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Abstract

/figure>Once, I rode up to the neighboring bat cave with a man who lived and still does, on the property. He used to take people on rides. This one particular ride was a sunset excursion, and I was the only person with him, so it was a quiet lope up the rocky road and onto a narrow rocky trail, about 2 miles upwards to a massive caved-in iron mine shaft. There in that hole, a quarter of a million mostly male short-tailed bats spend the summer. Over a decade ago, the Division of Wildlife took over the site so it’s got safety barriers now.<figure id="d121"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*kBbFxs1Aic7YYNtCftf5lA.jpeg"><figcaption>First trail toward the bat cave (to the right of the rocky outcropping, left of center). Photo by the author.</figcaption></figure><figure id="f291"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*WXfPT8kXCfQqNebEswMZXw.jpeg"><figcaption>View from the bat cave. When the bats fly out, they fly from behind this angle, headed out to the valley below. Photo by the author.</figcaption></figure>Back then, you could walk or ride right up to the edge of the cave and just wait. Back then, folks didn’t need to be instructed to be quiet while waiting. You could even crawl up into holes in the rock around the cave and wait. Now, we wait further from the cave itself behind a fence. There are benches now, but most people stand.When the bats come flying out at dusk, it is an other-worldly experience. You can hear their high-pitched squeal and the darkening sky is filled with thousands of dark bats flying out in their evening search for food. My body vibrates with the rush of wings. You can almost reach up and touch them. Sometimes, one will brush by so close that a person will jump. They just keep coming, and then the flow slows and stops. If you wait a while longer, there might be a couple more smaller out-flights.Watching those bats fly out into the setting valley I’ve sometimes felt like I, too, could fly with them, looking down at those humans with their eyes wide in reverence at the wonders of nature.<figure id="86ac"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*vMjdJlI6T8MDosWKZhgBXQ.jpeg"><figcaption>Bat outflight from the cave to the valley, 2008. The thousands of dots are bats. Photo by the author.</figcaption></figure>The experience of the out-flight was and is a spiritual experience, as, while it’s happening, I no longer can feel anything but the present.Sometimes later at night, bats fly over the pool we call the “party pool.” They sometimes whoosh by heads to get to the water, where they dip for a drink and move on.Another spiritual experience at the hot springs is watching the sunset, which most visitors do, either sitting on the edge of the drop into the valley, or above it, from campsites and primitive cabins. These days, we enjoy walking toward the bat cave, just a short way, and watching the sunset along the trail, stopping always to take the same pictures we’ve taken every single visit. Yet every sunset is its own unique watercolor with reds here, oranges, and yellows there.<figure id="fe1a"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*VvJv1jEOBkw7JzF2k1EVBQ.jpeg"><figcaption>One of many amazing sunsets from our campsite at the hot springs. View from Sangre de Cristo Mountains across the valley to the San Juan Mountains. Photo by the author.</figcaption></figure>Driving south in the San Luis Valley past small towns, and a more spa-like hot spring called Joyful Journey, about 45 minutes south of Valley View, is a town called Crestone. The town is primarily the home of old hippies and spiritual-seekers, at least, those are the folks I know. They have a nice natural grocery and a weekly farmers market in the summer. Alongside the little town is the Baca Grande, which is a land grant. On this land grant are homes and a variety of places of worship. This land, as was

