Introduction

Many Hawthorne students attended Cibola, the summer camp run by Sandy and Eleanor Orr in New Mexico, but many others who never went to Hawthorne are Cibola alumni as well.  This page exists for Cibola alumni and staff to tell the story in their own words and pictures.  To add your story or a picture to this page, please send it to Dana Sawyer.

1957: John O'Hara
1960: Lance Webster
1961: Peggy Diggs
1962: Carl Grossman
1962: Doug Hamilton (added March 13, 2010)
1964: Derek Fiedler

John O'Hara

1957

Caravaning west to Cibola that first summer, we left the Great Plains and went into the Rockies. It was mindblowing. From the endless miles of cornrows and wheatfields, to the foothills revealing the dark outline of the mountains, closer to see the snowcapped peaks into the Aspen hills, finally camping in the pines by a large creek, then the awesome sunset. The largest thing I had seen before was the Appalachians.

The Spanish set out to find the seven cities of gold, Cibola.  Our Cibola is more about the people than the country.  Yet, seeing that awesome land affected everyone.  I'm not sure we could have grown or changed without the new environment, at an age when our own chemistry was perking or boiling or whatever.

The first lesson learned was that everyone counted, though you may have hung out with a few people more than others.  It was neat to meet people with different places, different accents.  In those days you could tell if someone was from Boston, New York, Washington or Chicago in less than a sentence.

The commonality was in doing the same journey.  After the first summer you knew that Eleanor was going to take over a courthouse, play touch football with a canteen at Notre Dame stadium and climb into a cistern of water in the desert for relief from the heat.

You also knew there were going to be some potential disasters, either from nature or manmade.  Climbing out the side of Canyon de Chelly to avoid a flood had a big emotional effect on some.  Having some townies come looking for some of the lady campers also had an effect, giving that they were armed.  Not to mention a bus race or two.  We were a group, whether in whole or in part.

Working for hours in the driving ran after the dam broke upcreek to keep the water from ruining the fields for the whole valley.  The daily work assignments.  Harvesting cabbage for lettuce.  Freezing your ass off at the campsite just above Georgetown, Colorado.  (The next night it snowed 8 inches.)  Eating apple jelly or rice pudding until you couldn't stand it anymore.  The mosquitoes at Lake of the Ozarks.  Those god-awful peacocks at the artesian well in Kansas.  None of this was done alone, it was shared with others.

The crux of it all was the journey to the mountains and desert.  Learning the value of water.  Climbing into history thru the long deserted cave dwelling.  Listening to the Indian chants of "The One-eyed Ford" at the campfire.  Sitting atop the mesa next to Spider Rock, at sunset.  Shiprock at dawn.  Driving, then walking, across the desert road with a full moon.  No headlights needed. On moonless nights, the meteor showers and stars you could never see back east.

The dance on Saturday.  The fiestas when the whole valley showed for food, drinks and games.  A group of campers from the east singing songs of the west at the Taos festival. The volleyball games between cabins 3&4 while everyone else was on long siestas. Waiting for the different groups returning to Cibola from different places -- Mesa Verde, Chico Canyon or Blue Lake -- so you could see friends who had gone elsewhere.  Eleanor's group the last all of the time.  Sandy's steady hand.

The desert in front of you and the mountains behind.  On that first summer, Franny playing the Normam Luboff Chior album from the roof of the main building as we packed out to head back east the next day. We all looked at the sunset that day.

Each person had their own sweet wish the last night of camp at the bonfire. The wish that this summer would not be over or it wouldn't be their last.  The Spanish never found Cibola because they were looking for something tangible.  The Cibola we went to is gone only for those who want it to be.

