The Baca Campus

Watercolor by Eric Karnes		The Baca Campus is one of the truly unique features of Colorado College. The campus includes a lodge, three townhouses, a seminar building, and 300 acres of wilderness, situated at the northern end of the San Luis Valley, at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. It is 175 miles from the main campus in Colorado Springs (approximately a 3 hour drive). The flexibility of the block plan at CC allows classes to retreat to "a wonderful, natural setting" for up to a week at a time.


Colorado College's History at the Baca Grande	About the Crestone/Baca Area
CC's experiences at the Baca began in 1987 when Professor Joe Gordon led his English class on a field trip to facilities owned by the Aspen Institute in Crestone, Colorado. The students loved the experience and soon the College leased three condominium units and the conference center from the Aspen Institute. In 1990, with the special support of Trustee Emeritus Jerome McHugh, CC purchased one townhouse, the conference center, and adjacent land. In September of 1992, the 7,000 square foot lodge was built with help from then Trustee Edith Gaylord Harper and the El Pomar Foundation. In 2003, a computer laboratory was added. The Baca Campus has proven to be an important part of CC's experience and is continually filled to capacity by students and friends of the College.	At 8,000 feet, this beautiful region rests within the San Luis Valley of Colorado. The first inhabitants of the area were the Ute while nomadic groups of Capote and Comanche people traveled through the land. In 1823, Mexico granted 600,000 acres of land to Juan Maria Cabeza de Baca. This grant was made in an effort to secure claims against the governments of Texas and the United States. In 1860, the Luis Maria Baca Grant Number Four became what is now the Baca Grande development. When gold was discovered in the area, the town of Crestone was born.

	This region is known for its breathtaking sunsets and pristine natural habitats. Ponderosa pine forests, aspen glades, spruce-fir forests, and finally, alpine tundra climb the mountain peaks. Bear, deer, elk, and mountain lions as well as many varieties of birds make their homes in this area.

Description of Facilities
The Baca Campus is situated at 8,500 feet above seal level at the north end of the San Luis Valley. The view is magnificent-the Sangre de Cristo Mountains rise to 14,000 feet to the east and the Great Sand Dunes and Mount Blanca are fifty miles to the south. The Rio Grande River connects the campus with the oldest civilizations in North America.


Photo Credit: Dick Hilt The Conference Center The sun warms both the outdoor terrace and the quarry-tiled lobby. Inside the center, two hexagonal meeting rooms are designed to accommodate either large (180) or small (60) groups in a sky-lighted area which is equipped with comfortable chairs, conference tables, a small computer lab, and audio-visual equipment. The conference center is located a short walk over Crestone Creek from the townhouses.
The Lodge The lodge provides housing for both students and faculty as well as the library and campus office. The two student lodges feature full kitchens, four bedrooms each with four beds, two bathrooms, and a living room with fireplace. The faculty apartment has two bedrooms.

