OKAY LAS ANIMAS : WHAT IF ...

WHAT IF WE HAD US A FEW BEES?

I've been seeing on line stories about Southeastern Colorado and even specifically Las Animas, which is intensely important to me as the 'seat' of our particular family for six generations now. 

The news is dismal and when I was there recently I found the conditions and outlook to be almost as bad as the news tells of.

BUT ...

Ah yes, this is me and there's always a BUT ... 

And there's always a WHAT IF to go along with the BUT.

WHAT IF ... 

What if the farmers and ranchers who sold their water rights were to get at least a portion of those rights back? 

Yeah right ... I can just hear you ... and just how exactly do you think that's gonna happen, and just exactly who do you think is going to revitalize those farms and ranches? 

Hell if I know but brainstorming comes before actualization, so hush for a minute and let's take a little ride down memory lane.

I'm an old lady now, there's no denying it.

My early memories seethe in and around Las Animas, Colorado.

As a little girl my favorite things were simple enough: sitting in the porch swing with Grandma or Grandad; going to the store with either of them (Thaxton's); the clear sweet honey from the ranch that our Uncle Bob brought in; cantalope and home-made icecream and Roooot Beeeer in glass gallon jugs from A&W; looking for chicken nests; digging in the  sand pit for water; watching the horses; riding them; snow-faced red calves out at the ranch; Jimmy the bull; sunflowers along the fence line; glass bottles of orange, strawberry, grape pop in the stock tank ... the list goes on and on and on ... the little things that make a childhood joyful.

Then, things were different.

Today, it's not enough to sit around and moan and groan about how things have gone downhill.

The Valley needs water.

Hello, people.

It also needs more than that.

So what are we going to do about it?

Hmmm ... 

You know, I live in North Dakota.

Not just because I love it here but because it's been  like the only ONLY place that's remained stable over the years. 

ND, like the Valley, has been agricultural in nature - but nobody has come along needing our water. We've got Devils Lake rising and rising and rising - with an aquifer beneath it that runs clear down to Colorado. Did you know that? Now you do. And there are those who have known it for a very long time. Think about thata for a minute.

Onward with the brainstorming.

No matter how you cut it, agriculture in the Valley is going to take time to re-establish, even if they get the water they need.

What can we do in the meantime?

Me, I'm a writer.

I write fiction.

Just last night somebody asked me who my publisher is.

Me.

I publish my own books, get them printed, order them from the printer, and sell them. It keeps food in my belly.

The concept of books being fresh in my mind, and the dilemma of the Valley likewise being fresh in my mind, it crossed my mind to wonder ... 

What if, in lieu of agriculture for the time being, the focus went to culture? 

The towns are strung like gems on the Arkansas River along the Valley of Southern Colorado. 

Pueblo - Fowler - Manzanola - Rocky Ford - La Junta - Las Animas - Hasty - Lamar - Granada - Holly

And I know I missed one, that little place where you have to make a curve and go under an underpass or some such ... ach ... it will come to me.

Anyway, these are the towns along Highway 50 east of Pueblo - there are others, of course, but I don't know them as well (or at all) since this is my regular route and I'm altogether too familiar with it.

Now, all I'm doing here is thinking. Brainstorming. Maybe only brain-raining, but at least it's drizzling ... 

This necklace of towns reminds me of the area around my ND home. The towns have been dying for a long time - remember that awful NG article about them a while back? Now, of course, the focus is all on the western oil stuff - but let's not forget that ND was already well in the black (no pun intended but what the heck, there it is!) even before that boom happened.

Still, our small towns are dying or already dead. North Dakota can't save them. Nor can Colorado (even less) save theirs. And the small towns certainly can't save themselves. 

Me being me, I see yet another BUT coming up here.

Yep.

Here it is.

BUT ...

The little town my house is located in has been growing some just lately.

Maybe it's the attention ND has been getting from the boom, or maybe it's people 'out there' doing their homework on line and finding possibilities they hadn't thought about before ... whatever it is, they're coming.

From the Greater America, they're coming - and they're bringing their families and a bit of a new life to this little town.

Houses that stood empty for years are now occupied.

New ones are going up.

I'm trying to think of just my own block here. There are ten homes in our block (I think). Bear with me; I hibernate a lot. 

One of those homes sits empty, waiting for the people who now own it to do something with it besides gut it and leave it to fall apart.

Of the other nine, only me and one of my class-mates from high school (and grade school for that matter) are what could be termed 'locals'. The rest are 'outsiders'.

And that's just my own block.

If it weren't for the 'outsiders', those homes would probably be sitting empty.

So.

What's bringing them here?

You got me, but here they indeed are. 

One family came from Utah I think, a multi-generational family whose elders wanted to retire and whose younger members intend to raise their families here.

One came from somewhere down south I believe, and they are occupied with the ag stuff here - mother and father both - and the daughters babysit and work at the local store when not in school.

One lady came from down south too; she works at the nursing home in a nearby town, and does cleaning.

The rest I don't know about but one of them does in-home day care (now that there are at long last younglings again in our midst).

The point here is that they have found homes here.

Me, I'd rather live in Las Animas - it's got a lot better climate - but we tried that, my family and I, several years ago. I ended up working three hours and fifteen minutes away, up in the mountains. That commute was horrific to put it mildly, but I had a family to support. And that was then - things are exponentially worse down there now.