Lance Webster

1960

After I graduated from Western High School, my mother, sister and I hopped in our orange VW bug convertible and started off to see 'the West'. After a visit to Mesa Verde, we stopped by Cibola for a quick visit to Ned and Doris Sommer (friends who were there).  I wanted to stay.  My mom didn't really have the money for me to do so, but Eleanor and Sandy made some kind of deal that involved me getting up every morning at 5:30 and chopping wood to 'pay for' my stay.  I still proudly carry a scar from where - while sharpening my ax one of those mornings - I nearly sliced off my finger.  Eleanor and the 'nurse' on staff elected not to opt for stitches, but just kinda taped it together and I survived.  I am glad I have that scar. It is a continual reminder of a wonderful magical summer.

I remember having a horrible case of diarrhea and being trapped in the infirmary overnight with a fever and in the next room they were having a party but they had only one album..."Buddy Holly's Hits"....over and over and over. and over. I get an attack of nausea every time I hear a Buddy Holly tune, but it is still a good memory and I recently bought a CD of the songs.

I remember a breathtakingly spectacular hiking visit through Canyon de Chelley....
I remember an awesome horseback trip up Wheeler Peak.

I remember parts of the bus drive back...including losing our brakes on the buses coming down the hairpin turns into Georgetown Colorado, and us 'big guys' having to hop out of the bus at each turn to throw rocks under the wheels so the bus load of kids wouldn't go plunging over into the abyss.

I remember being hot and tired and thirsty as we pulled up to a public fountain in a town square somewhere in Iowa I think, and E Orr telling us all to get out quick and scamper thru the fountain to cool off, and get back on the bus and get out of town before the cops got us.

In fact, the Cibola experience is one of my most treasured memories from a difficult time in my life -- when my parents were in a bitter divorce and I was living with a mother, sister and grandmother who squabbled all the time.  And I went right from Cibola into a tough time in college, so it really was a very special time for me.

Peggy Diggs

1961

Carl Grossman

1962

There was a one-of-a-kind experience that summer - a Tremendous Legal broo-ha-ha with the Girl Scouts.  Talk about frustration.  We had driven nearly across the country, in anticipation of settling in at Cibola only to learn that Cibola was, at the moment, occupied territory - by the Girl Scouts.   So it was that for the next days/weeks (I can't remember precisely) it meant that - instead of going to Cibola - we found ourselves in a holding-pattern, camped out on some sand dunes outside of town, while, during the day, Eleanor and Sandy (and some others probably) and some lawyers (I guess) would go into town to slug it out in court with the Girl Scouts.   Eventually, they / we won and we were allowed to return to our homeland.

Doug Hamilton

1962

Derek Fiedler

1964

Oh, yes, well Cibola, what can you say?  A bunch of relatively affluent kids off for something entirely different. From what I gather every year had its own vintage, but I think it maintained a common color. Most of the settings were the same, but the all important people kept shifting.

I remember Dave Dykes telling me that in '63 the bus turned over on the way out...If it was anything like '64 they would have been too tired to react much; and also of Stanley Hirsch's great falls: one backward off the front porch railing of the Main House....... stunned silence until several moments later Stanley's sensory perceptions kicked in and he responded with a belated "OOH", and two, when he disappeared off the back of one of those Navajo wagons in Canyon de Chelly, eliciting the same delayed response. No harm done.

In 1964 we had upgraded to a "professional" driver (E.Orr was too busy nursing one of her recent offspring), who we managed to keep awake, somehow, at least through Raton Pass, Eagles Nest, Taos and into San Cristobal, where it turned our we actually had possession of the ranch this time. A certain amount of time at Cibola was devoted to getting to know the neighborhood and repairing the ranch.

We explored Taos, of course, but the quirky nature of Taoseños was not addressed and it was only later that I learned their live and let live nature even extended to big hairy men with ill concealed guns, dressed as women, standing in line at the local bank. One can see how 'The Milagro Beanfield War' could be a straightforward assessment of Taos citizens of that time. It certainly wasn't as touristy as it's become.

We were allowed one beer at the local Arroyo Hondo bar and mixed with the local kids who were more than willing to help us get over our limit. I don't know if that bar is still standing, but it seemed ready to wash away at the time, both figuratively and literally.

