22 HARPER’SHARPER’S MAGAZINE MAGAZINE / AUGUST / AUGUST 2019 2019

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THE LAST FRONTIER Homesteaders on the margins of America By Ted Conover

he San Luis Valley in southern picture the indigenous people who TColorado still looks much as it carved inscriptions into rocks near the did one hundred, or even two rivers, or the Hispanic people who hundred, years ago. Blanca Peak, at established ’s oldest town, 14,345 feet the fourth-highest summit San Luis, and a still-working system of in the Rockies, overlooks a vast open- communal irrigation in the southeast- ness. Blanca, named for the snow that ern corner, or a pioneer wagon train. covers its summit most of the year, is (Feral horses still roam, as do prong- visible from almost everywhere in the horn antelope and the occasional valley and is considered sacred by the mountain lion.) Navajo. The range that Blanca pre- It’s also not hard to picture oneself sides over, the Sangre de Cristo, forms as a homesteader. The land is not free the valley’s eastern side. Nestled up but it is cheap—some of the cheapest against the range just north of Blanca in the . In many re- is Great Sand Dunes National Park. spects, a person could live here in this The park is an amazement: winds from vast, empty space like the pioneers the west and southwest lift grains of did on the Great Plains—except sand from the grasses and sagebrush you’d have a truck instead of a mule, of the valley and deposit the finest and some solar panels, possibly even ones, creating gigantic dunes. You can a cell-phone signal. And legal weed. climb up these dunes and run back If you are on disability or receive down, as I did as a child on a family veterans’ benefits, you might even get road trip and I repeated with my own by without having a job, though if you children fifteen years ago. The valley have no income, things can get tricky, tapers to a close down in New Mexico, especially when winter comes around. a little north of Taos. It is not hard to att Little knows the hard- Ted Conover is the author of Newjack: ships of living in the valley Guarding Sing Sing and the director of the M firsthand. He grew up one Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at . His last article of eight kids in Weirton, a former for Harper’s Magazine, “Cattle Calls,” steel- mill town in West Virginia, saw appeared in the October 2015 issue. combat in Operations Desert Shield

The crossroads of Grant Avenue and MM 14th Street, with Blanca Peak in the distance, San Luis Valley, Colorado (detail). All photographs from Colorado, May 2019, by Lisa Elmaleh for Harper’s MagazineFOLIO © The artist 23

Conover Folio Final 18.indd 23 6/19/19 5:43 PM 06192019165404 and Desert Storm, and then in 2013 lost home. But they also moved around. [garbage truck]. Pushin’ a broom at the his wife to C.O.P.D. and their house to “We did a lot of free camping on Lake grocery is honorable.” And then one a fire. He decided it was time to start a Como Road, off of 150, Smith Reser- morning in March, as he approached a new life. He knew about Colorado from voir, Mountain Home Reservoir. We general store in the little town of Blanca, sportsmen’s magazines such as Field & stayed at the trailer park [in Blanca]. I he saw Calvin Moreau, a formerly Stream and, from googling “cheap land was considered homeless, but I didn’t homeless person working for a group Colorado,” had an idea that the San consider myself homeless—I didn’t see called La Puente, affixing a posting for Luis Valley might be a good place to us as that bad off.” In October, Matt a job to a bulletin board. The flyer read: settle. Among his many skills was food bought a camper for the bed of the “Do you live in this area? La Puente’s preparation (he had managed a Pon- pickup, which allowed them to sleep Rural Outreach Services is in search of derosa Steakhouse) and, en route to a indoors instead of outside in a tent. It a case manager. No experience neces- food- service job at Adams State Univer- was starting to get very cold at night, sary. Military Service a plus. Requires sity in Alamosa— the biggest town in and winter temperatures in the San great communication skills.” the valley— he headed west in his Ford Luis Valley can drop to negative fifty “He was the first one to call,” says F-150 with his grown son, a paranoid degrees Fahrenheit. Judy McNeilsmith, La Puente’s director schizophrenic, in the passenger seat. But Matt, a jack-of-all-trades, could of program services. “And maybe more It was early 2016. To save money for find only odd jobs. It was not for lack of important, he was the first one to an- the land he hoped to buy, they essen- trying. His attitude toward work is: swer when I started calling some of tially lived out of Matt’s pickup truck. “Every job is honorable. I spent five them back. Being reachable is very im- From March to October, that was their years throwin’ trash in a side-loader portant for this job.” She and her boss, Lance Cheslock, La Puente’s longtime director, liked other parts of Matt’s background, too, including that he was a veteran and lived in the valley and was eager. Two months after hiring him, they agreed to let me accompany Matt as he did outreach on the flats—La Puente’s term for the interior of the San Luis Valley, lightly populated prairie lands outside towns and between the mountain ranges. I’m originally from Colorado, but people like Matt and his neighbors were unfamiliar to me. I know about moun- tain towns, and the national parks and forests that support the tourist economy, and I know a bit about ranching. But the expansive San Luis Valley—about the size of Massachusetts, nearly 8,000 acres— is different. Much of it is pri- vately owned and for sale as small, af- fordable lots. Poor people can become homesteaders of a sort. The poverty rate in the valley is between 20 and 25 per- cent. The election of Donald Trump had made me feel ignorant of the poor rural parts of my home state. And the kind of off-grid living practiced there went against my preconceived notions about off-grid living. In my mind, most off- gridders were trying to live lightly off the earth by reducing their needs, unplug- ging from both utilities and society’s expectations of achievement. The up- scale among them embraced things like the Taos-based Earthships, often expen- sive, fancifully designed houses that incorporate advanced technologies to recycle water and control indoor cli- mate. I imagined the less affluent among

24 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2019 Matt Little preparing to deliver firewood to homesteaders in the San Luis Valley

