West of Walsenburg CO

Robert Mirabal and the power of intention

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

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“You never know what the spirit of intention can do.”  –Robert Mirabal

We spent a marvelous morning on Saturday at the Native American Celebration at Fort Francisco in La Veta.

First of all the Fort is a beautiful example of 1800s adobe construction. Their exhibits are also a wonderful collection of memorabilia from the past century, like a a walk through the homes of the early 1900s. Old furniture, clothes, and my favorite, photos of people from our past.

Then we enjoyed a dance performance by three girls from the Jicarilla Apache Nation. The highlight was a performance by Robert Mirabal of Taos Pueblo. Yes, his music is magic, and I also found great wisdom in his words.

Robert MirabalRobert shared with this mostly European-American crowd the history of this area and what it meant to Native Americans. He explained why his ancestors came up here from the south and kept the trails alive and fresh for others. He spoke of intention in our daily life.

When Robert plays his flutes and sings, it sounds like he is channeling the life and  stories of his ancestors, bringing up vivid imagery of our Native American past.

And in a way, isn’t that what we all do each day, channel our ancestors? So much of who we are is determined by choices made by our parents and grandparents.

I am honored to be now living on this land where the buffalo roamed, the place where my grandfather hoped to retire.  I feel closer to the land than I have in decades, and I intent to protect this land and its heritage.

Excerpted from my new book: A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado.

My New Book – Kindle Edition!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

memoir-of-retirement-2016Hey! It’s Small Business Saturday and you cannot find a smaller one than mine! Please consider my new memoir as a great gift for boomers thinking about retirement alternatives. We did something completely different and we’re glad we did, but there were times we weren’t so sure. Some of you have asked when I might have an e-book edition of my new book available for purchase. I just loaded it!

How sacred are our mountains…

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

After watching an episode of Sacred Journeys on PBS, one which included a bit about the sacredness of mountains in Asian thought, I got to thinking about how important it feels to have a full-time view of the forever changing Spanish Peaks right outside our front windows.

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The Spanish Peaks, pictured above, have a centuries-old history of sacredness. Dating back far before the Europeans arrived, this area was a crossroads of the American West. Taos Pueblo, located in northern New Mexico today, has been a major Native American trading center for over 1,000 years. One trail headed north out of Taos into the San Luis Valley, crossing east over Sangre de Cristo Pass, through the gap between Rough Mountain and Sheep Mountain.

Various Native American tribes like the Ute, the Navajo, the Jicarilla Apache and the Comanche passed through this valley regularly. To them the Spanish Peaks stood out because they seemed to emerge out of nowhere up to 13,000 feet running east and west, not north to south like the rest of the Rocky Mountains.

The natives peoples considered this a sacred place of ceremony. As far as they were concerned, this is where mankind first emerged from the womb of the earth. In other words, this was their own Garden of Eden.

The Ute Indians named these two peaks Huajatolla (pronounced Wa-ha-toy-a), meaning the “two breasts” which translates as “Breasts of the Earth”. I loved learning this ancient history, which I first heard about from Robert Mirabal when he came here to perform recently.

We moved here to create a dynamic relationship with these mountains, this landscape and the lovely silence. Mike and I have both traveled to many parts of the world. We now find the inward journey more essential than outward ones.

DSCF1014For us this is a sacred place, one where we can celebrate and appreciate the beauty of nature every single day, while continuing a long tradition of sustainable living.

Want to learn more about what it feels like to say goodbye to city life in order to live more intentionally?  Here’s a link to my new memoir.

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The Ups and Downs of Being a Writer

/ Laura Lee Carter / 16 Comments

I saw some interesting commentary on whether maintaining a blog is “real writing” over at Kathryn Mayer’s Writing Out Loud blog this week. This topic certainly got me going! No maintaining a blog isn’t just writing, it’s learning a certain software, editing, proofing reading, organizing the appearance of your article on the page and, in my case, providing professional-grade photographs. Then if you decide to write a book and self-publish, you need to acquire so many more new skills, and pay others for their skills.

writing-penI’ve been writing professionally since 2006. I started out as a freelance writer with a number of stories published in national magazines, but I did not like how the editors decided everything. Specifically I could find no editors willing to cover my favorite topic: midlife psychology.

Sometimes the editors were simply wrong, sometimes their English was terrible, sometimes they stole my ideas, and sometimes they cut my piece at the last minute, paying me nothing for a few weeks of work. (Thanks American History Magazine!) That’s when I started blogging. I for one am so glad to have the freedom to write everyday if I like, and reach those who want to hear what I have to say.

Freedom of the press is only available to those who own one. And now, I do!

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The downside to all of this is the unreliable pay for those of us who write because we love it. Through the years I have made money on sponsored posts, but most by selling my books. 

For those of you who read this blog regularly, thank you! I’m happy that you come here and follow our life beyond the big city, but remember, my only real income is from book sales. Please consider purchasing one or two today. It makes my day!

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/midlifequeen

What are your life-changing unpredictables?

/ Laura Lee Carter / 8 Comments

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”   – Gilda Radner

When I sit and think about all of the coincidences and chance acquaintances that had to happen for me to be here now, loving my new life in the foothills of southern Colorado, it fascinates me. Life is rich and so complex!

thailand_1973-photo-for-blogMy brother John has been visiting again, which only reminds me of where I came from decades ago, and the lost years of junior high and high school. In my teens I was such a lost soul, walking around without a clue of what I needed to do with this great opportunity called life. One coincidence that changed everything for me was a chance opportunity to live in Bangkok for a few months after high school. I had just started college, but felt no real career direction until I went to live in Asia. Shock and awe is an excellent way of describing what I found there. I thought, how could this whole part of the world be here, and I had no idea of its existence?

The fascination that developed from that brief stay dominated the rest of  my 20s. I studied Asian history, learned Chinese, lived in Taiwan and traveled in China a few times. Asia captivated my imagination, only because my Dad’s sabbatical included a trip for any of his kids under the age of 20 to accompany him.

When I look over each decade of my life, I can find at least one life-changing unpredictable event which somehow changed everything in my future.

Go take a look at your own life. Do you have unpredictables there that changed everything for you? German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said that it is only while looking back over your life that you may see that it all somehow makes sense.

One of the most unpredictable was our decision to move to a tiny, poor town in southern Colorado to build a solar home from the footers up. Now we live close to nature in “be-here-now” land, and life just keeps getting better…