creststone colorado

we visited some wonderful friends from old olympia days who now live in creststone in the san luis valley at the foot of the sangre de christo mountains.

beautiful views

kelly and zana hart

kelly and zana moved to crestone many years ago and built a earthbag/papercrete house in the foot hills of the mountains.  building with earthbags was a new concept for me.  the idea is you fill polypropylene bags with earth, sand or crushed volcanic rock and build a building with the filled bags of dirt. after living in their earthbag home for some time, kelly and zana sold it and moved to mexico for 5 years. they returned back to crestone a few years ago and now live in a lovely very eco friendly doublewide trailer in the valley. all their electricity comes from solar panels they have on their roof. unfortunately i did not see the earthbag house.  i did see a mini example of how this building works because kelly is building a chicken coop and the foundation is made with earth bags.  to see pictures of the house the hart's built and to find out more about earthbag building visit www.earthbagbuilding.com

their homestead in the valley

their garden

their green house beds

lola and larry chillin inside

kelly at work

earthbag builing

crestone is a large community that is spread out over many acres of land in the valley and in the foot hills of the mountains. there is a small town of crestone which started as a mining town in the 1800's.  there is one gas station, two little cafe's, an art gallery, and a few other small businesses.  

the main drag

the dancehall

old hardware store

the park

the art gallery

the gas station and food store

where we had lunch

in the 70's the manitou foundation granted huge areas of land around the town of crestone to spiritual groups and sold single land parcels for private building.  there are many wold religions represented at crestone as well as new age centers. a few of these are:

crestone zen center

haidaikhandi universal ashram

nada carelite hermitage 

the way of nature fellowship

the sri aurobindo learning center

the academy of on

crestone end of life project

i am harmony

vajra vidya retreat center

crestone sufi circle

and many more

the stupa

crestone healing arts center

haidaikhandi universal ashram

the temple

me and babaji

earthship

inside the earthship

we spent a lovely evening doing zikr with hamida nur, the leader of the crestone sufi circle. zikr is singing, chanting and moving and dancing the name of god together in a group.  it is something i have done a lot in my earlier life in america and it felt good to use my voice and my body to praise god again.  

with hamida nur

the sufi durga

the view from the tower

hamida nur's house

our visit to crestone was great because of the people we spent time with there. kelly and zana are such sweet people and we felt very welcomed by them.   the community as a whole did not seem like the type of community i am looking for at the moment.  for me crestone was too spread out and too complicated to navigate.  i will visit again though i am sure because i have the feeling that we just scratched the surface and there is much more to discover about this place. 

and the landscape is breathtaking!

the valley

the mountains