Conover Folio Final 15.indd 24 6/18/19 2:54 PM 06182019144029 them as neo- hippies with environmental near a coast but more probably came pickup truck, I saw that his shirt was consciousness: into the virtue of not from the heartland, many from the maroon. “I told Lance it couldn’t be needing much and appreciating the cre- South. And most were very poor. The those other colors, and we settled on ative reuse of discarded materials, com- San Luis Valley, with its cheap land, was this.” The outside of the truck was cov- munalism, tiny houses, and outsider art. a sort of magnet for these off- gridders. ered with mud; the inside was blanketed Some of the valley’s off- gridders were There were a few hundred of them in with dust and smelled of cigarettes. like this. But more of them were just total. Nationwide there are probably He’d already been to the local poor and wanted a different life—one several thousand people living off the spring to fill his water tank, a chore with more self-reliance, fewer bills, and, grid. No authoritative numbers exist, but he performed daily just past dawn. in many cases, lots of distance from off-grid life seems to be growing, often Now that he had a job, Matt had neighbors. They arrived pulling trailers in states with cheap land (Tennessee, rented a small place on the prairie for or with old R.V.s and set up camp. Some- Kentucky, Missouri), sunshine and himself and his son, but, like most times they would build something, but cheap land (Nevada, , Texas), homes in this part of the valley, often the trailer became the building and/or frontier appeal (Alaska, ). Matt’s house lacked running water. block, with shacks or Tuff Sheds added We filled the 275- gallon cubical plas- on. They drove Fords, not Toyotas. Their att and I talked on the tic tank in the bed of Matt’s truck, political views tended toward the Mphone the night before we drove a half hour back to his house Trumpian: anti government, pro-gun, first went out: Don’t wear to drop off the water, and then set off America- first, build-the-wall. Among tan or blue, he advised me, as those are on the day’s outreach rounds. them were doomsday preppers, Chris- the colors of county code inspectors During his first few weeks, the job tian home schoolers, self- proclaimed sov- and sheriff’s deputies. We met in a was almost entirely cold-calling, he ereign citizens, weed lovers, and Hillary parking lot in Blanca, and when I said. Now it was maybe two-thirds haters. Some might have previously lived climbed into the front of his dusty red that, and the rest involved checking

A barn on a homestead in the San Luis Valley FOLIO 25

Conover Folio Final 17.indd 25 6/19/19 3:38 PM 06192019144819 in on people he’d already met. We It’s where the house will go, the man generalized kind of unease, which, I would do that today. explained to Matt after we stopped. imagine, was less a feature of life on the First we checked in on Diana and Matt told the family that he was about American frontier one hundred years Wilene Hubbard- Hall, a recently mar- to do the same thing. He gave them a ago than it seems to be today. ried couple, who had arrived from Okla- card and said that when they were ready If the last presidential election taught homa a few months before, on the run he could bring some wood. me anything, it’s that journalists based from city life and corporate America. It is like the frontier but also not like in New York need to pay attention to life They called their little house at the the frontier. Matt believed that many outside cities. And I was further in- bottom of Blanca Peak the Muumuu households seem to have been attracted trigued by La Puente. The group runs Ranch. Among their many dogs was a to Colorado by the decriminalization of one of the country’s oldest rural home- Chihuahua dressed in a leopard-skin marijuana in 2012— before then, only less shelters. Cheslock told me that more sweater “so the hawks won’t eat him.” a handful of people had lived off-grid and more people who show up at the Next we visited Charles Leroy Harris, on the prairie. People commonly grow shelter, especially in winter, have been sixty, a retired plumber, and his wife, the plant themselves (legal to do in trying to live out on the prairie. In good Cate, who had left suburban small quantities, but the allowed quan- weather, the large area between the “after the gang shootings got too bad” tity is often exceeded), though where mountain ranges has many appeals: and now lived in a shed. An Air Force there’s a lot of marijuana there is some- incredible views, eagles and other wild- jet roared overhead, alarmingly close to thing to steal, which might account for life, and land you can buy for a song. the ground. Inside the shed, they had some of the pit bulls and guns I saw. Five-acre lots on the prairie are typi- added a loft where they sometimes slept, And other drugs aren’t far away: stop cally priced at $3,000 to $5,000. (Land more often after they found a rattle- the meth and the heroin pleads the costs a lot more around the mountain- snake inside the little marijuana green- sign outside a garden store in Alamosa. ous edges or in towns, where more peo- house they had built in front. We passed Where there are drugs there is para- ple live.) But only the hardy can make a family from Pueblo who were engaged noia. And in the valley, that paranoia it here year-round. The cheap land is in the very first act of settlement: scrap- takes a particular form: fear of the almost all treeless and miles from any- ing a patch of land clear with shovels. power of government manifests as a where, and the valley is famously windy.

26 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2019 Wilene and Diana Hubbard-Hall in front of their house