	The Townhouses The townhouses offer accommodations in Southwestern design. There are two student townhouses with three bedrooms apiece; each bedroom has three beds and its own tiled bath, modern kitchens, and living rooms with vaulted ceilings and wood burning fireplaces. The faculty townhouse is a two-story, two bedroom facility.
Photo Credit: Suzi Nishida
The Desert Sage The restaurant provides food service to the community, as well as to CC students, special spiritual retreats, and workshop groups who visit the area. It is also a gathering place for community events.
Photo Credit: Suzi Nishida
Baca Campus Reservation Policy
A definitive set of use priorities for the Baca campus was created by an extended form of the Southwest Studies committee (including faculty representing each division of Colorado College, senior staff, select administrators, and any other interested faculty and administration; this group was then titled the "Baca Committee." They met over a period of three years and formulated the following "Baca Policies and Procedures/Priority Usage Guidelines."
I. Priority Usage a. CC classes receive first priority, and are booked on a "first come, first served" basis. A faculty, administrative, or staff advisor must accompany all student groups. These classes all receive an orientation given by the Baca manager. Reservations for courses may be made up to one year in advance. Because of increasing demand on very limited space, this one-year limit is strictly enforced. In order to allow a greater diversity of faculty/class visits to the Baca, a limit of one reservation per faculty member has been imposed. This does not include team-taught classes. (If there is more than one yearly request per faculty, those requests are wait listed, and are filled if no other single request is made for the time slot. 1) Reservations are made through the Baca Manager. b. Affiliated campus groups (e.g., Writing Center, Shove Council, ORC, International Students, etc.) have second priority. The Baca campus covers only the cost of housing. As with guideline "a," the group that is booked must have a regular orientation from the manager, and be accompanied by college faculty, administrator, or staff advisor. In-house (CC) conferences and departmental retreats come under this heading. (This was done to give organized student groups a greater feeling of equality and participation, particularly during non-academic space: during block breaks.) c. Outside conferences, groups, or private visits (CC staff, administration, and faculty, etc.) shall have third use priority. These guests will be charged a fee determined by: 1) housekeeping costs; 2) utilities costs; 3) size of group; 4) season; 5) length of stay. Reservations in this category will be made on the first day of each block and will be accommodated (as in groups "a" and "b") according to "first come first served" and space available.
II. Orientations An informational orientation is required for all student classes and campus groups going to the Baca. This orientation includes logistical instruction (food, housing, transportation, immediate resources, crisis protocols, legal (Pathfinder) issues, and offers the opportunity for students and faculty to ask questions about the campus and surrounding area. It is given by the Baca manager and must be done no later than three working days prior to the group's scheduled departure. These orientations last anywhere from 20 to 60 minutes, depending on the size of the group and its familiarity with the use obligations.
III. Reservations and Cancellations Because of departmental scheduling of classes (this includes summer session classes), reservations are not made more than a year in advance. Demand is very high for a limited amount of space. The Baca can accommodate up to two classes at the same time, if one of the classes has no more than 18 students. Again, it is done on a" first come, first served" basis, and there is no such thing as permanent reservations or preferential treatment of certain courses, although some professors regularly make reservations for the same courses one year in advance. A wait-list is kept as necessary Cancellations usually occur for three reasons: the weather, faculty illness, and inability of majority of the class to leave the Springs campus due to adjunct classes, sports, jobs, etc. Cancellations usually occur on very short notice, which makes for difficult replacement of wait-listed classes. However, many of these classes have chosen to go with this short notice.

Contact Information: The campus is in use (by CC classes and groups, and both CC and non-CC conferences and meetings) year-round, and is managed by the Hulbert Center. For more information, contact Suzi Nishida at (719) 389-6647 or SNishida@ColoradoCollege.edu.

Map of the Baca Campus


Baca Experiences
The educational uses of this scenic and richly historical site are almost endless. Biology classes study the flora and fauna; geology students examine the landforms; cultural astronomy classes view the breathtaking skies; and English classes draw upon the serenity and beauty for inspiration. Nearly 2,000 students and faculty utilize the Baca each year. President Richard Celeste - The overwhelming popularity of the Baca campus among our students and faculty, in particular, is no surprise. What a stunning setting for learning, especially field study. What a uniquely peaceful place for reflection and leaving behind the buzz of the everyday world. What an unparalleled mix of spiritual, agricultural, artistic, and ethnic communities. Not to mention the best star-gazing around. A recent student - I would never have met these people had it not been for this class. After Baca, I feel like I really know them. Mario Montaño, Professor of Anthropology - During their stay a la Baca, students encounter people, material culture, language and history, and in doing so, they begin to understand the research procedures involve in solving their cultural and historical research problems. Dan Tynan, Professor of English - I admit it from the start: I’m a Baca addict. I use it whenever I can for whatever course I’m teaching. The first time I used it, I had no idea what the effects might be. A student asked me if I would serve as faculty sponsor for a group of students organizing a theme house. I said yes. Perhaps I should have just said no. Since then, I’ve been to the Baca campus many times, although not as many times as I would like. I’ve been hindered only by bad timing in booking reservations or by the births of children, including a set of twins. In the spring of ’92, Joan Stone and I taught a course called Spiritual Journeys in Poetry; naturally, we took our class to the Baca for four days.


Photo Album of Colorado College Classes at the Baca


Jane Hilberry's Class Experience at the Baca

The Baca Grande Colorado College's Campus located at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the San Luis Valley
*^{^{^Description}}*	^{Reservation Policy}	Photo Album	Facilities
^{History and the Crestone Area}	^{^{^{Contact Information}}}	Writings at the Baca	Maps


