Northern New Mexico’s Ghost Ranch is a “thin place.” I know, because I’ve been met there.Thin places, it is said, are places on earth where earth and heaven open to one another and even meet. They offer a readily-accessible pathway for communication between our time-bound creation and the eternal realm of origins and destinies. Those who visit earth’s thin places can, when they set their minds and hearts to it, experience a palpable sense of divinity in their here and now.
At 6,600 feet above sea level, Ghost Ranch ought to be such place just by virtue of its altitude. But Ghost Ranch, a Presbyterian-related retreat and education center about 60 miles northwest of Santa Fe, earns its thin place standing because of the way it nestles in a stream-fed valley surrounded on three sides by towering red and gold cliffs.
I have visited Ghost Ranch several times over the years. In 2022, after two summers when the ranch was virtually closed by COVID, my wife and I arrived there on Sunday, July 3, for five days of the annual Family Week. We were the only representatives of our family that week, but we trusted we would become family with the people we would soon meet.
That afternoon we asked someone on the ranch staff if Willie Picaro was ever around. Willie had guided Maxine and me on a couple of week-long “Hiking Ghost Ranch and Northern New Mexico” expeditions several years before, but was now retired and living in nearby Abiquiu. The person I asked knew Willie, but hadn’t seen him for some time. (I had actually run into Willie in the dining room the last time we had been here, so something told me it could happen again.)
Willie is a wiry, stereotypical New Jersey guy, still sounding like a New Jerseyan despite his decades in New Mexico. Short of stature, tough as the desert, with bright eyes and a ready grin, Willie is an inveterate Yankees’ fan with overflowing heart. He is always eager to share any piece of his huge store of knowledge about Ghost Ranch and northern New Mexico with anyone he meets.
After dinner at orientation, the nurse reminded us to keep hydrated and avoid rattle snakes—standard stuff. We did not catch her name, but her relaxed manner and ready smile assured us we could go to her if and when we needed to. We expected we would get to know her casually during the week, not as patients. But it was comforting to know the nurse’s trailer, flying the red cross flag, was parked within sight of our room.
Monday was the Fourth of July. Ghost Ranch traditionally celebrates the birth of our nation with a short, home-grown, very fun parade. Kids and adults, guests and staff, work together to decorate golf carts and other vehicles, from which candy is thrown to the waiting spectators. The whole parade takes about ten minutes, round trip.
Early that afternoon, a couple of hours before the parade, Maxine and I were sitting on the veranda in front of the Welcome Center—Georgia O’Keeffe’s beloved mesa, Pedernal, in the distance—when I glanced up and saw Willie walk by. I called out, “Willie.” He turned and looked at us. “I know you, but I can’t remember your names,” Willie confessed unapologetically. When we said “Dean and Maxine” he knew right away who we were. We reconnected quickly, recalling past times and talking about the ranch currently as he saw it.
But why was Willie at Ghost Ranch today, and a bit dressed up at that? Because Paul Fogg, the ranch’s Executive Director, had asked him to drive a beautiful, sky-blue,’50’s-era Chevy pickup in the parade. (Surely Willie wasn’t the only person around who knew how to drive a stick?)
In a few minutes Paul came up the steps, and the two of them quickly walked together into the building behind us. I decided to give Willie a copy of my book, Ghosts and Gold: My Story of Ghost Ranch, later that afternoon, after the parade.
Back at our cabin, around 3:30 p.m., I stepped out to our porch to sense what the weather was going be like for the parade. It had been unusually cool and wet at the ranch the last few days. I happened to look to my left toward the nurse’s trailer, and there was Willie, standing down on the ground, talking with the nurse up on the wooden platform that served as a kind of porch for the trailer. I went back inside, found a copy of my book, and inscribed it to Willie. I would take it to him now.
As I approached is was clear that Willie and the nurse knew each other. I did not want to interrupt them for more than a moment, so I just tried, as unobtrusively as I could, to hand him the book. But even chance meetings at Ghost Ranch hardly ever end quickly. There’s always something more to be said.
Willie opened the book, saw the inscription, and thanked me. The nurse expressed interest in the book. She had not seen it. And then something was said by someone—I don’t remember what—that forged an intimate new connection between the three of us: Nurse Jean Mason was a niece of my seminary classmate and close friend, Don Mason. And Willie had known Don and Donna Mason very well; they were frequent volunteers and leaders at the ranch.
In 2009, Don had asked Willie to join him on a long and challenging hike along the mesas that surround the ranch. Unfortunately, and contrary to widely-accepted practice, Don decided to attempt the hike alone.
Don fell to his death on that hike, high above the ranch, above the Kitchen Mesa trail. Willie had helped find his body the next morning, and carry it back down to the ranch on a litter.
Thirteen years later, Willie expressed profound grief and deep regret that he’d turned down Don’s invitation. After a moment’s silence, I asked Willie to give the book back to me. I showed Jean where I’d written about Don’s death. Her eyes glistened at the memory and mention of her uncle. She said she’d go at once to the Trading Post and buy the one copy they had left, for I had no more with me to give to her.
In our collective experience of Ghost Ranch’s majesty and mystery, the three of us were bound together with Don and his tragic death in an eternal moment, standing in a thin place.
That was Monday. Tuesday I decided to sign up for Wednesday evening’s “talent night.” After all, writing is a talent. I would read the opening paragraphs of Ghosts and Gold and invite people to consider getting their own copies—all proceeds to Ghost Ranch, none to me.
But Tuesday I woke up not feeling well. Maxine had been congested for 24 hours, but now I was, too, with achy-ness thrown in. Something wasn’t right with my body. I self-tested for COVID at noon, and was negative.
Wednesday morning I felt worse, and self-tested again before breakfast. This time, positive. Maxine tested the same. We both had COVID.
We knew we would have to leave the ranch. I felt like Hagar and Ishmael being banished into the wilderness by Abraham.
I walked to the nurse’s trailer, sure Jean would be at breakfast. She did not respond to my knock on the door. A couple of summer college staff people walked by on their way to breakfast, and I asked them to find Jean. It was a selfish request, because I could have waited for her to finish breakfast. I was overcome by uncertainty about what we would do.
When Jean came out, I told her we had tested positive. She expressed genuine concern, but made sure we knew we’d have to leave. She told me to go back to our room and wait for her to come to assess our situation. I urged her to finish her interrupted breakfast.
In a short time she came to us, bringing us much-appreciated breakfasts. She did all she could to prepare us to leave, including directing us to the Emergency Department at the Espanola Hospital, some 35 miles away. We asked her to cancel our reservations for the Georgia O’Keeffe tour that afternoon.
Then I remembered I’d signed up to share my talent that evening. Would Jean take my name off that list, please? And she said, “No. I’ll read from your book for you, and I will tell people about it and what it means to me and to the ranch. And I will do the same next week as well.”
Everything Nurse Jean Mason did for us that morning was done with calm and compassionate competence, as if, maybe she was doing it for Don. When I expressed concern that we’d spread COVID to others, she quietly reassured us that we had done what needed to do when we knew we needed to do it. As it turned out, at the end of the week Jean emailed me that no other guests had reported COVID cases.
In thin places heaven and earth meet, and so humans meet humans as well. It’s all part of the breaking down of barriers, even of barriers between strangers who have just met, or who have known each other for years. Thin places are about being open and receptive to what and who is around you, and not denying anyone a relationship with you.
I have long known that Ghost Ranch is a thin place. I had experienced it as such before, but never as profoundly in that first week of July, 2022. Thanks be to God!