Conover Folio Final 15.indd 26 6/18/19 2:54 PM 06182019144029 Settlers will typically have a few solar a little harder to solve. I would never Geneva my predicament, she offered to panels hooked up to batteries for basics have the experience or resourcefulness sell me the twenty- five- foot camper such as lights and a refrigerator, but of a veteran outreach worker, but I could trailer in her driveway. It was twenty beyond that you need money for gaso- live out on the prairie and maybe under- years old—she had bought it used and line, you need water, and, when it gets stand a little bit better what that was kept it mostly for fishing vacations with cold, you need a reliable source of heat. like. The challenge was that there are family in the summer. It was in decent In 2015, La Puente realized that many no apartments or Airbnbs in the area shape. But where to park it out on the attempts to live on the prairie ended and virtually no market in rental prop- prairie? Her friend, Teotenantzin Ruy- with homesteaders presenting them- erties. I thought of buying land and bal, had a solution. Tona, as she is selves at the shelter. The workers there putting a trailer on it, which I probably known, is the longtime director of the heard stories of people skipping diabetes could have accomplished for $7,000 to La Puente shelter. She is in constant medication because they didn’t have gas $8,000. But everyone I floated this idea contact not only with shelter guests but to get into town, or running out of food, by warned me that during the weeks I also with people who make use of the or being isolated in abusive relation- wasn’t there, I should expect the trailer organization’s other services, including ships. While the valley has approxi- to get broken into, if not stolen. Such the outreach office. There she met a mately equal numbers of white and was the vulnerability of property on the family from the flats interested in mak- Hispanic people, poor people out on the flats—and the poverty of some who ing a little money. Frank and Stacy prairie tend to be white. But it was all lived out there. Gruber had five daughters who ranged kinds of people. Lance’s scouts reported In Alamosa, I had overnighted in the in age from just a few months to thirteen that an African- American woman and spare bedroom of a longtime La Puente years old. They homeschooled the chil- her four children were living in an un- volunteer, Geneva Duarte. When I told dren, and they also had six dogs. They finished house with little heat and no water. “We were getting stories like that and collectively thought, We need to be out there,” said Lance. “We should have known this long ago. But, like everyone else in the community who drives on paved roads, we hadn’t paid attention.” A grant was secured from a group called Caring for Colorado, with the premise that helping far-flung poor people to become engaged was likely to improve their health, even if that didn’t happen overnight. Rural outreach could begin with a load of free firewood, but then it would move on to other things: Did residents need help picking up a prescription? Could they use a ride to (or help making) a medical appoint- ment? So far, Lance told me, the initia- tive was off to a strong, if limited, start. The valley was so big that Matt Little couldn’t possibly cover the entire area. The first outreach worker they had hired had hurt himself loading wood and was out on disability. I was im- pressed by La Puente in just about every way. And I was curious about the appar- ent self-exile of some on the prairie. I wanted to learn about this kind of American wilderness—the one with people in it. I asked Lance if he could use another volunteer. He said yes.

o now I needed (1) a truck and S(2) a place to stay. For the first, my sister in New Mexico started scouring Craigslist and helped me buy a pickup truck from a used-car dealer in Española. The second problem was

Luke Kunkel, who has lived in the San Luis Valley for five years, drives several miles to fill his water tank at least once a week. FOLIO 27

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Conover Folio Final 15.indd 29 6/18/19 2:54 PM 06182019144030 were open to the idea of my parking a created there in the 1970s, when a before. Their daughters watched us small trailer on their property—where handful of giant historic ranches were through the windows as the dogs calmed there was almost always somebody bought up and then subdivided by de- down and we were able to talk. He had around—in exchange for a modest rent. velopers. These were the crudest kind been a house painter and drywaller but My idea was to spend at least a full of early subdivision, consisting of noth- hadn’t been able to work for a while. month out there, starting in mid- ing except a grid of dirt roads and the They pointed out a promising spot about December 2017. occasional street sign. Their creation two hundred feet from their house. I had hoped to tow the trailer with had been driven by a marketing inno- Matt and I leveled the ground and my truck, but the hitch ball was the vation: mail- order land. Ads in na- arranged bales of straw around the wrong size. A friend’s pickup was avail- tional newspapers and in publications perimeter to keep out some of the wind. able, but it had a breathalyzer attached such as TV Guide read: 5 acre ranch It was just above freezing on the mid- to the ignition, the result of a D.U.I., and, only $1995. $30 a month. relax or December afternoon, but the wind was alas, my friend had been drinking. So I play in an uncrowded world. Most blowing and by night it would be very called Matt Little, and a couple of hours of the five- acre lots had never been cold. Geneva had loaned me a small later he was hitching the camper to the built on, and, over time, most of the generator, and I’d brought some big jugs back of his pickup. signs that I imagined had once been of water. As it happened, the old-style Stacy asked the two oldest girls to electrical plug of my trailer wouldn’t give me a tour. Thirteen-year-old fit into the outlet in Matt’s truck, so T Trin and ten-year-old Meadoux to- my trailer’s brake lights and running HE PASSAGE FROM GRID TO gether introduced me to their three lights wouldn’t work. The solution to OFF-GRID IN COLORADO’S Nigerian Dwarf goats and a regular- this kind of problem, in the San SAN LUIS VALLEY TAKES PLACE IN size billy goat, a Vietnamese potbel- Luis Valley, is to get onto a dirt road lied pig named Pumbaa (super tame, as soon as possible, since the cops A SCENE OF ALPINE SPLENDOR slept with one of the girls for a while seldom patrol there. We were about in her bed), a cat, a fat rabbit, and fifteen minutes from the dirt roads, some chickens. The five dogs and once there we stayed on them for there had fallen over or otherwise dis- ranged from an aging St. Bernard the next hour. appeared. Some of the area could be (the largest) to a Chihuahua (the Though I was worried about what navigated by GPS apps such as Waze or most fierce). Through a window we effect the jostling might have on the Google Maps, but much information could see a cockatoo inside. Most of plates and glasses in the cupboards of was missing or wrong, or simply inac- the animals were rescues, Stacy said. the trailer, basically I was thrilled. The cessible because of weak or nonexistent When the front door opened, I could passage from grid to off-grid in the San cell- phone signals out on the flats. hear the cockatoo squawk and then Luis Valley takes place in a scene of “Yeah, those don’t really work,” Matt speak in a woman’s voice. Stacy said it alpine splendor. Looming in front of us told me as I riffled through the big also spoke in the voice of a man they was snow-covered Blanca. In much of DeLorme atlas. “You need to get one of deduced had been named George, be- Colorado, public land surrounds major these.” He held out a tattered map of a cause the woman said reassuring things peaks. But not in the valley: there are kind I’d never seen. “It’s a DIY Hunting such as, “It’s okay, George.” many sheds, trailers, and shipping Map,” he said, explaining that the brand “But sometimes George uses bad containers, both in current use and was well known to hunters in the Rock- words,” Meadoux informed me. abandoned, all around the skirt of the ies. “You can get one in Monte Vista.” “Oh, like what?” mountain, grandeur towering over the I took it and helped Matt navigate She didn’t want to say. Stacy dared, less grand. to Frank and Stacy’s place. It was a though. “George will say things like [she I was intrigued to see that Matt actu- mobile home with a lot of stuff around lowered her voice], ‘Shut the fuck up’ or ally needed to consult his map as we it: wooden pens for animals, a small ‘Shut the fucking door.’ ” The girls gig- went south—though the valley is huge, bulldozer, cracked solar panels and a gled. “We think George was abusive,” he knew where most things were. generator, discarded plastic toys, trash Stacy added. Down south near New Mexico, though, around a burn pit and elsewhere (there There was a lot to dust and straighten where I’d be staying, there were many is no garbage collection on most of the out after the long trip on dirt roads. And unmarked dirt roads, and often they prairie), and several dogs who ran up to then there was the fairly urgent task of weren’t in a perfect grid. Lance had our truck after Matt tapped the horn. figuring out how to keep warm in the loaned me a DeLorme road atlas, which The dogs were friendly and so was Stacy, trailer. In the short term, it was not a divided Colorado into ninety-four pages who emerged from a back door holding problem: it had forced-air heat, and at and offered a close-up of practically her youngest daughter, Raven, just a few Geneva’s its little battery had kept the every area. But the flats—five regions months old. Stacy told us to wait and trailer warm overnight. That evening, I of the prairie where people might try to she’d get Frank. He came out a few min- made my bed, a double, spread a heavy live, per Lance—were so huge that the utes later wearing a Denver Broncos T- blanket and comforter on top, and atlas was not up to the task. Specifi- shirt and clearly in pain. Several inches quickly fell asleep. cally, it did not include details on the of his colon had been removed at a It couldn’t have been more than a hundreds of dirt roads that had been hospital in Colorado Springs two weeks couple of hours before the heater stopped