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once true of the hot springs, was Native American land. And, you can feel the sacredness of this land in many spots around Crestone.Winding around through the Baca, friends and I discovered composite rocks that are other-worldly. Multi-colored with shades of red, green, white, and grey, many of these rocks seem to have scenes embedded in them. One looks like the face of a spaceman. That one scared a friend so much that she was afraid that I was bringing it home. She thought it was a bad omen. That rock is still with me many years later.<figure id="6f04"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*SiRrDt9Goevuw7iqA4eMVw.jpeg"><figcaption>A composite rock from the Baca. No, not the spaceman. He’s hiding at the moment, somewhere else in the yard. Photo by the author.</figcaption></figure>The first time we discovered these rocks was while exploring a piece of land on which a Buddhist Temple was being built. Since then, we’ve seen them in other spots around that area. One time a friend and I started a hike in Crestone and kept having to come back down to the car because we’d accumulated too many heavy rocks to walk any further. They now decorate our gardens.To most people, they are just pretty rocks. To me, they are both a beautiful recall of happy visits to the area and also a remembrance of the sense of the humans who traveled through or resided there centuries ago. Yes, a spiritual experience without the need for a building.Moving south on this journey through the northern San Luis Valley, we come to Great Sand Dunes National Park. As others have <a href="https://readmedium.com/magnificent-dunes-and-shimmering-aspens-a68553b2e050">written</a>, this place is stunning.I’ve never successfully climbed the dunes, but it’s fine to just look at them with half-crossed eyes and imagine being alone to watch the sands shift.<figure id="8eb8"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*Tf44rVYUoVi97myonSbe2w.jpeg"><figcaption>Sand Dunes and Medano Creek, July 5, 2015. Photo by the author.</figcaption></figure>Several years ago, we heard that a stream runs there in the Spring, Medano Creek. When it runs, it’s mostly a very shallow moving body of water with ripples and waves that tickle your feet and legs.<figure id="ae76"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*c_JiIbaNQwTN4nUDCNTOUw.jpeg"><figcaption>Medano Creek runs through the dunes and our feet, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado. Photo by the author.</figcaption></figure>The first time I went with my friend, Kari, we excitedly took off our shoes and walked into the water with everyone else who knew about this phenomenon. We felt the waves, which seemed out of place there with the dunes just on the other bank, and looked out to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and hills around us. We felt respect and yes, I’ll use the word awe again. Another spiritual experience in my favorite valley.<a href="https://medium.com/@sondrasmiles1">Sondra Singer</a> is a writer, storyteller, and musician in the U.S. Mountain West. She studied theater, radio & TV, as well as other media including photojournalism. She made her way for decades selling advertising and corporate support in commercial and public radio/TV. Her website is <a href="https://www.sondrasinger.com/">here</a>.I tagged <a href="undefined">Claire Elizabeth Levesque</a>’s <a href="https://readmedium.com/magnificent-dunes-and-shimmering-aspens-a68553b2e050">story</a> about her visit to the Great Sand Dunes within the article. Also, I found <a href="undefined">G.P. Gottlieb</a>’s <a href="https://readmedium.com/street-musicians-of-spain-a2c1fad003a3">story </a>about seeking out street musicians in Spain, as my husband and I are thinking about going there next year.Thanks for the monthly challenge, <a href="undefined">Anne</a>. This was a fun story to write.</article></body>

TRAVEL / SPIRITUALITY

Finding Spirit in Bats, Rocks, Sand, And Hot Springs

The northern part of the San Luis Valley in Colorado is my haven

San Luis Valley and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the Fall. Photo by the author.

I’ve been to many spiritual places…churches, synagogues, Stonehenge, and other specific holy places. I’m often in awe of the light dancing through stained glass. We spent time with the tombs and memorials of the poets and monarchs inside Westminster Abbey in London and stood in wonderment inside Notre Dame in Paris.

But when I think about what moves me and makes me feel connected to the universe, especially nature, I think of the San Luis Valley of Colorado, a centuries-old home of indigenous peoples and once part of Mexico. I first discovered this area on a road trip in 1975 with my then-husband and six other friends, taking a Spring Break jaunt through our new home state. It hasn’t changed a lot in all these years, which is one reason I love it.

Pronghorns in the San Luis Valley. Photo by the author.

On that 1975 trip, one of our travel companions declared, “I heard about a hippy-dippy hot spring in the mountains. Let’s go find it!”

Valley View Hot Springs, off a dirt road that climbs into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, was my introduction to this semi-arid, fragile farming valley and that majestic mountain range.

When we first visited the hot springs, it was mostly a ruin of old mining cabins, maybe an outhouse (I was pretty stoned and it was a few decades ago), some holes in the ground with hot water, and lots of nude hippies. There was a bouncer who worked for the farmer-owner down in the valley and collected a few dollars to enter. He threw out those who got rowdy. He later bought the place. It’s now part of a land trust that limits visitors to preserve the land and views.

I went through ups and downs with that husband, including whether or not to go to the hot springs after they changed ownership, made improvements, and became a member-only spot on weekends, the only time in the week we could go there. He didn’t want to go for about 13 years because he didn’t want to enter the lottery to join, and then pay for the privilege.

I convinced him to stop there again around 1990 on our way to Taos, New Mexico on a Fall Friday morning, and again on our way back on Monday. He fell back in love with it. We entered the lottery and two years later we got in, visiting for a few more years together, on weekends. It was a fun, relaxing, freeing (it’s clothing optional and we took that option) break from the workaday world in Denver.

Looking down from the upper-most hot spring at two others after hiking to get there. I could sit in that top pool for hours. Photo by the author.

After we divorced, I talked friends into going. It was also kind of a prerequisite for any man that I was seriously dating that he must love this place.

It was during this time frame that I began to recognize the spiritual nature of the San Luis Valley. Friends and I began exploring, not just the hot springs area itself, with its upward hiking on rocky terrain; back then we were also able to ride horses at times through that property and the trails on either side.

Riding south of the hot springs with a friend. Photo taken with author’s camera.

Once, I rode up to the neighboring bat cave with a man who lived and still does, on the property. He used to take people on rides. This one particular ride was a sunset excursion, and I was the only person with him, so it was a quiet lope up the rocky road and onto a narrow rocky trail, about 2 miles upwards to a massive caved-in iron mine shaft. There in that hole, a quarter of a million mostly male short-tailed bats spend the summer. Over a decade ago, the Division of Wildlife took over the site so it’s got safety barriers now.