Why do I think I ought to be doing something about it? I can barely support myself and Duke my dog with what I'm doing HERE. I don't have anything at all that would be useful to Las Animas in any real sense of the word.

Well geez. I'm just THINKING.

I can still do that at least.

So get on with it already, b.

Okay.

Back to the WHAT IF.

What if ... for example ... somebody SOMEBODY ... thought to tap into that aquifer?

Hmmm?

It's RIGHT THERE, look up the damn thing on line. 

All that water.

There's water there besides what's in the Arkansas River, you know.

Out at the ranch Grandad had a water witch come out and there are two wells down there in the desert country south of Purgatory. Far enough south so they don't have to meter the water coming out of those wells (not in the 'water table' of the Arkansas).

So there's that.

Maybe not much, but there is that.

There's also a well on the homestead place, further south yet.

Just sayin'.

It won't help the Valley, but it's there.

Here's another thought.

How come they can lay a pipeline for oil and such but not for water?

How come they can't pipe up some of the water that's flooding our Devils Lake region and send it to the Valley?

Because why?

I don't want to hear it.

It is TOO worth it.

Where now the Rocky Ford cantalopes? Where the big sweet onions? Where the hot hot peppers? Where all the rest of the abundance of the Valley?

Sold down river.

What the hell is wrong with this picture?

Which ranting and raving is getting me exactly nowhere in my little brain raining session here.

What if the Valley, for the time, could develop the resources it CAN get its hands on?

Like what?

Like its people, for example.

Otero Junior College is right there - education isn't extinct in the Valley, you know.

Give the ones that are left a reason to go to school and learn to manage businesses, or to provide services - call it a leap of faith.

Me, I publish my own books and could well do the same for others if I had time in between my shift-work, writing, artwork, housework (which is rare, granted, but still needs doing), yardwork, yada yada yada. IF I could afford it, I would set up down there and teach others to edit, format, publish ... do all that stuff.

Right now I can't, but the thought lingers.

SOMEBODY could.

They could.

What does it matter where books are published from, or printed?

Why NOT someplace like Las Animas?

For that matter, there are any number of non-agricultural things that could find homes in the Valley. 

North Dakota's small towns are dead or dying because the support structure for them went away - family farms are few and far between these days.

Other things have to take the place of the old support system.

The Valley isn't devoid of life.

Some people do remain.

I can hear the scoffing all the way up here in my ND study.

Unskilled workers.

Well and whose fault is that?

Give them skills.

Give them a reason to find their own personal strengths and put them to use.

So.

The Valley has people and can get more, just as our little town up here has somehow managed to get more - from the outside, true, but here they are.

What else does the Valley have?

It's been for always a travel route.

Use that, and lure people into stopping to LOOK instead of just passing on through.

Give each gem on that necklace its own unique personality and make it 'the thing to do' to travel that necklace and stop to examine each of the jewels along it.

Move the stockyards AWAY from the travel route (yeah I know, but nobody and I mean NOBODY wants to get hit with that as they drive along).

Lure the Boomers into investing in the climate. Use the very absence of big population centers, but string medical facilities along the necklace, and supply centers.

I tell ya.

Were my situation even a LITTLE bit better, I would buy myself a home in Las Animas in a heartbeat and settle myself into it to write and publish to my heart's content. I'd have me a little studio and get some artwork done.

So where are all the wannabe writers and artists who, like me, would dearly love a little stone or stucco home in the dry heat of Bent County, where the winters hardly ever bring snow or even freezing temperatures and where even the high heat of summer is DRY heat and won't suffocate you.

Why would I want to go THERE you ask.

Here's why:

It's affordable if you have anything at all (which I don't but am working on).

It's that climate.

It's the raw beauty of the countryside around.

It's the fact that it's been forever a major trade and travel route.

It's that the mountains are nearby, VERY nearby at the western end of this necklace but within shooting distance along all of it.

It's peace and serenity.

It's the smell of the settled dust right after an early morning shower.

It's all of the things I loved as a child.

It's all of the things I love as an adult.

For me, it's home.

Ye gods and little people - I'm rapidly writing myself into wanting to pack up and head there right this very minute. 

I won't do that, but oh the temptation is very powerful.

I like this little town I live in up here in Dakota, truly I do.

I like it a lot.

But, you know ... 

I love Las Animas.

Brainstorming tends to be a convoluted procedure, long and tedious.

And I'm okay with that.

I'm perfectly fine with knowing that I've long lost any audience I may have started out with.

I myself can't do much of anything for Las Animas or the Valley - but ...

BUT ...

Maybe I can do a little something for myself. 

And if, in the doing, it turns out in the end to give even just a little something back to the place that has nurtured six generations of our family ... so much the better. 

We, along with almost all of everyone else over the generations, have long left it in the dust - but it endures - and it will welcome us back should we choose to go. 

I find strength and healing in my hills, the Colorado Rockies.

Strength and healing are also to be found in the rocky deserts.

And, you know ... the mountains don't need me.

Las Animas might could right about now.

And you.

And you, and you, and you, and you.

Just sayin'.

My sister is right.

I'd best hurry myself up and finish this set of books I'm working on.

Because as soon as they're launched I'm thinking that there's another set Calling - really loud and really powerfully.

Oh yes.

There it is.

Right down there. 

Down in the Valley.