This is what inter-agency collaboration looks like:

Locks locked to locks...this is how the Forest Service, the BLM, the National Park Service, private land owners who have "in holdings"only accessible by this road and others? are able to access the restricted road to this magical place.

I had a fantastic weekend of work at the Duncan Cabin, just north of Great Sand Dunes National Park.  HistoriCorps in partnership with Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado in partnership with the BLM, the SLVPLC, the National Park Service, the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife, and let's throw in AmeriCorps and Adams State College ... worked on restoration of this historic cabin.

I so felt like a country girl, making a corral of all things, at this place.

Kevin Rockey, of Western Mountain Youth Services, after a long day of corral building

I <3 Historic Preservation

Forest Service Archaeologist, Angie Krall, gave the volunteers a history lesson about John Duncan and his cabin.  I loved the integration of history, archaeology, geology, and construction principles in this project.  We even identified and sampled edible plants!  And we started each day with yoga stretches and "waterfall" hydration games, so I don't feel too physically sore from my workation.

 
We discussed multiple perspectives of "land owners" of this place: the Luis Maria Baca land grant from 1600s Spain, the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which apparently invalidated the land grant's right to claim (because it was in Spanish?), John Duncan's (the cabin builder) claim for the mining rights (he found some gold nuggets in the nearby hills), his "sale" of nearby plots of land (which didn't really give the buyers the right to ownership), the US Supreme Court decision to award ownership to the San Luis Valley Cattle Company, rather than the people who thought they owned the cabins and land on which they built them. The US Marshalls forcibly evicted those people in the early 1900s by blowing up their cabins. John Duncan's cabin is the only one that remains.

Angie Krall also explained this place's location on the Spanish Trail, from Santa Fe to Los Angeles, and the native peoples who inhabited this place for the past 11,000 years. 

Since the place had been in private hands for the last several decades, there are lots of bits of glass, even shoe leather from the cobbler.  At one point the town of Duncan may have had 3000 residents, a stage coach line, and maybe even a telegraph link.  Now it is a ghost town, with one lovely preserved cabin.

I'm hoping Jonas Landes, the HistoriCorps program manager, will develop summer internships for college students for next summer.  Through partnerships with the multiple agencies, HistoriCorps was able to provide meals (organic!  local!) and even local BEER to appropriately aged volunteers.  We also had a safe place to camp. (note: there was a strange vehicle (white truck, no agency logo) that came on the site between 3:30 and 5 am on Sunday, without its lights on...)

When the cabin is finished, anyone can make a reservation at this fantastic place through Recreation.gov  for about $30-60/night and enjoy lovely views like this:

Great Sand Dunes National Park, from the north

This is my first rodeo.

I love the western expression, "This ain't my first rodeo."  It has all the cowboy cool of "hey, I know what I'm doing" with plenty of swagger and confidence.

Cowboy, including cool, swagger and confidence.

And of course, sometimes we say it even when it is our first rodeo. Sometimes it's better to fake it until we make it, to feign competence until we attain it.

Cowgirl, also confident, slightly less swagger.

Real Cowgirl, who is so confident she doesn't even need a hat or swagger.  And she's actually working with Cows, near San Francisco Creek, Colorado.

And, sometimes it's good to confess I have no idea what I'm doing.  Help me. The trick, of course, is knowing which attitude to take when.

Skipping the opportunity to be creepy?

I've been thinking about "Creepiness".  What makes something/someone creepy?  I think it has something to do with degrees of intimacy.  If you're a close friend or lover, I'll tolerate all sorts of stuff.  If I've just met you, or you're a stranger, that behavior/comment will be creepy.

Let's make a list of things that are potentially creepy:

"I like the way you smell." --Uttered by a female friend while shopping for perfumes, less creepy.  Uttered by a stranger (of any gender) on the bus/at work, creepy.

"You wore that dress two weeks ago, too!" --well, maybe that's always creepy.  Are you keeping a calendar, Stalker McStalkerson?

I wanna "crowdsource" the rest of this blog entry.  What are other creepy scenaria?

So as to appear less creepy, I try to monitor my comments and behaviors, frequently skipping the opportunity to be creepy.  If we're foursquare friends, and I notice you're at the same place a lot, how creepy is it for me to comment to you in person about it?  I suppose the purpose of social media, especially this location-based tech like foursquare and scvngr, is meant to foster that kind of intimacy. So maybe we should embrace this opportunity to be more intimate, to tie together our lives and experiences?

Triangles

Triangles, Triangulation, Triads... three things, three ideas, three people in relation to each other.  Dyads turning into Triads.  Dynamic tension and creativity, possibilities within boundaries, and new frontiers...

Three things...I now have three hives of bees.  As soon as I finish this blog post, I'll head out to the farm to see how they are doing.  Two hives are of one style; the third is different.  I will compare the three throughout the season.  I'm eager to see how they interact with each other. There is strength in numbers, and I'm hopeful that if there are any problems I can combine and recombine the three into new possibilities (possibili-bees?).

Three ideas.... Talking with a friend yesterday, he kept posing either/or questions, seemingly like he predecided the answers for me.  I kept having to rephrase the question into one I could answer.  This is my example of the dynamic tension between twos and threes--he was pulling the conversation in one direction--either or--and I wanted to insert my own perspective--the third.  I'm sure there is a musical connection here, too--the one and the five of a triad, with the third (major or minor?) determining more meaning.

Three people, third wheel, the other "other", three examples of three triads... Two friends plus a new friend equals jealousy, comparison.  Potential for more fun, but also for toxic triangulation, positioning, gossiping. A stable pair, with a third wheel, disrupts balance, brings attention to the stability. The other "other", the grass is greener; I see more with him because I saw with him.

Sigh of relief

good news... I got my test results, and they were "negative" which is positive.  Negative for cancer.  Huge sigh of relief.

Good news!

Quick update ... got test results and all is well. Thanks for the well wishes :)

Bee update and more 6/12/2011

Checked on the hive established at John and Trudi Kretsingers' on Thursday. They are so super mellow, and seemingly without queen.  My mind has been trying to work out what it means...perhaps the old queen absconded with a bunch of bees and they are raising out a new queen. I didn't even wear gloves or my bee suit.

The raised knobby cells look like drone cells or queen cells. I'm hoping queen cells.

Another bee photo...I'm in Taos this weekend for the wedding of Brian Rauscher and Justin Wheeler at El Monte Sagrado.  Here are some happy honey bees on lavender at this fabulous resort.  The weather is beautiful, warm, breezy.  The flowers are blooming.  An excellent setting for this happy event.

And more bee news this week: Jen Johnson, sometime bee partner of mine, moved two of our four hives to the Kretsinger farm for me yesterday.  We started beekeeping together in 2009, but it was difficult to share responsibilities and decision making.  I'm thinking our challenges were similar to how a beehive can only have one queen.  :)

And a tangential health update... Wednesday I had a biopsy of a very small dot on my cervix.  I should have results tomorrow and will give an update here.  I'm feeling good, upbeat, hopeful that the results will be good, and even if they're not as good, I'm upbeat, hopeful about the next course of action based on the results.