Walsenburg Waltz - Page 2

Back in the day, the world was headed for Hell and Marigold's group household opted out of the chaos, buying 80 acres in southern Colorado, beyond the front-range growth surge we foresaw, even in 1978. Huerfano County had cheap land so, numerous hippie tribes settled there, in the footsteps of coal miners who came for the jobs and stayed to scratch out a living running cattle, selling real estate, motels and cafés catering to travelers.

Huerfano (meaning orphan) County’s Spanish Peaks, neither quite a fourteener but standing out from the Front Range (wa-ha-to-ya in the native tongue) were landmarks on the Santa Fe Trail. Population centers include county seat Walsenburg, sex-change capital Trinidad, Ludlow (as in Massacre), La Veta and a double handful of small dried-up towns scattered across the scrub oak and pinon of the hills and sagebrush of the high prairie.

Huerfano County has been home to the oldest Jewish congregation west of the Mississippi (which recently folded, selling their beloved Torah to, coincidentally, the temple that Fred and Marigold joined in Denver); to Drop City, Libre, Red Rocks and other hippie settlements; to neo-con retirees who, in 2016, turned the county Republican for the first time in its existence. There’s a struggling ski resort on the west side of West Spanish Peak, an opiates problem and history that looks a lot like poverty.

one, two, three
one, two, three
play the song over
we’ve only begun
and still having fun