First trail toward the bat cave (to the right of the rocky outcropping, left of center). Photo by the author.

View from the bat cave. When the bats fly out, they fly from behind this angle, headed out to the valley below. Photo by the author.

Back then, you could walk or ride right up to the edge of the cave and just wait. Back then, folks didn’t need to be instructed to be quiet while waiting. You could even crawl up into holes in the rock around the cave and wait. Now, we wait further from the cave itself behind a fence. There are benches now, but most people stand.

When the bats come flying out at dusk, it is an other-worldly experience. You can hear their high-pitched squeal and the darkening sky is filled with thousands of dark bats flying out in their evening search for food. My body vibrates with the rush of wings. You can almost reach up and touch them. Sometimes, one will brush by so close that a person will jump. They just keep coming, and then the flow slows and stops. If you wait a while longer, there might be a couple more smaller out-flights.

Watching those bats fly out into the setting valley I’ve sometimes felt like I, too, could fly with them, looking down at those humans with their eyes wide in reverence at the wonders of nature.

Bat outflight from the cave to the valley, 2008. The thousands of dots are bats. Photo by the author.

The experience of the out-flight was and is a spiritual experience, as, while it’s happening, I no longer can feel anything but the present.

Sometimes later at night, bats fly over the pool we call the “party pool.” They sometimes whoosh by heads to get to the water, where they dip for a drink and move on.

Another spiritual experience at the hot springs is watching the sunset, which most visitors do, either sitting on the edge of the drop into the valley, or above it, from campsites and primitive cabins. These days, we enjoy walking toward the bat cave, just a short way, and watching the sunset along the trail, stopping always to take the same pictures we’ve taken every single visit. Yet every sunset is its own unique watercolor with reds here, oranges, and yellows there.

One of many amazing sunsets from our campsite at the hot springs. View from Sangre de Cristo Mountains across the valley to the San Juan Mountains. Photo by the author.

Driving south in the San Luis Valley past small towns, and a more spa-like hot spring called Joyful Journey, about 45 minutes south of Valley View, is a town called Crestone. The town is primarily the home of old hippies and spiritual-seekers, at least, those are the folks I know. They have a nice natural grocery and a weekly farmers market in the summer. Alongside the little town is the Baca Grande, which is a land grant. On this land grant are homes and a variety of places of worship. This land, as was once true of the hot springs, was Native American land. And, you can feel the sacredness of this land in many spots around Crestone.

Winding around through the Baca, friends and I discovered composite rocks that are other-worldly. Multi-colored with shades of red, green, white, and grey, many of these rocks seem to have scenes embedded in them. One looks like the face of a spaceman. That one scared a friend so much that she was afraid that I was bringing it home. She thought it was a bad omen. That rock is still with me many years later.

A composite rock from the Baca. No, not the spaceman. He’s hiding at the moment, somewhere else in the yard. Photo by the author.

The first time we discovered these rocks was while exploring a piece of land on which a Buddhist Temple was being built. Since then, we’ve seen them in other spots around that area. One time a friend and I started a hike in Crestone and kept having to come back down to the car because we’d accumulated too many heavy rocks to walk any further. They now decorate our gardens.

To most people, they are just pretty rocks. To me, they are both a beautiful recall of happy visits to the area and also a remembrance of the sense of the humans who traveled through or resided there centuries ago. Yes, a spiritual experience without the need for a building.

Moving south on this journey through the northern San Luis Valley, we come to Great Sand Dunes National Park. As others have written, this place is stunning.

I’ve never successfully climbed the dunes, but it’s fine to just look at them with half-crossed eyes and imagine being alone to watch the sands shift.

Sand Dunes and Medano Creek, July 5, 2015. Photo by the author.

Several years ago, we heard that a stream runs there in the Spring, Medano Creek. When it runs, it’s mostly a very shallow moving body of water with ripples and waves that tickle your feet and legs.

Medano Creek runs through the dunes and our feet, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado. Photo by the author.

The first time I went with my friend, Kari, we excitedly took off our shoes and walked into the water with everyone else who knew about this phenomenon. We felt the waves, which seemed out of place there with the dunes just on the other bank, and looked out to the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and hills around us. We felt respect and yes, I’ll use the word awe again. Another spiritual experience in my favorite valley.

Sondra Singer is a writer, storyteller, and musician in the U.S. Mountain West. She studied theater, radio & TV, as well as other media including photojournalism. She made her way for decades selling advertising and corporate support in commercial and public radio/TV. Her website is here.

I tagged Claire Elizabeth Levesque’s story about her visit to the Great Sand Dunes within the article. Also, I found G.P. Gottlieb’s story about seeking out street musicians in Spain, as my husband and I are thinking about going there next year.

Thanks for the monthly challenge, Anne. This was a fun story to write.