a worthwhile stop just for the people watching. But the coffee is good too.

Heading out for Colorado Springs 

We got back on the freeway and I started to navigate towards our next stop.

On the way to Colorado Springs I’d identified another somewhat spiritual site, the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun. This is apparently in the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo but I had heard that the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo was free to get into and I assumed there would be no problem with us driving in and seeing the shrine without looking at the animals.

Unfortunately I found out that you can’t get into Zoo without one of those deeply despised timed entry passes. Naturally the only timed entry pass you could get for the day we were driving was 3:00 p.m. Anyway admission wasn’t free, it was almost $30 a person, so I announced that the Shrine of the Sun was off the itinerary. 

The trip was beginning to feel like a joke, and my research using Atlas Obscura seemed to have been more than somewhat ineffectual, but nevertheless we took off for Pueblo in good spirits. 

It was then that the back window failed. This family has long had a tradition of being the last owner of every car we drive and the Toyota Highlander was no exception. This actually is my son’s car. I had borrowed it because it still has air conditioning, something which my car lacks. But having air conditioning isn’t much help when the back window suddenly goes down of its own accord and refuses to stay up. 

My friend and I looked at each other. Could we really make it for 10 more hours driving in this car with the window open at freeway speeds? With the window open you couldn’t hear anything.

“We need duct tape,” I said. A great idea, my friend replied. Mr Google was there to help us and thanks to the query “hardware store near me” we got to Lowe’s in only about 3 miles. From there it only took 5 minutes to buy some duct tape and tape the window shut. 

Just solve the problem for the moment, that’s how I travel. I didn’t know what my son the mechanic would think of putting duct tape on his car but I decided not to call him. Don’t ask, don’t tell, you know?

We came out of Denver into the barrens that lead through Castle Rock to the sound of Pinball Wizard by The Who and I thought about Tommy in this rock opera. He plays pinball in the spirit, deaf dumb and blind but he knows stuff there’s no way he should know, like a prophet.  

A motorcycle roars beside and then beyond us, travels off in another direction,  and the Who sings “No Doctor I found can cure the boy.” I think about how people want to be cured, it’s true that’s a big part of the gospels, curing people. But most of the cures are spiritual not physical in this day and age.

Pueblo

And we were on our way to Pueblo. It was decided that we needed to go to lunch since it was now around one and so I began to search for a restaurant on my phone. The request had gone out for a quirky unusual place and I decided I wanted Mexican food so we decided on Cactus Flower. We got there around 2:00 on a Saturday and the place was packed … I wasn’t sure we could get a table. But a smiling young woman wearing a t-shirt with a Day of the Dead skull on the back and the words “Muriendo para comida Mexicana” (in English, dying for Mexican food) smiled and showed us to a booth by the window! I took a picture of the ceiling and walls decorated with various Mexican restaurant paraphernalia but the most interesting part of this restaurant was their green chili. I had read that every restaurant in Pueblo, including plenty that weren’t actually Mexican, had green chili in them and this particular plate combined the green chili with fried potatoes rice and beans and of course cheese. The waitress smilingly answered my question about adjustments for spiciness: they have mild medium, spicy, and scorching. I chose mild.

I thought it was the best food I’d had in weeks although I wondered if perhaps I was just very hungry. But now three days later, I think about those fried potatoes. A whole pile of them, sliced like potato chips and fried and salted, crispy outside tender inside … ah the salt and chili. One has to have some regard for such good food. The people in the restaurant were Puebloans, very practical, well-fed people who know about things like pickup trucks and steel. One got the impression there were plenty of good places to get lunch in this town and this was one of the best.

Unfortunately by the time we got out of there we were pushing our luck to get to our destination, the Church of our Lady of Guadalupe in Conejos, before the labyrinth closed at 6. 

We set off from Pueblo on interstate 25, taking the exit for Highway 160 at Walsenburg. I had originally meant to have lunch there, at a positively reviewed place called Sipsters. We drove through the revitalized downtown and past a pizza place advertised as “last pizza until Alamosa” and weaved around the railroad tracks and drove out on 160, past La Veta and up towards the pass. 

In this land of fields and mountains and only a few trees it’s impossible not to talk and there’s little to distract you from anything that might be important. 