Previous spread: An abandoned trailer, with Blanca Peak in the background (detail). Opposite page: The 30 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2019 Gruber family. Clockwise from top left: Frank, Stacy, Trin, Meadoux, Saphire, Kanyon, and Raven

Conover Folio Final 17.indd 30 6/19/19 3:38 PM 06192019144819 FOLIO 31

Conover Folio Final 17.indd 31 6/19/19 3:42 PM 06192019144819 running. And the lights wouldn’t come Back inside, I resolved to at least residents whom my rural- outreach pre- on. I knew the battery was dead. brush my teeth before getting in my decessor, Robert Lockwood, had got- I hadn’t yet set up a generator, so that truck and heading into town: I wanted ten to know. That afternoon, after wasn’t an option. But I had brought with to show myself that, though very cold, buying gasoline for my generator at the me an extremely heavy, polar-weight, I could still do most of what a normal nearest gas station, about forty minutes down sleeping bag that I had used in the person might do in the morning. The away, I began my outreach. Himalayas while reporting there. Shiv- jugs of water I’d brought were frozen, The day was cloudy and cold. In three ering, I got inside, covered the sleeping but somehow at night when the cold hours, I saw only one other vehicle on bag with a blanket and a comforter, and, had woken me I’d anticipated that: I the road and it was far away, visible to some degree, went back to sleep. was particularly proud of having thanks to the trail of dust that rose be- The problem, come morning, was in thought to put a filled water bottle into hind it. Most settlements were far from getting out of the sleeping bag. I was my sleeping bag so that it wouldn’t be one another. It took me a while to un- wearing thermal underwear, but the frozen when I awoke. I found the tooth- derstand which might be worth ap- temperature inside the trailer, according brush I’d left by the kitchen sink the proaching and which were abandoned. to a little thermometer, was negative night before, applied toothpaste, and . . . One obvious clue, once I thought to seven degrees Fahrenheit. I dressed as yow! With the bristles completely fro- look for it, was the road: a handful of quickly as I could and then headed out- zen, it felt like a jagged rock in my roads had plenty of tire tracks, but others side to pee . . . but condensation inside mouth. This was a bridge too far. I had none at all: nobody had been down the trailer had frozen the metal door found my keys, went out to the truck, them in a long time. Another clue, shut. I guessed I could kick it open if I prayed as the engine slowly turned over, which I was embarrassingly slow to ap- really needed to, but I didn’t want to then rejoiced when it started up. preciate, was whether smoke was com- damage it—the trailer had lasted My goal was to meet one new person ing out of a chimney pipe atop a trailer twenty years and this was only my first on the prairie every day. That might or shack or there was a generator run- day inside! With all the patience I could not sound very ambitious, but given ning outside. If a home had neither (and muster, I pushed around its edges until that I was a complete outsider I thought most places had neither), then nobody it swung open and I could step out. it was reasonable. There were some was there . . . and anybody who stopped

32 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2019 Outside the Gruber house

