By Nicholas Chambers

            For some, Crestone is the place of retreat.  For others, it is just not Kansas anymore.  But for some people it is simply our home.  It is the canvas on which the daily flux of shelter, food, and energy is played out upon neo-native hearths of Earth.  Crestone is the axis mundi in a very real and carnal sense: it is the birthing ground of our Indigo children!
            The Crestone culture of alternative building and homesteading has inadvertently given rise to a vernacular lifestyle that is found most indigenous in our straw bale homes. Take the title:  “The straw bale building capitol of the world.”  This was not an emblem that was planned, bought, or even knowingly devised.  Men, women, and children earned it as a result of sand-etched toil.  They came here with pennies to forge their dreams and visions in the vacuum left by a failed retirement community.   This was the seed of what has become an endemic flourishing. 
            The Crestone straw bale is a distinct style of form and function that is at once tight and beautiful, while out-performing notions of what is “normal.”  Passive and active solar design with the thick walls of straw bales and tight roofs with high R-values have created homes that are warm in the winter and cool in the summer—near perfect consorts with the climate.  Heating costs are low or even non-existent, and the price of hot water is merely a function of the installation cost of the solar system and the sun.
            Straw bale is not the only tradition here, but is the locally produced product that is most inclusive of other approaches.  Cob, adobe, rammed earth, spectacular carpentry, earthships, earthbag, soy-foam insulation, various concoctions with cement, stone work, and beetle kill timber and lumber all can be found in various proportions along with straw bale.  A dash of opportunivorism and you have the base recipe for the diverse continuum of our high-performance and aesthetic building traditions.
            Many of the people who came here to find their slice of heaven were not builders when they began, but they certainly became one through time. They are familiar with the frontier of individually pushing envelopes, while commonly fluent with hawk and trowel. Building was their domestic chore; much like an urbanite would mow the lawn, and the prime way to have a job.  For not only did they build their own homesteads on nights, weekends, and holidays, but they built the homes and retreat centers of Baca’s more cosmopolitan side. 
            The families and individuals who have made Crestone their single year round home are here for the long haul.    They are the sacred earth warriors who also serve the role of the common people. They are the human capitol that will build, fix, and maintain the functions and infrastructure of this community come glaciers or drought.  Crestone as a place of national headlines needs these people as seafaring vessel needs its crew. 
            Visitors and prospectors alike, remember this land is the raw material of the locals’ existence. Engender and build upon what has happened.  Hire, invest, co-create.  The cookie cutter status quo is just not a good match for an isolated, alpine valley community.  We are at the end of the road, folks, the Shambala is full of mosquitoes, thirty below winter temperatures, and apocalyptic spring winds.  The shelter of family-built passive solar straw bale simply can’t be beat.