Mountains rise behind the fields and remind you of eternal things, a good backdrop for a spiritual journey but I was wondering if God was really going to tell me anything for making all this traveling and I wondered if I was just being self indulgent and going on this journey collecting unusual sites and unusual people and running away from my house for a day. 

The road rose slowly to the pass. It was one of those where I think I’m going down but we’re actually going up. I hadn’t known there was a pass on the journey but soon we saw the snow fences beside the road and I realized that in winter they might even close this place. The pass was undramatic and if you weren’t watching for it you could miss it. We started to sending and I noticed a train track which wound along the creek below. 

I got a couple of pictures but we were watching the time as miles rolled by, hoping to make it to the church before they closed. 

Alamosa 30 miles, a sign said. Westward ho. I looked at the gas gauge. We would make it to Alamosa but barely. 

This is the biggest town around, 10,000 people. They have a more than one real gas station with multiple pumps and a snack shop. Pull in, fill up, pull out. Phone says, take Highway 285, Antonito, 26 minutes. 

To get there, you drive through a country of tiny farms. People build buildings out of a lot of stuff down here. You can see log cabins and pole buildings and mobile homes and Quonset huts and there’s fences of every description, small stretches of white post, barbed wire, pig fence. Horses and cattle inside the fences, in small pastures beside the road and in small groups. It would seem to me that this is the land of deeply rooted people. The cattle seemed unusually healthy and the horses… they’re the very type someone would want to ride, especially a palomino that I saw standing with a roan in a pasture next to what looked like a long, low shedrow milking barn.

We came to the Conejos River which looked more like a creek to me but then all of the rivers in Colorado seem like creeks. Compare them with the Sacramento where I grew up in California! 

Trees hang over in the rocks lining the riverbed, rocks about the size of cobblestones, and a man is stepping along the river with a pole for fishing in his hand.

“Master, we fished all night and caught nothing …” Luke 5.5

Despite our late arrival, the tension in the air has left. People have been living here for a long long time. The feeling of urgency that was everywhere in Denver is gone. Somehow things will be all right.

We get to a place where there’s roadwork and men in orange vests and pylons and the cars all have to stop and my friend says “oh no oh no” but I know it’s going to be okay, and sure enough, no sooner have we stopped, but then we get to go again on the road. They’ve cut it down to one lane now because the eastern one is closed and 100 yards after that we see the sign I read about on the internet, which says the Oldest Church in Colorado, turn right. 

The labyrinth itself — El Sanctuario de los Pobledores

There it is, the brick church building and beside it the labyrinth with a big gate, still open at 5:35, and it’s absolutely brand new, just finished in the last year. I’ve got 25 minutes to talk to God and ask him my questions.

This is not only the oldest church in Colorado, it is the oldest settlement, once part of the place history books call “New Spain,” but culturally linked most closely with Mexico. Mexican heritage Catholicism — the Catholicism that oversaw my foundation in the faith in California –spoken here.

The labyrinth is called “El Sanctuario de los Pobledores,” the sanctuary of the settlers.

Out in front of the labyrinth is a painted statue of Jesus of the Sacred Heart. There’s a flame on his chest, and he wears a red sash and his hair is brown. It’s something only Catholics could really understand but the point is, Jesus’ heart is on fire with love for you. That’s the iconography. That’s what it means.

And we go in. We do the whole labyrinth. It takes all the time there is left. There are four different rosary paths, the joyful mysteries, the sorrowful, the luminous, the glorious. And there are four quadrants of the labyrinth and for each  mystery there’s a bronze sculpture plaque. We stop at each to say a single prayer. The ones I remember: The finding Jesus in the temple, the Baptism of Jesus, The Garden of Gethsemane, the Assumption. And below every plaque are the names of the donors. And what do I find but names of families and I find lists of children: eight children in one family 12 in another and I think of the faith of these people in this simple place bringing all those children into the world. 

You might think these people have a beautiful life here in this pastoral valley but as I look at the list of names I imagined the little children in the simple houses that I saw on the way in here and I think not only of the incredible joy that comes with a large family but also of the bravery of such people who have to be aware of the losses that can come. Because when you’ve got that many people things can go wrong. And then there’s all the work.

Perhaps that’s why so many people have small families because if you just have two kids you can hope that everything will go well. If you have 10 children you know it’s going to be tough. There is no other way, just the work alone is overwhelming, just keeping that many kids in their basic needs, and then you have to remember we’re dealing with human beings and all their feelings.