Conover Folio Final 15.indd 32 6/18/19 2:54 PM 06182019144030 his truck at the end of a driveway and showed me an ugly scar on his arm parked under an actual tree near three honked was a fool. For several early going up toward the pit. other cars, one with the hood up, its stops, that fool was me. battery connected to a solar panel that Other times, though, a place likely he next day, bumping down a rested on the ground. I stepped out and had somebody home who just didn’t T lonely road, I saw a small S.U.V. was thronged by four dogs, three of want to see me. That was the case turn into a driveway, so I them blue heelers (a type of Australian with a small compound (trailer and honked and followed it in. The driver cattle dog), a ranch dog popular in the shed) off a more-traveled road with a saw me and slammed on the brakes; area. Their owner, Paul Skinner, was an painted wooden sign out front that she wanted to know who I was. I got affable gay man in his fifties who said advertised piano lessons and listed a out and introduced myself. Two he had lived in his mobile homes (two phone number. I was attracted to it by African- American women looked at of them joined together in an L shape) the suggestion that the inhabitants me skeptically but then made the con- for more than twenty years. He invited appreciated the finer things in life, and nection to Robert of La Puente. They me inside and made me tea. Raised in also by the possibility that, appreciating signaled that I could follow them to northern , he suffered from a the arts, they might be less likely to their rickety mobile home. social- anxiety disorder and said he had shoot me. The place had no dogs found some relief on the prairie. He chained up in front, which was itself doted on “the girls,” as he called the a welcome sign. Heat from the chim- I dogs, and chatted happily about an ney, I couldn’t tell. The tire tracks T TOOK ME A WHILE TO annual winter trip out of the valley heading up the driveway, past the UNDERSTAND WHICH SETTLEMENTS to escape the cold and especially closed gate, looked pretty new, and I WERE WORTH APPROACHING AND the wind, the force of which, pushing could see part of a truck or S.U.V. through his windows and rocking behind the house. I honked, and a few WHICH WERE ABANDONED his trailer, had lately started to minutes later honked again. Nothing. make him anxious. He proudly But less than a mile away, I spot- showed me a form letter from La ted another place, with a Jeep Wag- The day was sunny and warm, and Puente, signed by Lance, thanking oneer idling out front. A man was in- we gathered around the back of the him for his recent donation of fifty side. I stopped a few yards away, rolled S.U.V. while three dogs on chains dollars. He may have been a man of down my window, and waved at him. snarled at me and the older woman told humble means, he said, but he had A moment later he cracked his own them to shut up. She was Rhonda Def- good values— including opposing Pres- window. I climbed out of my truck and, fley, she said, and this was Ke’Attrice ident Trump, which he said put him at in a show of my confidence and good Stanley, her daughter. odds with many of his neighbors. intentions, walked over to him. Rhonda had hair going straight up I complimented him on the two “Hi, I’m Ted, from La Puente,” I said. from her scalp and an animated style of trees on his property— a rarity, I could “Hey,” he said. His green Corona talking. She spoke of growing up in already see. Paul explained that they’d baseball cap matched the color of California and Chicago but eventually survive on their own if you could get his eyes. “burning out” on more populous places them past the first four or five years. I told him about the firewood. and coming here twenty- one years ago He’d watered them several times a “I don’t usually accept charity and because, she said, “I decided I wanted week to get them through the summer stuff,” he said. to be a recluse.” Ke’Attrice, who was heat, and gradually their roots grew “I get that,” I said. We talked for heavy, spoke of medical issues and “a deep enough that they could keep a while. He was just back from re- problem that’s breaking our hearts.” An themselves going. So they were a sign hab, he said. I asked for what, and abandoned place nearby belonged to a of constancy. (I would later hear an he said opioids. woman named Juanita MacArthur, acquaintance say he’d pay several “And how are you doing?” I asked. who had lived there even longer than thousand dollars extra for Paul’s place, “Okay so far. You want a soda?” He they had—“a pioneer,” the women “just to have those trees.”) offered me a Sprite, which I accepted. called her. Her husband had died a few It was cold and windy, and I had left years before. Recently she’d fallen, bro- few days later I saw a sheriff’s my jacket in the car. I should have ken her arm and hip, and finally been A car cruising slowly across the gone to get it but I kept hoping that discovered by the man who delivered prairie and decided to follow any minute he’d invite me into his her oxygen. She’d had to leave the prai- at a distance. As the cruiser approached truck, which was warm enough inside rie for an old-age home. And now, they’d a property where a new house was go- for him to be wearing a T-shirt. heard, she owed back taxes— $585 and ing up, I saw a woman jump into a red He didn’t. He liked to talk, I wanted $166 on her land and house, respec- truck and drive away quickly. The cops him to, and it wasn’t long before he tively. “She was a founder” of the com- didn’t follow her, but they did pull into told me how he had let a guy live in munity, lamented Rhonda, who feared her driveway. My truck had La Puente his place for a spell while he was gone. that now “it’s gonna be bought by an signs on its doors; I used that cover to Then, when he came back, he and the outsider.” I left them with a pile of wood. pull in after them. guy had gotten into an argument and The next day, I drove past a white- Only one of the guys in the cruiser the guy shot him. “Right here.” He painted front fence without a gate and was dressed like a cop; he was actually

