Life changing spring break in New Mexico

By Bill Vossler

Larry Schug says Ghost Ranch changed his life.

“Of all the things I’ve ever done, going to Ghost Ranch was the best, for spirituality, showing that the divine surrounds us in the natural world, for beauty of every kind, for artistic events: classes in writing, photography, pottery, and more. And that is just the beginning” he said.

Larry is having a joyous time at one of his favorite places in the entire world, Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. The photo gives an idea of the beauty of the place. Contributed photo

While working at St. Benedict’s University in St. Joseph in 1996, Larry heard of the college’s alternate spring breaks for students to work in inner cities, with the homeless, and food shelves.

“They also designed a trip for environmental work, but I didn‘t know about that,” Larry said.

But his wife, Juli, who worked at St. Ben’s, did.

“She saw a notice about spring break service trips, and suggested I go on one. So I attended the meeting, and discovered the trip was to do environmental service work in New Mexico, just up my alley. And I wanted to travel.”

He had no idea about leading students or teaching them, but he thought he’d try the trip, even though he had to pay his own way and take vacation time.

The first time–and all other times he saw Ghost Ranch–he felt fulfilled.

“A small-town guy getting to the desert and seeing something so fantastically beautiful and amazing like that just blew me away. It had a positive vibration to it too, where everybody was so kind and helpful,” he said.

But before he could go, he had to choose 10 students to travel with him.

“I interviewed each student for one hour, checking their majors, past records, telling them what we’d do down there, answering questions, determining whether they seemed like nice people that could work with others,” Larry said. “It was hard to say ‘no’ to people who wanted to go. But I learned I could do that. Students included freshmen through seniors, and we wanted five males and five females, but often more women went than men.”

Each trip to Ghost Ranch required nine days.

“Two travel days each way, and five working days,” Larry said. “While there each time we got a day to hike, which the students enjoyed most. We hiked for 20 hours all over the beauty of the canyon where Ghost Ranch is located. They loved that. We would sightsee, ride horseback, or travel into Santa Fe. That was part of it too.”

But the real point of traveling to Ghost Ranch was to work.

“Many of the 28 consecutive years I went to Ghost Ranch we weren’t sure what we would be doing when we got there. Because Ghost Ranch was a working ranch, with cattle, horses, chickens, and sheep, we worked with some of them. If students hadn’t had much experience with large animals like horses, they started by standing outside the fence and sticking grass through the fence so the horses could eat. Once a blind girl came, and she loved being by the horses, and the horses really took to her. When she came they would run over to the fence to her. That was awesome too. And it built from there.”

Other work they did over the years included cutting wood for firewood.

“As well as working on buildings, in the garden, digging many acequias, or irrigation ditches owned and run by the communities, planting trees, digging out unwanted vegetation, building a log cabin out of log-like sandbags, an experiment to see if they held up in the weather. Whatever we were asked to do, we did. Many different projects,” Larry said.

The students loved the work, too, Larry said. They also loved the culture, everything from biology to zoology. Because they were all open-minded, they had nothing but positive experiences.

One other aspect of the trip was building relationships.

Looks like the students, along with Larry at the bottom center, are having a good time at Ghost Ranch. Contributed photo

“Every evening two people from the group were in charge of an activity of some sort–making cookies, having crying sessions, making dream catchers, looking at the stars–we did that a lot–but anything the students could think of, and in the process learning about each other. We talked about everything and anything, music, and since some people brought guitars and other instruments, we heard them play, and even did some singing. A real plus each evening,” he said.

Larry said he met many other people, too.

“We met lots of different Mexicans and American Indians–all kinds of people you don’t usually get to know up here. They invited us to dinner and we talked. They told us stories of the old times, and how Ghost Ranch got named, from the Indians way back. We were told back in the day the Indians originally believed the canyon, where Ghost Ranch is located, had ghosts in it, and was haunted. The Spanish then adapted some of that stuff, and hung onto the name.”

The food was wonderful, Larry said.

“My favorite meal was breakfast–waffles, bacon, scrambled eggs, croissants, watermelons, fruit, yogurt, bars,  everything. Also lunch and dinner, nothing but good food, and eat all you wanted.”

Their housing was sufficient in older buildings.

“Just a warm and comfortable place. We didn’t do much in those rooms except sleep,” he said.