This is what I find in the labyrinth. I find people, family and this is what I see in the San Luis Valley, family, simplicity, history. 

When we drive away there is a row of American flags on either side of the road that leads to the church and I stop to look at the flags. Each flag has a plaque with a name and there are dozens, maybe two or three hundred of the plaques, I don’t know …I stop to look at the names and see that each has the name of a serviceman and the name of a war: World War II, and World War I are the two I looked at, but no dates.

Nor can I stay very long because just then two large whitish labs or golden retrievers look at me from a house sitting well back behind the row of flags and they begin to come closer and I notice that they’re barking. I realize that this avenue is right next to someone’s property. These dogs think I’m too close so I turn to get in the car. I do but the dogs are not satisfied; and as we pull away, they chase us, barking. 

Happy Dogs

Crazy dogs! I take a picture. I know what they’re doing. Country dogs come and bark at visitors to announce that they’re here. Having such dogs is a way of keeping an eye on your place if you live in the country. It’s an old tradition, one that works out differently in the city where people pass by all the time and barking dogs are just irritating, but if you have a small farm you might not be in the house. You might need to know that someone is visiting. So barking here serves the purpose.

These are country dogs defending their place and doing their job. Chasing people who decide to leave, of course, is recreational.

I’m still looking for some kind of answer to my question. But since all I’ve prayed for was knowledge of what God would want me to do …I may not get an answer at all. 

Maybe I’m already doing what God would want me to do.

As we’re leaving town (in town is only about a dozen blocks long) a man is walking along the side of the road, pulling a suitcase, a small one with wheels. At first I think he’s a homeless person but then as I look at him I think no. His hair is too short and well cut. His clothes are too neat. He could be a native son traveling from far away, coming home. 

Why he’s on foot I’m not sure. I look up “bus service” to see if there’s a bus stop in Antonito, but in fact all they have is Dial-a-Ride via Mountain Valley Transit, operating only on Mondays and Fridays. In the days afterward the image of the man walking along the side of the road crossing to a side street with purpose stays with me. The mystery of who he was remains.

We decide that we have to get coffee and now we’re pulling away from Antonito on Highway 285, driving past the same small farms and the same small buildings and the horses and the cattle we went past an hour ago. It’s almost 7:00. 

Getting coffee in a place as small as Alamosa is pretty unlikely this late in the day but we need coffee so we can make the long drive back. I go back to Google and I say “coffee near me open now.” There’s more than one place that says it’s open now but one of them is open until 11:00 pm and that just seems too much to believe. I have to see this place. 

It’s called 7 Brew and so we drive a little bit out of our way, maybe a quarter mile, and pull up at a coffee barn with a neon ringed roof and a drive-thru lane. We park outside and there’s a table in front and a menu and what is on it? It’s a place with all the drinks. It’s got coffee, it’s got tea, it’s got shakes, it’s got energy drinks, juices, smoothies. I don’t know what all else …I took a picture of the menu. 

Around the corner of a somewhat battered looking Subway next door comes a cholo dude and he’s got a vape and tattoos on his neck.  He comes and sits at the metal picnic table and a girl with long black hair and false eyelashes, very pretty, comes out through a sliding door and she asks him what he wants.  He asks for water and she hospitably gets it. 

Next she takes our order and is as nice as you please. It was $9 for two drinks but the mocha coffee was perfect. They even had decaf Americano at that late hour. And they served it with liquid cane sugar. 

We turned around to begin driving back up Highway 160 towards La Veta Pass and crossed into Blanca, past the Blanca Railroad Park and Lu’s Blanca Cafe ( breakfast lunch and dinner) which has a  battered exterior, but unlike some other businesses there, is open, and crossed a vast sagebrush plain with Blanca Peak (4th highest of Colorado’s 14ers, at 14,345 feet) and Great Sand dune National Park to the north, and on the right, to the South, a vast plateau dotted at wide intervals with small simple houses, mobile homes, bungalows, maybe even a shipping container or two, it’s hard to see. They stand alone at a distance from each other, often with no trees in the yard, a mile apart perhaps at times and far beyond them, the Spanish Peaks are blue gray. It’s amazing.