e FOLIO 33

Conover Folio Final 17.indd 33 6/19/19 3:38 PM 06192019144819 some unchained dogs, including a scary- looking old white pit bull, but when I cracked open the door to my truck I could see their hearts weren’t in it. They started wagging their tails. A teenage girl came outside wearing a parka and slippers. I told her who I was but she wasn’t interested; she told me the pit bull had porcupine quills lodged in his face that they couldn’t get out. Also, he limped because last summer somebody had shot him in the leg. She ducked back inside to get her mom. The mother told me her name, Sam McDonald, accepted my offer of fire- wood, and told her son, also a teen- ager, to come help me unload it. While we did, she confessed that, “My hus- band, he’s the one been charged with child abuse.” I told her I knew that and was sorry. She had four teenagers, in- cluding two girls I hadn’t seen yet, one wearing a bulletproof vest. The other a system installed takes two or three of whom was disabled with a spinal one, shaggier and wearing a Denver months at best. Robert of La Puente said deformity. “And you all fit in there?” I Broncos jersey, was doing the talking. several people had placed boards with asked. Yes, she said, and the dogs came In the driveway listening was a man nails in their driveways to discourage the in at night as well. Her son slept in a who had been working inside the new unannounced visits. reclining chair, and one daughter slept house. No, he was saying, he didn’t Draconian enforcement had also on the couch. She gestured toward know about permits. The owner wasn’t energized a small sovereign- citizen what was probably the most beat-up there—she’d just remembered an er- movement, which the local police minivan I had ever seen, and said, rand she needed to run in town. Well, feared—and Robert did, too. I knew “Our biggest problem right now is that just tell her she’s got three days to come there was a road nearby where code- front tire.” It was flat and shredded. I in and see us if she didn’t pull the per- enforcement officers would no longer asked if I could drive her or a kid into mit, said the shaggy guy, and he didn’t travel, because they had been shot at town with it, and she said yes, as soon think she had. He gave the construc- during a visit not long ago. One man as she raised a little money. I gave her tion worker a pamphlet with county in the area had, along with others, de- my cell-phone number, and she asked building- code information. After I in- clared himself a “common- law marshal,” if I might just spin back by in a day or troduced myself, he gave another one and on Facebook advised that it was two, since they were out of minutes on to me. And then they left. time for people to “form your militias. . . . their phone. I promised I would. “So those are the code- enforcement The time has come for the masses to As I drove away, I paused once to guys?” I asked the worker. He nodded rise.” (A promoter of the sovereign- look back at the house. They lived just and told me that Jinx, the woman in the citizen movement who had advised the a five-minute walk from the Rio Grande pickup truck, had very much not wanted Bundys in Oregon had heard about this canyon. Down by the water there were to meet them because the permits—for “resistance” and spoken on a nearby Indian petroglyphs. Beyond the canyon a septic system, for a driveway—cost one-lane bridge in October 2015.) rose a gentle mountain. On all sides money and required expensive additions As it happened, the “common- law was golden grass. And they were surviv- to the work plan. “But once you’re on marshal” had since been charged with ing, it would seem, on thin air. their radar. . . ,” he said. child abuse, as had his politically like- Matt Little and others at La Puente minded neighbor. The two were now in rank had helped me set up my had warned me about this. Costilla jail in San Luis. The first man’s fam- F generator, and now my heat County, where I was, had been particu- ily had left the area, but the second was slightly more reliable. But larly harsh lately with code enforcement. man’s had not. I knew they lived some- I’d still had to venture outside in the In the most extreme examples, code- where nearby, and the next week I extreme cold of 2 a.m. to change pro- enforcement personnel would show up, pulled up to their place. pane bottles. Then, during night armed and wearing bulletproof vests, at It was the first dwelling I had seen three, the last bottle ran out. I needed a residence that had been built years that was totally without windows— more propane, and I needed more before, issue the occupants a summons basically a wooden box. In lieu of a gasoline. I could have also used a for not having a septic system, and give regular doorknob and lock it had a hasp shower. And it was time to check in them ten days to put one in or face a for a padlock that could be set when the with La Puente and get more fire- daily fine of $50—though getting such occupants were away. Outside were wood. I drove into Alamosa.

34 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2019 An abandoned property in the San Luis Valley

Conover Folio Final 17.indd 34 6/19/19 3:38 PM 06192019144820 Tona was easy to find in the homeless his business cards at the man’s gate. Matt should not be an ongoing thing for any- shelter, which she ran. I told her about told us what had happened then: “Come one. He disapproved of people taking my challenges keeping warm at night, back around the next week and all my government money who could get a job. and she suggested I get a Buddy heater— business cards are gone. Okay, so I left But then he qualified that by saying that a small propane unit to keep me warm more wood. Next week I come around I single moms are a special case: it makes if the main furnace went off. I was sold get a note on a piece of paper. Says, no sense for them to get a job just to pay on the name alone! Lance Cheslock ‘Thanks for the wood. Tom.’ I think, for day care they could do themselves. had told me to be careful about using a cool. So I continue dropping off wood, Speaking of job- seeking, he told me he heater that wasn’t vented to the outside, and the Tuesday after Christmas I got thought the hoops the government because of the possible buildup of carbon an envelope, says ‘The Wood Guy’ on it. makes applicants jump through are monoxide. But apparently Buddy heaters Inside, on a Christmas card, it says, crazy: he had to attend a job-hunting were quite efficient, and I knew my ‘Thanks for the wood.’ ” Matt still seminar in Fort Garland. “The time and trailer was far from airtight. hadn’t met the man, whom he thought money I spent on that, I could have been I joined Matt Little for his weekly must be a veteran, but we agreed that out looking for a job.” check-in with Judy McNeilsmith. He this counted as progress. So it was interesting, a few days later, had a new story to tell, of trying to make Politics wasn’t discussed much around when the question of asking for help contact with an extremely reclusive La Puente, and Matt never brought up came up at a La Puente all-staff meeting. resident who, the only time Matt had presidential politics. He said he was non- Once a month, around fifty staffers at- seen him, discharged a shotgun into the partisan. I knew he valued self-reliance, tend these meetings, gathering in a cir- air to show he was serious about wanting because he practiced it. Back in West cle of folding metal chairs and old Matt to leave. Even so, Matt had per- Virginia, he’d told me, he’d hunt deer couches in the meeting room of sisted, returning every week or so to and turkeys for meat to feed his family. St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Ala- leave a small pile of wood and some of He agreed with Trump that food stamps mosa before work. Lance Cheslock is

