Questa Story Boxes & the Community Memory Lab

An update from Questa Stories

Claire Cote

This year we’re continuing our Voices de Aquí series, but changing our approach to sharing these stories. When you’re at Questa Farmers Market keep your eye out for two wooden boxes with headphones each featuring a story and bio of one of our community members. These listening units are fun, interactive ways to share stories, learn about and appreciate one another and get to know our community a little better.

Family listening to the story boxes at the Questa Farmers Market

Rachel Kuc listening to a story box at the Questa Farmers Market

We’re collaborating with Questa Library to develop a Community Memory Lab and Archive onsite at the Library as well. We're gathering equipment and strategizing on ways it can serve. Get in touch if you'd like to be involved with this! Questa Stories has also been attending local events recording audio, video and taking photos and adding this documentation to the community archive at QuestaStories.org and on harddrives at Questa Library and soon to be added to the Manitos Community Memory Archive (expected to go live soon).

In the coming months we’re looking forward to offering hands-on photography and cyanotype story workshops in local schools in collaboration with local photographer, Jamey Bryant.

We continue to improve and add content to our website QuestaSories.org. Visit us there and @questastories on Instagram and Facebook 

Wild Camp, 2023

This year at Sangre de Cristo Wild Camp, Localogy’s teenage camp, we continued our tradition of helping the community and challenging the teenagers in a week-long back packing trip. Our intense two week adventure proves a success once again.

The Sunday camp starts sets the tone for the rest of the session, and this year the teenagers did a stellar job in taking control and owning their camp culture. After picking work crews, we spent the next 4 days serving Questa Farmer’s Market, cleaning Casas Culture next door, continued a building project at Veterans Off Grid, and cleaned up and restored our Camp campus. The teenagers at Questa Farmers Market did some much-needed weeding, indigo dying of clothes and Suki-Ban wood burning. The Casas crew peeled off-putting plaster off of 110 year old adobe relleno walls, revealing the beautiful earth plaster underneath. At Veterans Off Grid, Ryan Timmermans taught our teenagers a lot about sustainable building through insulating a healing structure with straw-clay slip between studs.

The backpacking trip took place in the beautiful sea of mountains that is the Weminuche Wilderness in south western Colorado. The teenagers embarked on a 52-mile hike that took them through a river, up a peak, running into several moose, and swimming in Emerald Lake. Stargazing late into the night and hiking under the sun through the day, the teenagers had a deep-dive of wilderness and they came back to camp in good spirits ready to take on the world.

We had an amazing time and the teenagers were truly the best our camp program has ever had.

Keaton Karvas - Wild Camp Director

Questa's commemorative tree grove, plus art workshops for kids!

An Update from Leap - land Experience and art of place

Did you know LEAP has been planting trees since 2017? The Commemorative Tree Grove at the Questa Municipal Park, sponsored by community members in honor of loved ones, has grown to over 20 trees. As we continue to steward the grove, we are working with the Village of Questa to install a more professional irrigation system with a timer for the park with a longer-term vision of establishing a comprehensive site plan for the Park, Youth Center and Library site. Since 2021, LEAP has collaborated with the Vida del Norte Coalition, the Village of Questa, Questa Farmers Market, Questa Economic Development Fund and other partners to facilitate intergenerational community connection days, including tree planting days! This year, our two spring Community Connection days happened at the park and Farmers Market site to pick up trash, remove invasive weeds and ready the sites for summer use. We’re also supporting the Village of Questa’s Beautification Committee and working to expand and mobilize the volunteer base in our community.

This summer we also offered two kids cyanotype art workshops with the Quesa Achievers 4H group and Vida Camp. We gathered and identified local plants along Columbine Trail for 4H and at Questa Park for Vida camp, then each child created unique prints using their collected plants and cyanotype paper, exposed it in the sun and developed it in a tub of water. Kids had a lot of fun and really enjoyed the chemistry and mystery of the process!

Claire Cote - LEAP Director

Oh the Places We've Been

Oddly enough, when I went to post the camp pictures, I found my collection consisted mostly of this character hamming it up. Here he can be seen rock climbing in the Crestone area (perhaps the most spectacular of the Rocky Mountains). Other Summer Campers also made it into a few good shots, including the teenagers who hiked here.

Having brought together extremely photogenic summer campers doing interesting things around spectacular scenery, I can now proudly present to you the absolute finest Sangre de Cristo Youth Ranch Summer Camp pictures.  As usual, we took it to the next level with our activities and destinations, and the results will amaze!  Click here to see.

The residents of this nest chose to construct and populate it in the Bud cabin during Session 1. The camper who shared this bunk didn't seem to mind

Lama Mountain Internship

An LMI Pioneer shows a camper how to card wool from a sheep he tackled and sheared

Five college-age students participated in the first-ever Lama Mountain Internship (LMI) in 2013, Residential stays ranged from 1-3 months, and interns spent 30 hours a week engaging in activities related to homesteading in the high desert—from sheep shearing to food preservation, from composting to construction.

Shepherded by charter school founders Todd Wynward and Dr. Stephanie Owens, LMI was of significant benefit to both the interns and the host community. The individual interns gained new knowledge, deep friendships, improved skills, and clarified personal values from a “time apart” characterized by healthy localized living, meaningful work, wilderness experiences, group discussions and opportunities for deep reflection. The Mountain at large benefited significantly from the labor interns brought to projects—cultivating community gardens, caring for sheep and goats, installing a drip system, building a greenhouse and sustainable housing, and practicing youth leadership with SCYR Summer Camp and Roots and Wings Community School.

We are currently accepting applications for the 2014 internship season.  College credit may be available to participants.  Contact Todd for more information.