Writings at the Baca
Quests at the Baca Dan Tynan [This article was written for the Winter, 1993 edition of la Tertulia.] I have many images from that time. As part of course requirements, students kept their own journals on the readings, not necessarily on their own spiritual quests, though Joan and I would welcome such jottings. After class one day, I took a walk along Willow Creek up towards the big mountains. In the quiet of the breaking spring, I came upon students absorbed in the spaces along the creek, apparently writing in their journals. Maybe they were just spacing out but at that point the line between spacing out and meditating becomes invisible. To see students absorbed in this way should not have surprised me, but it did. It had something to do with the place; the place invited them to immerse in the quiet of their thoughts. Some, at least, accepted the invitation. It came to me that this look of absorption can come across a face when it’s fully engaged in a creative or maybe even a spiritual moment. Spiritual communities quietly enliven the Baca Grande. There’s a Carmelite monastery, a Zen Buddhist community, an Ashram, among others. In connection with the subject of our course, Joan and I arranged a visit to the Zen Center. In the cool starkness of the temple, we sat on the floor and listened to members of the community explain the purpose of their spiritual practice. They explained how they had arrived along many different routes; they explained that even after the journey delivered them to the Center, they could not always stay there. Sometimes they had to leave, sometimes they came back. We sat in the stark prayer hall; we listened.		Afterwards, we toured the grounds, the kitchen, the meditation room. Gisela delivered from the kitchen trays of cookies and punch. We ate. We heard more of the rigors of the meditative life. Students asked questions. Was this the kind of spiritual journey they might like to take? Would they like getting up at three a.m. to meditate, motionless on the prayer pillow, for four hours? Would they like the kitchen duty, the rigors of the knife and ovens? Eating, living, working, praying in the community of discipline? What about politics? Wasn’t this copping out? How could a person do it, year after year? Can you romanticize this life? Do you want it forever? I could do it forever, one said. I could never do it, said another. Students seemed different, somehow, though I probably couldn’t say exactly how. We enjoyed-that’s right, enjoyed-the oral finals we gave. Groups of two or three students would listen as Joan or I read a poem which we had not studied in class, but which had been written by one of the authors we had studied. We listened, barely able to contain our joy, as students (not all of them by the way) pieced together the language, the imagery, the sounds of the poems to identify the authors for all the best reasons. After the exams, on the last night of the course, we had dinner at the faculty townhouse. Joan had suggested a read-around; each of us chose a favorite poem to read to the group. Who would go first? Joan would. Then who? Students fidgeted, giggled a little, took a long time warming up. Once they got going, though, we couldn’t stop them. Eventually, people went to bed, the circle got tighter; the read-around went round. As you can imagine, it was not that easy to leave the Baca, so Joan and I decided we would not. Ever. We decided that we would simply call the dean and tell that if he wanted us to continue teaching, he could send as many students as he wanted down to the Baca.




Crestone, Colorado by Rebecca Laroche and Sonnet for Juan by Liz Lewis are both printed in Poems from the Baca Grande, a publication of the Hulbert Center Press. Laroche and Lewis are member of Poetry West, an organization that holds its yearly retreat at the Baca. Both poems are inspired by the beauty of the Baca.

		Crestone, Colorado Rebecca Laroche The kind of town where your brother drives by as you talk, heads almost touching, with his ex, insists you ride in the back of his loaded pickup. The kind of town where everyone knows if your crops are failing, where the store clerk hugs you, asks you how your father's doing. The kind of place where you run into a neighbor in the post office who tells you things are both great and scary and you know just what she means. Two strangers flit through the whole-foods store, the Asian import shop, and finally alight at the Rainbow Cafe. here they have iced chai and someone shows their pictures of Ground Zero. A Signorelli beauty, so young, pours them their tea and a guy with an acoustic guitar tests the mike in the room so small it shares a storefront with a video store. Here the toddler daughter of the Marian-faced waitress eats rice cakes, ignores her crayons and shows the customers her bare bottom, and the waitress looks more worn than she did before.
Photo Credit: Suzi Nishida Sonnet for Juan Liz Lewis You've memorized a black of mountains, washed in watercolors of early May, taught words for the science of landscape - bajada, terrace, congomerate, dunes. Acequias dug by the baptized Spanish, ecstatic cries of horses coming to drink, the overflow of human histories I read. Years past you loved a woman who vanished into the airbrushed light. I will write it: a woman escaped into a valley, leaving no footprints, the gullies gone dry. Vultures and ravens found no bones, no flesh. You arrived in the trees ahead of her, breathless, certain, waiting to read this lore.
		Photo Credit: Liz Lewis



Trial by Silence A mute, judicial absence fills the valley. No boots track the snow, and blades of yucca stand guard in clusters. The rabbitbrush clumps are wigged with the same dry powder, if it please the court of quietude, the juniper jury of windless attitudes where mule deer hide. And where the arroyo runs, a leafless line of lumbering cottonwoods catches the news- a stillness will be hung in the air, and a dog will bark steam at the coldness of it all. -David Mason, Professor of English		Photo by Joe Gordon