Maverick, a resident of the valley, in front of his Datsun camper FOLIO 35

Conover Folio Final 15.indd 35 6/18/19 2:54 PM 06182019144047 always there, but often he does not pre- That week he told the story of a girl judgment, you are unable to give help side. Rather, he asks Tona or another named Raven whose family moved out without judgment,” she said. I thought trusted lieutenant to call on people from to the valley from Missouri after their that sounded reasonable. But Matt dis- the various La Puente initiatives to offer house burned down. The place they agreed, quietly. I was sitting next to a brief report and, if possible, a story. It moved into was a bit shy of the 600 him. “No,” he muttered. “That was the falls to Matt Little, who is no fan of large square feet required by code, so Matt exact situation I was in a year ago. I’ve meetings or public speaking, to report led a group of church volunteers who got my gun and my tent and the woods, on rural outreach. built an addition to the house. He had and I’m going to take care of myself. I Though Matt is very much aligned worked in construction for many years like helping all varieties of people,” he with La Puente’s goals, his worldview and so had been the perfect person to said, “but the target I like looking for is differs from that of some of the other lead the effort. the people who help themselves, which workers. He squirms when others refer Later in the meeting, one of Lance’s most of my people do.” to “clients” whom they “serve.” managers led a group- relations exercise. “They’re not my clients, they’re my Everyone was asked to stand or sit, she t would have been lonely living out neighbors,” he insists. And he dislikes explained, according to how they an- Ion the prairie by myself. Crossing the idea that he’s serving them. “Serv- swered questions such as: “If you found its undulations in my truck in the ing is what they do in restaurants,” he yourself without money, support, or evening, I sometimes felt as if I were on says. “I’m not serving, I’m just helping housing, would you ask for help?” Most an ocean, so long were the views. Dis- out.” His rough and dirty hands, dusty of those present said yes, which was the tant lights from isolated trailers looked boots, and worn jacket make him stand answer the manager was after. “If you like bobbing dinghies, their survival out in the group at La Puente. are not able to accept help without precarious. I was always glad, at the end of the day, to drive back to Frank and Stacy’s and enter my little trailer. The vast surroundings made the hum- blest shelter—Tuff Shed, tent, cab of a truck—feel quite cozy. First to wel- come me as I approached would be the dogs who swarmed my pickup, from slobbery, friendly Tank the St. Ber- nard to Little Bear the Chihuahua who, perpetu ally failing to recognize me, nipped at my ankles. Then anywhere from one to four of the five daughters would knock on my trailer door to see how I was doing. They delivered pictures drawn with crayons and told me tales of what they’d seen on the prairie that day. The pair of ravens that perched on the wooden fences were so regular that the girls had named them Coo and Caw. Each farm animal belonged to one of them. Kanyon was very proud of Pumbaa, her pot bellied pig, who would roll over for her to scratch his bristly stomach. They cackled when Goldie, one of the Nigerian goats, leaped into the back of my truck when I opened the rear gate to retrieve a bag of groceries or when they held up a container full of strawberry yo- gurt for the goat and his beard dripped pink. They reported on the latest bad word uttered by George the cockatoo. Among their chores was feeding animals. This included the two horses of an elderly neighbor, Jack Brown, two miles away. Often Stacy or Frank drove the girls over for this chore, and a couple of times I went with them.

36 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2019 Kanyon (left), her pig, Pumbaa, and her sister Saphire (right)

Conover Folio Final 17.indd 36 6/19/19 3:38 PM 06192019144835 Jack, a former truck driver from Ne- season, they would accompany their settle on. Three years later, using an braska, was a religious Christian. His dad elk hunting. At night they’d oc- inheritance from her estranged step- place was bare-bones: a trailer, a shed, casionally be left alone to babysit. father, she bought the mobile home. I a truck, a pen for horses with a big roll They knew where the guns were, should knew that Trin and Meadoux were of hay next to it. Sometimes, when the they ever need them. proud to live on the prairie but also that weather allowed, the girls would ride One day, when I told the two oldest life for their family was very hard, with their bikes to his horses. I needed to take a walk and get some few creature comforts and a constant When I’d returned from a time away, exercise, they offered to accompany me, shortage of money. The girls appreci- they told me what had happened the along with their dogs, and two goats, on ated trips to Denver to stay with their week before. There were some hills leashes. Trin, the oldest, taught me aunt, or even to nearby Antonito, where between Jack’s place and theirs, but the names for plants I knew only by sight: they could get a good signal on Trin’s girls were strong. The bikes were noth- those were yuccas, these were chico smartphone. (Most places on the prairie ing fancy, and Meadoux’s lacked brakes, bushes, that was a sage. And the girls had poor cell service.) They watched but out here that didn’t really matter . . . identified things that were mysterious to TV and knew what was happening in until that day: riding into a stiff headwind, me, such as the hoofprints feral horses pop culture. When I shared a story on they crested a hill and saw a small herd of left on dirt roads or holes where a Facebook about New York City teens pronghorn antelope resting just below. ground-dwelling owl might live. I wor- who had their own fashion sense, Trin The wind was so strong the herd didn’t ried that they weren’t getting as much was the first to like it. hear them, and some didn’t see them of an academic education as kids who Stacy at first was shy about inviting until it was too late. It was a fairly soft went to school. But, thanks in part to me into their mobile home because collision, from the sound of it: Meadoux the efforts of their mom, they were ex- often it looked as though a hurricane said the pronghorn she hit bounded away perts in the natural world around them. had hit. But slowly the family became as if nothing happened. Trin said, “I Five years earlier, using settlement more comfortable with me. We had a crashed my bike, but I wasn’t hurt because money from an accident she’d been in, few things in common: we were fans I was wearing my parka and I rolled.” Stacy had bought about thirty-five of the Denver Broncos, and we were Though young, both girls were ex- acres. Her idea was that this would be readers. Frank loaned me a couple of perienced with guns. Trin had her own enough not only for a future home site solar panels and car batteries for my .22 rifle, and Meadoux a BB gun; in but for each of her girls to have land to trailer and helped me wire them up.