Nights Larry couldn’t sleep because of the excitement, he headed over to the library in Georgia O‘Keefe’s former house.

“Amazing place, with lots of O’Keefe stuff. At midnight I would go there and sit in front of a large picture of Georgia O’Keefe, and write poetry about what happened that day, or what I saw or what I learned. A great place to write. I couldn’t not write about it, because it was so many new things I had never experienced before.”

One of his poems went this way:

Weavers

They come to Ghost Ranch,

the high desert of Georgia O’Keefe,

seeking patterns and colors,

shapes and textures.

They ask the spirits of rock and sky,

cholla and piñon, elk and coyote

to live awhile within them,

inhabit their creations.

The weavers sing songs of blessing and thanks

to the Creator who has shown them

sight as well as insight,

who has given them a glorious gift

for the translation of visions,

passed as yarn through fingertips.

Ghost Ranch is also very active in the sciences, Larry said.

“Geology has a primary place because of all the rock structures found in the area, and then the Florence Hall Museum of Paleontology where many dinosaurs have been found on Ghost Ranch.”

A unique dinosaur from Ghost Ranch is in the museum in Abiquiu, New Mexico, and called Coelophysis, a nine-foot beast of which fully-articulated skeletons were found in the hills of Ghost Ranch, the best examples of the genus, and helpful in crucial insights into early dinosaur evolution, according to the museum.

Larry said he’d been told a huge chunk of rock was encased in plaster, and moved to the area.

“And then the museum built around it. That museum is just a really cool display of dinosaurs and their lives, and why they were that way. It’s just another education about so many different things,” he said.

Another museum on the Ghost Ranch land is Florence Hawley Ellis Museum of Anthropology with ancient pottery, weavings, and so on.

But all good things must come to an end.

“So after 23 years, the college dropped the Ghost Ranch trip. It broke my heart,” Larry said. But did not stop him.

Using his relationships, and desire to keep the trip going, “I went to the Sustainability Department to a woman I knew pretty well, and said I would take the leadership of going to Ghost Ranch, and she said, ‘That’s great.’ So the trips continued. After that first year with the Sustainability Department, I retired from St. Ben’s, but the trips through them continued for two more years, a total of 26 years.”

After the Sustainability Department stopped supporting the trip to Ghost Ranch, Larry still wasn’t finished. He used his relationship skills once more.

“I knew the people who ran the maple syruping environmental program, and talked them into sponsoring the trip for two more years. That’s kind of my history of it,” he said.

“I did the trip with people who had the same view point I did, and it was a great opportunity for students. I was so glad they somehow found a way to get me to go along with it. I sure loved the place.”

During the trips back to Minnesota, Larry learned the students felt like he did about Ghost Ranch.

“They were amazed. They’d never been to a place like this with artists, weavers, painters, sculptors. They were amazed by some of the people they met,” he said.

Students did all kinds of work while at Ghost Ranch during the 28 years Larry Schug worked with them. Contributed photo

After the trips ended, Larry still got involved with Ghost Ranch.

“One young woman who had gone on three trips drove up from Texas to Minnesota to visit us years later. Another came with her husband and son. Ghost ranch brings them back.”

Larry also met one of his best friends at Ghost Ranch.

“A worker named Willie got to be one of my best friends. He has come from New Mexico up to Minnesota to see us, and we’ve gone down there to see him. It almost felt like we went on vacation when we went down there. In the end, everybody came away with something.”

He said he went back one year after the college trips ended.

“Juli and I stayed about a week, visited Willie, had a good time with him hiking and walking around and seeing things and trying to do everything I did in 28 years in one week. We had a great time.”

Larry said he learned several things about himself doing the trips.

“I learned how to relate to people I’d never encountered before, and found out that by our helping them they were helping us. It was a strange experience in a lot of ways, and always a great time. I learned that I could be an organized person who lined up trips, found the van, got gas, meals. I learned I could do everything. It made me look at my job in a whole different way, not the job of doing something, but of teaching people to be respectful to the planet. I’m glad I ended up going to Ghost Ranch.”

He said he went down each year with an open mind.

“I let that sucker get filled up learning all those things, and spending time with those 20-year-old people. And then there were the students. I loved the students. One went on all 28 trips. I just love being around 20-year-old people. They are so much fun,” Larry said. “I’m glad I ended up at St. Ben’s, and glad I ended up going out to Ghost Ranch all those years.”