It finally snowed here in our high desert land! For a while I wondered if we were ever going to have winter with our 50-60 degree sunny days. It has been so dry we have been watering all of our gardens and trees for fear of losing them to the drought conditions. When Richard went to pick up hay today, one of the farmers in town, who recently attended a soil conservation meeting where the stats for the century were available, said it was shaping up to be the driest, windiest winter in history. Oh boy. Global warming in action.
I know we haven't seen any moisture for several months. I am beginning to feel a bit concerned. If we don't have enough water, we are doomed. Needless to say, I've been trying to find a location we might permanently relocate to, a place with enough water that we could survive on water catchment and intelligent garden design systems. Richard thinks the magic number is 15 inches per year. We don't get that here. We are short by several inches and if it continues to dry out, there is no hope. When the town runs out of water, we run out of water. We don't have a well. We are on the town water system. It is still illegal in Colorado to collect rain water, although I'm considering going renegade on that law. In ancient civilizations, when the drought came for an extended period, the people all died. Simple. We need water. A sustainable homestead takes the physical needs into consideration when planning for an unknown future of Peak Oil, global warming, societal collapse, etc.
So, where could we go? Richard thinks a place without building codes would be ideal for building an Earthsip or earth bag house that we could live in as we went, which is true, but where in the world is that? It turns out there are a few counties in Colorado without building codes, including one to the south of us, and one of the little towns over there gets about 8 more inches of moisture per year. Perfect. But then there is New Mexico, the land that I love, which allows rain water collection, and has more lenient building codes anyway. The Earthships originated in NM.
So, even though we can't afford to move, I've been snooping around on the internet, trying to find another perfect spot. I do this fairly often, feeling restless and annoyed by suburbia and the covenants imposed upon us.
I've been learning some interesting things about Rio Arriba county in NM. There's a little town down there called Dulce (it's not wet enough to move to, and on a reservation) that has quite a colorful history in the world of Extraterrestrials. Look it up to learn more about it. It involves the Archuleta Mesa and underground military installations and all sorts of bizarre goings on. Is this for real? And if it is, what does that mean for the rest of us? And does the location of my little homestead even matter anymore?
Well, I'm not sure what to believe anymore. When we went to Taos for the first time in November of 2001, Richard and I had our own close encounter...about five or six green glowing, round orbs in the night sky. "Are you seeing this?" I asked him. You have to understand that back in the day, Richard was about as straight edge, conservative, discount anything he couldn't see or prove, as a son of upper middle class suburbia could be, trained in cynicism for anything metaphysical. "Are you seeing this?" I asked him that night long ago, wondering if my mind had finally slipped into fantasy land. Sure I had heard about UFO's in NM and joked about them taking people and mutilating cattle in the San Luis Valley. It was part of the quirky history of the Southwest. Right?
"Let's follow them," Richard said. He apparently was seeing it too. But no one else driving on the road stopped. There were no people standing, car doors flung open, gawking at the green lights in the sky. I tuned in to the local radio station (KTAO, one of my favorite stations to this day) and there was no mention of this mysterious thing in the sky. Helicopters? They aren't green these days are they, I wondered? It was crazy New Mexico weird, but we followed the lights as they headed slowly up toward Taos mountain and the Ski Valley. Richard drove his little Subaru right through the snow until the road dead ended into a snow bank too big for us to cross...and the lights disappeared behind the mountain.
I never forgot. When we came back to Colorado, I searched the internet for mention of the mysterious lights. Nothing. We decided to move to Taos that night. It was a sign after all, even if it was one we couldn't understand. How cool was that really? A close encounter of the first kind in the Land of Enchantment where anything is possible. I was thrilled, but wary about mentioning it to anyone, knowing most people were well on their way to thinking me crazy anyway.
And so it comes back. Life is a circle, isn't it? I once painted a painting of circles and circles and circles, intermixed, crossing, intertwined, confused and chaotic. Everything comes back around. Here I am again, ten years later, contemplating the existence of ET.
We're not going to move to Dulce, it's on a reservation and I don't think we could anyway, and Chama, where I was originally looking, is on the other side of the great Divide from that alien activity that is rumored to be occurring there. But, I know that the Southwest in general seems to be a hot spot for alien activity. What is going on in these parts? Is the government hiding this from us too? Most certainly. They can garble information about our food, our planet and conditions about global warming, and it seems the information they dish out to us unsuspecting Americans is the information that keeps us in our sheeple suits.
I never did fit into mainstream society and the cute little lamb costume they had me fitted for, I burned in a bonfire built from the rage of a misunderstood teenage girl. It was my right of passage. And to that fire I added everything that would hold me down, keep me a prisoner to the American Dream and the herd mentality. That included Christianity, materialism, capitalism, government and anything else that tried to put me in the box of the unthinking, mindless zombie like 9 to 5 ers who were sleepwalking around me, everywhere I looked. I wanted no part of it. I still don't.
In this season of materialism, I always have a hard time coming back to the expected reality I feel is forced upon me. I hate Christmas. Every year I feel the same unease about participating in consumerism, letting everyone buy my kids things they don't need. And every year I wonder how I could just bow out of that too. Hey folks, I'm not doing Christmas anymore, so don't buy me anything and don't expect me to go out shopping to find some token gift that will never be used. It's all ridiculous. The only positive I have to remember is that Christmas is really a pagan holiday, from the tree to Santa Claus, the gift giving and the feasting, the reindeer and the yule log. I'm cool with that. Santa is a shaman and Jesus Christ may not have even been born in December. How about that? If only we as a society could stop with the crazy shopping madness. Give a handmade gift instead.
So the Universe gave me a little gift this season. Maybe a little comic relief...it did make me laugh when I read that aliens of many species are living underground, with massive tunnel systems that traverse the globe. Some of the governments are in on it. Sure why not? And I most assuredly am having a great time now researching the whole secret world of ET. Who knew? Fun, fun for the holidays. And I continue to look for the perfect, safe, alien free homestead location, ruling out various places for lack of water or...extraterrestrial presence. Don't want to live there and let my children become the next abductees in the endless parade of genetic madness and experimentation rumored to be going on. But then, is anyone safe anywhere? What could you do really if they came for you?
I'll just go back to my farming, my little piece of reality in an insane world. I can still eat healthy and take my vitamins (Did you know Vitamin C can cure cancer? Another cover-up.) Sometimes I look up into the sky and wonder. Maybe the 2012 end times involves an intergalactic underground battle that will have far bigger repercussions for us Earth dwellers than even global warming. Who knows. I've still got to do my part to save the planet, but this new information has my head spinning. I'm hoping that the rumors of benevolent ETs are true too, to help mankind save itself from itself and heal our great planet. Just a gift from the Universe...something to keep in mind as we plan for a sustainable future for our children and grandchildren.
Something new happens every day. Gifts. Miracles. Pieces of the puzzle. Tidbits of information that may one day come together to be useful or to make the bigger picture easier to see. I am thankful for the interesting, unexpected and fun gifts that expand my mind.