There were enough of us that we would sometimes be divided into separate groups for trips. Trips would usually start by someone storming into a cabin in the middle of the night yelling "get your sleeping bags and ponchos we're leaving in ten minutes!". In darkness we clambered onto the back of the stake body truck, fell asleep again, and woke up rattling along at fifty miles an hour somewhere in New Mexico, Colorado or Arizona to a heart wrenching sunrise. Trips were the most memorable items of Cibola and we certainly had enough of them. Of those I remember:

1. Sand Dunes, Durango, Mesa Verde

2. Canyon de Chelly and Chinle where we nearly ended up in a wash because a flash flood wiped out a bridge and killed more than a few people who happened to be in front of us on the road. We spent the night at Chinle High along with a bunch of prisoners who had been recruited to work retrieving bodies. I learned that shepherding was a legitimate excuse for missing class among the Navajo.  At Canyon de Chelly we slept in the back of the truck. We seemed to have been tired, wet, and cold most of the time at Cibola, and in the back of the truck that night all I wanted to do was sleep and all everyone else wanted to do was joke, so I finally yelled "shut the fuck up!", and after a moments silence E.Orr bust out in peals of laughter which set everyone else going and I knew I'd have to give up any thoughts of rest. We spent the next night in a hogan with a Navajo family singing and talking (again little sleep).

3. Santo Domingo Pueblo for the Corn Dance.... so much went on that I shouldn't talk about, but Joe Caté's kid sisters did get a charge out of getting me to eat some cold green soup that nearly fried my larynx. I desperately wanted to yell 'ASSASINS!' but nothing would come out.

4. Mt Lobo. Half of us, on horseback, went part way up the mountain that was directly east of the ranch and spent the night in a cloudburst in our ponchos under pine trees,the horses, having been  hobbled by Mr. Trujillo were milling around in a mountain clearing and seemed to have very little trouble sleeping. In the morning everyone decided things were too wet to go on and saddled up to go back down. I was the last in line and had to get off my horse to retrieve my hat when my horse decided to catch up with everyone else. I was half on when that damn well rested horse took off and tried to scrape me off (like a tick) on every tree we passed doing twenty miles an hour.

5. Heart Lake. I was with the group that rode up. 20 or 30 miles on horseback isn't all it's cracked up to be, but at least it was warm and dry. When we camped at the lake E.Orr went into teach mode (when was she out of it?) and asked if it would take more or less time to boil water at that altitude. Today I'm surprised at how many of us got it wrong. One of the more obnoxious little kids got lost and we kept hearing mountain lions, but he eventually turned up anyway. So anticlimactic. We took the horses up the steep western slope and got a view of eternity while balanced on a fidgety horse who was in turn balanced on a ridge about a foot wide with ten thousand foot drop-offs on each side.

Of course there was so much that you can't begin to get into: the cow butchering, with Walter Ailes doing the honors and E.Orr jumping rope with the intestine, or running out of smokes and E.Orr trying a roll-your-own with sage wrapped in brown paper. John Jacobs dislocating his arm when a horse didn't want him on her. All sorts of little things. Camping smells. Crackling camp fires. I get the impression that people don't camp like that much anymore, on the ground, with a bunch of tired friends.

With the combination of my feeble memory, dyslexia, and altered brain wiring this is some of what comes through the ages. I can see Robert Jampolsky, E.Orr, Sandy, Bronwen Stickney, Nancy Adair, Marcia Linebarger, Christy Dodds, Christina Trujillo, Peggy Diggs, Joan Gold, Walter Ailes, John Jacobs, Charlie Phillips, and the Montagues, then the fog rolls in and people blend into Hawthorne again.

There's lots of blanks that others can fill and having taken a weak stab at it I hope someone gives it a try. Cibola I recently described to someone, as almost a cabal within a cult. It was certainly an extension of Hawthorne; almost Hawthorne on-the-road.

I remember how Sandy and Eleanor were so frustrated in trying to get us to have some school spirit and here we are forty years later and, my god, we actually do.

Last updated March 13, 2010