The rest of the drive is taken up with such matters as listening to music and sleeping and driving down the road which becomes anonymous, because it gets dark and after that you can’t see anymore, there’s nothing but yellow and white lights with the very occasional blue, red, and green, and most of the time there’s not even that. 

This part of the drive is uneventful except for some very funny jokes about the names of gas stations, including the Loaf and Jug.

A Reflection

At night after the car is parked I lie down, still wondering what the answer is and I go to sleep and I have a dream. I think I see the statue with the sacred heart of Jesus from the labyrinth, but it has become small and it’s sitting in the bottom of a drawer. The white background is there, like a ceramic medal, but Jesus is alive. He looks like a real person, He moves, only He’s small because He’s got to fit in the drawer and it’s one of those dreams which just prints on your mind and you can see it after you wake up. It’s clear as day. His red scarf, His brown hair, and His face which is alive.

But He didn’t tell me anything.

In the morning my son noticed the duct tape on his car and said “What is this? What made you think that taping up the car was a good idea?” I explained how much noise the open window was making and how in the short time, we couldn’t stop for repairs, and I think he was only half convinced.

Then he asked me “How long did you spend driving to see the labyrinth?”

Twelve hours.

“Twelve hours for half an hour actually doing it, that’s ridiculous!”

I thought about that while outside, working on the duct tape. I managed to clean it all off, using fingernail polish remover. Ingenuity! This is how you save $500 a month in new car payments. 

My son’s criticism notwithstanding, I still was glad we went on the pilgrimage. The things we had seen were now living in my mind, in particular the wide plain with all the small houses. The young man dragging the rolling suitcase. The young waitress at 7 Brew, and Mount Blanca presiding over it all. And at the very farthest point, the labyrinth itself with many bronze plaques.

It was too far to drive, really, but sometimes you have to go too far. The very point of making a pilgrimage is to do something in a way that is time consuming, inefficient.

I could have planned the trip for two days I suppose, if I had wanted to see all the things I had listed, including the Shrine of the Sun, and the International Church of Cannabis, not to mention an abandoned hover train that was in Pueblo and the Sasquatch Station in Bailey. 

But no.

The spiritual journey is not actually meant to be a “good” use of your time unless you’re metaphysically measuring. You go because you really want to, because you need answers. 

Perhaps then I had my answer, in there in my dream, which I choose to believe told me that I am not alone. The pilgrimage itself tells me that we are on the road, we can trust ourselves, and to keep going. The plaques at the labyrinth tell me of the central importance of faith and family in human existence.

The road has reasons which reason doesn’t understand. And what is life except traveling forward? 

The Rock Opera Tommy

We had listened to the rock opera Tommy and I decided to listen to it again. 

It’s a complicated story, probably worthy of another post, but there are certain leitmotifs in the soundtrack that I’ve known since I was a teenager… such as when Tommy sings:

“See me, hear me, touch me, heal me.”

I reflect that this is why we go on pilgrimage. We want to be healed, and we don’t know how. Tommy asks, “See me,” to ask the universe to notice he is here, similarly “hear me” because he wants God to respond. It’s phrased as a question. Is God there? Seeming to believe in the affirmative Tommy says, “Touch me,” because he wants God to interact and help, and finally “Heal me,” he’s asking to be healed, made spiritually whole, a universal desire. 

If we are healed, like Tommy, we know it. If we aren’t, we keep seeking, knowing the answer is out there. We are on the road. And even if it’s 12 hours, we keep going.

Life itself is a pilgrimage, one step at a time and going forward through time. Answers to our many questions are vague, and the road can be steep, but our drive to learn and know and be healed is persistent. At waystations on the way we find rest and encouragement, with friends who help push us forward. 

We look for some message in the terrain, in all that we see, but find only signs and signals, open to interpretation. Perhaps that’s okay. If there was an answer, maybe we wouldn’t be here anymore. 

As I was writing this blog post tonight, I finished the last paragraph, I closed the app and the phone rang in that second. And although I can’t prove it to anyone, within that moment was the closest thing to an answer for my query that I think I’m going to get. 

Listening to you, I get the music
Gazing at you, I get the heat,
Following you, I climb the mountain,
I get excitement at your feet.
Right behind you, I see the millions,
On you, I see the glory,
From you, I get opinions,
From you, I get the story.”

Tommy, the Rock Opera