Local News

By Eden Elderberry The Firewood Project, led by Donovan Spitzman, continues to expand and provide firewood for residents each year. This year, thanks to the partnership of the Crestone Energy Exchange and Neighbors helping Neighbors, the project held its fourth annual Firewood Fiesta.  The Firewood Fiesta is an event open to the community, providing chainsaw education, a potluck, and a chance to give back to the community. After Spitzman learned that Neighbors Helping Neighbors was spending $5,000 a year just to provide firewood, he devised a business plan to offset the expense.  Some of the wood cut by the program is sold,...

By Anya Kaats Crestone conducted a special meeting on short notice to approve a new “Welcome to Crestone” sign that would feature Crestone’s designation as an International Dark Sky community.  Crestone Board of Trustees, on Thursday Oct. 19, posted the notice of a special meeting for the following Monday, Oct. 23. The meeting included a discussion concerning a proposed Welcome to Crestone sign that would feature Crestone’s designation as an International Dark Sky community.  According to Mayor Kairina Danforth, the proposed sign would sit in front of the existing Welcome to Crestone sign and would be seven feet high and eight feet...

About 38 years ago, Crestone town trustee Stephen Hume was living as an artist-in-residence at Lindisfarne, an interfaith sanctuary built into the Sangre de Cristo hillside in 1979. A couple of months after he began his residency, Lindisfarne was transferred to the ownership of the Crestone Mountain Zen Center and Hume was invited to stay on for another year — practicing Zen Buddhism and gradually realizing that the San Luis Valley was a place he wished to call home. “While I was a resident there, I found a piece of property on the eastern edge of the town of Crestone,” he...

By Anya Kaats, July 2023 The future site of Marguerite Humeau’s Orisons, San Luis Valley, Colorado. photo courtesy the artist and Black Cube On July 29, 2023, Orisons, one of the largest earthworks created by an individual woman, will transform an unusable plot of farmland owned by Jones Farms Organics into a place of artistic reverence, honoring the San Luis Valley’s interwoven history, ecosystem, and imagined futures.  Orisons, meaning “prayers,” is the vision of multi-disciplinary artist Marguerite Humeau, who will pay tribute to the San Luis Valley through minimally invasive and environmentally conscious kinetic and interactive sculptures.  Some of the sculptures will include...