The visit with Tom was a pleasant cap to a day of miles through beautiful Colorado scenes. Rocky Mountain National Park provided a high view looking down. Poopysuits protected us from the ascending cold, even keeping off the cool melt of occasional snow flurries. The road zagged across the faces of mountains, horizontal to clouds and vertical to sheer drops. The small town of Estes Park followed, descending into forest with views that looked up instead of down. Roads twisted out of the parks toward Nederland, where we met Tom in the parking lot of a local restaurant. We convoyed from there to the ashram.
A rocky, potholed dirt road led to the cabins, and we left our bags on the motorcycles for a beautiful hike along ex-horse riding trails to the summit of Rollins Peak. The trail required frequent stops to find out where we had just lost it, but sporadic rock cairns served as our progressive trail of breadcrumbs.
The summit was bare, pocked rock. Streams of gray rain were rippling down on distant mountains, and a river fitted its way through a valley below. Specks of cars could be seen on the road leading to the ashram, perpendicular over the train tracks which copied the shape of the river. Tom had slept up there one night in a warm breeze on pine needles and a sleeping bag. I understood why. Much was visible yet everything was distant enough to feel very removed. We haphazardly tried to follow gravity in a straight direction back, but course corrections were needed frequently. Two beds in a room full of more beds waited for us in the guest cabin. Dad read while Tom and I met in Tom’s personal cabin.
I sat at Tom’s desk. Rain was speckling the uninsulated roof with muffled crackling; the lack of insulation made for cold hands but soothing background sounds. His single room cabin on the grounds of the ashram was rustic and basic, but I could have easily enjoyed an out of the way cabin like his. He said he liked living simply, with poverty thrown into the recipe as a special ingredient.
The desk was utilitarian, like the rest of the room, and I dusted it off with the palms of my hands. The outside did not advertise electricity, but it was there. The dirty lit desk lamp concurred. The smell of just-boiled tea was subtly easing around its pot’s edges, waiting and taunting since it had been left unattended. We would drink some later, after Tom came off of his bed and out of meditation.
Tom softly walked over to the pot and poured two mugs full, trying not to disturb me with the rattling spoon of his mixing honey. Tom sat cross-legged on his bed while I talked and walked around to different spots in the room, stopping for emphasis or wherever seemed comfortable. We discussed electricity being taken for granted, his ex-girlfriend Trish, and the graffiti left on the walls from when this was a girl’s horse riding camp.
I shifted the subject to my prime area of concern for him: the commune-like meditation center that he was a believing part of. My first thoughts, when I read his vague descriptions in letters, centered around cults. His idealism and intelligence made him a susceptible candidate. “Checking it out”, as his mother had wanted me to do, was always in my mind. No problem, I was planning on it anyhow.
Tom probably did not need someone else to mother him, but he genuinely appreciated my concern. After bringing it out openly and squarely, he thanked me. His hug the next morning said a lot. I initially picked up his books on the I Ching, an ancient Chinese philosophy that promoted inner peace and relied on mysticism. It was the basis for the teachings he received.
He respected my doubts of the mystical aspects. Random chance and heavily generalized statements worked like astrology: always right, with a wrong easily explained away. Whatever its faults though, Tom seemed to have mellowed and relaxed about life. His ex-girlfriend apparently “opened his eyes” to some problems at the ashram, and his unquestioning enthusiasm for the ashram had waned. But he felt it was a good experience for him, and in some ways I did as well. After talking with him about what were perhaps better paths ahead, he said he wanted to move out and away soon. He planned to restart college in the fall, majoring in environmental design. The experience at the ashram had put him on a personal track, and college seemed to be his next perceived crossing.
As to whether or not the ashram or the organization behind it had cultish aspects to it, I did not know enough about life there. Tom was free to move in and out as he desired, and the facilities were very pleasant and removed just enough from the road to be peaceful. It was officially a meditation center, but residents like Tom worked at an outside, connected job and did chores around the facilities. All for only room and board. In Tom’s case, he worked as a dishwasher at Rudy’s restaurant in Boulder, and had also been doing carpentry work on a new two story building to be used for administration and massage. That arrangement seemed lopsidedly in favor of the ashram, at least economically.
Trish apparently tuned him on to the organization’s lack of conscientiousness and respect for the environment. He also recognized a use of fear and intimidation in some teachings and policies. Definite marks that made me wary. However, Tom seemed well and content, and his newfound see-through view of the organization was reassuring. Though he was not as critical or objective as I would have been, he was also a different person who might have rejected my level of cynicism. I hoped he would do well in his decisions ahead, and I had more confidence in that since I came to visit and talk it through with him.
Two weeks later, I received a letter from Tom. He had separated from the organization and was moving forward on his new path.