A road on the flats, what locals call the interior of the San Luis Valley (detail) FOLIO 37

Conover Folio Final 15.indd 37 6/18/19 2:54 PM 06182019144048 He helped me fix a flat tire on my of the family menagerie, as was a sec- you know what they say about land,” truck and drew maps with his finger in ond St. Bernard, a female rescued he said. “They’re not making any more the sandy soil to show me how to get from a home in Colorado Springs. of it!” The lots are now mainly sold to places I wanted to visit. Some of the ducks, chickens, and online, on the sites that pop up when And yet . . . they loved guns and geese had made the move, but many you search for “cheap land Colorado,” hated Hillary, while I felt pretty much more had died in the interim. Jack was as Matt and many others had done. It the opposite. One night, after they not well and would soon be diagnosed is even sold on eBay, where one serial shared a dinner of potato soup, we were with cancer. The McDonalds, the fa- seller maintains that the location of a all watching some YouTube videos of ther still in jail awaiting trial for child particular lot doesn’t make much dif- Casper, Wyoming, Stacy’s hometown, abuse, were thinking hard about leav- ference: “There are no rare finds here, on TV. (Their solar power was usually ing the area before school started in it is all the same views, sage brush, ample enough to power the television, the fall—possibly for Alabama, where same rattlesnakes.” the refrigerator, and the lights.) I sat on they had come from years before. An- But to me these lots are not all the the couch with an over-affectionate other neighbor told me her cousin was same. A few of them had neighbors white boxer named Nae Nae and the visiting to withdraw from her addic- visible, and you wanted to size up blue heeler mix named, in a nod to tions to meth and heroin. Paul was neighbors. A few have been occupied Stacy’s ancestry, Lakota. Next to the planting a garden and thinking of before and have junk left on them. A couch was the parents’ bed, draped getting his last teeth pulled. Rick, also few of them are situated near enough with other dogs, including the giant, in the area, had sent out a group mes- a cell tower that you’d get more than filthy, slobbering St. Bernard, and at sage on Facebook warning of the a single bar of signal. A few are near a least three of the girls. I winced at the mountain lion he had seen on his prop- road that might see several cars a day occasional ear-splitting shrieks of the erty. Rhonda and Ke’Attrice, before (with the associated dust). I thought cockatoo, but the family hardly long, would report that Rhonda’s house about these things and about where I noticed— they were much more com- had been robbed while she was away; might like to buy. I couldn’t entirely fortable with the chaos of life than I disillusioned, they said they might put explain why: I wasn’t going to move am. I make plans and then try to ar- it up for sale and move to Alaska. out here, and it wasn’t my wife’s idea range my calendar and bank account At La Puente, Matt was spending of a nice vacation property. And yet, and relationships so that I can carry out less time introducing himself to new and yet . . . those plans. They live hand to mouth people and more time responding to Matt was starting to build his new and don’t make many plans. They don’t the requests of those he’d already met— home. It was on a piece of land where, believe in schools and formal educa- his client list (though he’d never call it almost certainly, nobody had ever lived tion. They believe in weed and don’t that) had grown by word of mouth. (though someone may have hunted or drink. They are exiles, or self-exiles, Months before, he’d bought ten acres at grazed animals there). He had machin- while I am a city guy trying to fashion the foot of Blanca Peak for $8,500. ery, in particular his truck; he’d dragged a bridge to the far margins. I drove up to see him at his new place a heavy tow hitch from a neighbor’s on a beautiful afternoon with a warm mobile home to clear a driveway through hristmas and New Year’s came sun and a moderate breeze. The gigantic the sagebrush. But now, to prepare the C and went. After about a month sky above had room for several weather ground for laying blocks for the shed he’d on the prairie I returned to my systems: to the east it looked like storm ordered, he was using a shovel. He life in New York—but I left behind the clouds, overhead it was high cirrus, and paused when I drove up and sounded so trailer, paid my rent each month ($50 a different situation that had not quite proud when he laid out his vision: The when I wasn’t there; $150 when I was), declared itself was manifesting over the corral would go here. His La Puente and made three visits before May San Juans to the west, where most of pickup and his own Ford F-150 would 2018, when I returned for the sum- the valley’s weather came from. To me be parked over there. Trash pit yonder. mer. I had missed the views and the that sky said, Wherever you are, you are The equipment had changed from the space, the low density and the stars, not stuck. There’s a different situation, 1900s, but the motions were essentially and the quiet, as well as the people new possibilities, new weather, a short the same: Matt was a homesteader, with who felt at home amid a minimal drive away. all the beauty and promise and drama number of other people. The amazing thing was that a per- and uncertainty that implied. Much had changed in a short time. son, even a person of very limited We hung out for a while and then I Frank and Stacy and their family had means, could actually buy a piece of headed back south. As the sun began moved about seven miles away to a these vast acres of land—some of it to set, the prairie grasses took on a property that had a small house and a farmland with pumped irrigation but golden glow. There was an old- timer well. They were buying it from an- most of it just undisturbed, primeval— I’d met and liked whose neighbor’s other couple, who would remain on for not too much money. Not that this place was for sale. It had a well on it, the property in a trailer. I was invited would be a smart investment in terms and a septic tank, and a trailer in to relocate to a corner of the new land of return: Paul had told me he’d paid pretty rough shape. The owner felt it with them, and I did. about $2,300 for his five acres twenty- was worth $20,000, but the old-timer Jack had gifted Meadoux and Trin five years ago, which was probably opined that “out here, it’s worth what his two horses, which now were part close to what it was worth today. “But somebody will pay.” n

38 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / AUGUST 2019

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