Just two years in Cortez, Colorado
Walking through the community of Cortez, I go to City Market, the library, Parque de Vida, the Rec Center and skate park. Having lived in Montezuma county for almost two years now, I have visited these places so many times, made so many memories, it feels like home to me. At City Market, I regularly see the same people waiting outside the southern entrance; the friendly native with a bandana holding his shoulder length hair back, he complimented me and called me a “cutie” before I cut my long hair. The younger, worried looking man with short black hair and a goatee who paces back and forth and talks to himself out loud. I’ve often wondered if he is on the spectrum with autism. What are their stories? California, New Mexico, Utah, Montana, Idaho, New York, there are license plates from just about everywhere. Cars pull in and out of the gas station, filling up before they continue on their adventures either up to the mountains or out to the desert. Walking through the isles at City Market I often run into my students and their families, “Oh hey Mr. Michael!”, and their parents quietly ask them “Who is that?”. I like when I get the chance to introduce myself but usually they seem to be in a rush, are attending to their other kids and are off to find their next item in the store.
There is a certain mix of people you find at the market: natives from the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation and Navajos; the old farmers and ranchers with their cowboy boots, shining belt buckles, jeans and cowboy hats, and diesel trucks; the younger hippyish, organic looking, subaru drivers with chacos and trucker hats; the multigenerational hispanic families, usually the mom leading the way with a line of kids following her through the store; and the multigenerational anglos who come from families of sharecroppers, who grew up here and are raising their kids here, just figuring out how to make it like everyone else.
Outside again, two of my students ride their bikes through the parking lot, casually becoming aware of the cars they almost run into. I look to Main St and see the same Navajo man who walks into town every morning from the east and back out of town heading west on the highway with his 1980s blue external frame backpack. Where does he come from and go every day? How long has he been doing that?
I head out onto Montezuma street, one of my favorite streets in town, with a walkway shaded over by cottonwood trees hundreds of years old. Sometimes I think of how my great grandparents used to walk the same road. Heading east a few blocks, I arrive at the library, a small humble building at the edge of Parque de Vida with a background view of the majestic La Plata mountain range. There are free books in boxes outside of the entrance. Old westerns, Louis L’amour, and Tony Hillerman novels are common to find. The quietude that all libraries invoke sets in as I pass through the doors. I see kids using the computers to play Minecraft, adults checking email, reading news and paying bills. These computers might be the only ones they have access to. Reliable internet service is not something taken for granted here. Some high schoolers work on their homework and use the printers. Mostly people come to pick up DVDs and use the computers. It is rare to see people actually checking out books. There are story time programs and I see elementary kids come in on their own, their big mission for the day, most likely assigned by their parents, to make the journey to the library and find books to bring home. They look focussed and determined.
In Centennial park, people relax in the shade of more grandmother cottonwood trees and gather in the shelters near the duck ponds. In the summer people bring food and have parties. Across the street at Parque de Vida, I see three of my students riding their BMX bikes around the pond. They pass by me coming from the skate park and on their way to the BMX jumps by the KIVA school. Two of my eighth grade boys with one my of my seventh graders. Little rebel trouble makers. They love to move, all talented athletes but struggle to focus on work and not chat with their friends in class. They look happy to be out of school and playing. I was the same way.
In the Rec center I see more of my students hanging out in the entryway and playing basketball. Some of them need to fill up their time while their parents are at work before they can go home. Others don’t really want to go home, “it’s boring” they say. I’m always glad to see them out being active with their friends and doing positive things. Some of them are really good at basketball or are upstairs pumping some iron with me. Next to the rec center is the skate park; middle school mecca. While it’s still warm out some of them are there every day. No helmets or pads, that’s not cool, gotta be able to do the tricks without ever falling or looking bad.
There are so many microcultures within our community, and others from the Ute Mountain Ute reservation in Towaoc where many of my students come from. From a broad, generalized perspective, there is the transient passer-through tourist culture of people enchanted by the natural wonders of Mesa verde, Moab/Canyonlands not so far away, and the San Juan scenic byway to the east. There are the multigenerational, every type of christian, conservative ranchers/sharecroppers Anglos and old Spanish Catholics. There are old hippies who may have started homesteading here in the 60s-70s, own businesses, or work at the National park, but probably have not been here more than one generation. There are the older, traditional Ute and Navajo who live all over the southwest and have been here longer than all of us. And there the younger natives and hispanics/chicanos; the adolescent boys who love to wear all black with snapback hats, and the sweet, more shy girls. And there are the new comer, hippyish back-to-the-land liberals who have fallen in love with stunning landscape, strong rural community and eclectic mix of cultures.
A broad brush generalization of the visible cultures in Cortez, but they are there. The surface characteristics of these cultures anyone can notice, but what many of them have in common takes some time to learn. What brings everyone together is our connection to this place, its history, and the grit it takes to make a living, and a life in the high-desert southwest.
