Blair Family Legacy

The Blair Family Legacy

Two photographs have spoken to me recently. One is of Katrina kneeling alongside of her mother at the Dandelion Festival several years ago, Pat winking. 

The second I received from a dear friend and caregiver yesterday, of Pat resting in bed, bathed in sunlight. “… this morning Pat was very peaceful. She smiled huge and woke briefly when I brought her the flowers and gave her many kisses. She was mostly sleeping (while gently smiling) all morning while I played her song after song. And meditated with her a lot too… just sharing sacred silence and song….”

A legacy tended in love, a communal revival and healing, death and the heart-opening mystery that whispers in a soft breeze, catching you in a moment, water overflowing from eyes that see so much beauty. Sure do miss you Katrina… what a gift to feel you and drink deeply from your memory.

Many in the Durango Natural Foods family lost a dear community member with the passing of Katrina Blair on Friday, June 5th. What many of us witnessed was something quite rare and beautiful. Rather than enter into the medical system for end of life care, Katrina opened her home and heart to all friends, receiving the full palate of love over the last weeks of her life, including overnight care, a menu of prepared foods delighting her inner child, songs, a stream of beloved visitors, laughter. She was bright with enjoyment, full of grace, and dying of undifferentiated cell growth painfully spreading throughout her body. Over the last days and weeks it was as if her soul was undressing itself of an ego, radiating acceptance and an unconditional love towards the friendships and landscape that had been her life.  

Her last breath was taken in the arms of women who must have travelled through lifetimes to hold space for her quiet exhale in the deep coniferous woods and sprawling aspen groves of La Plata Canyon. Her body was then carried by friends singing “The Water is Wide” to be laid to rest underneath an ancient Douglas Fir tree. A pilgrimage of hearts soon made their way to lay flowers and song upon a body gently unraveling itself of a lifetime. Sunday morning she was transported back to her home in the Turtle Lake Valley, prepared for burial by a coven of women, and laid to rest in a hole in the earth that took three days to dig, excavated by the sweat of friends who understood the sacredness of the task.

Walking away from the burial it was very clear that Katrina was still teaching, even in death. Allowing us to see her in the raw, wild, vulnerable journey of passing over, she solidified in each of us a sense of belonging to a community that she had fostered through an unyielding smile that greeted life openly and welcomed each fully. And looking around at those who had loved her, in each we saw a part of ourselves, who also loved.

As the days have begun to turn into weeks, as people have tended to their grieving hearts each according to their own precious wisdom, her mother now too appears at the threshold… and crosses over.

What the Blair Family has given to the community of Durango is truly immeasurable. From their founding efforts to establish Durango Natural Foods, to Pat Blair’s creation of the Rocky Mountain Retreat in 1989 as “a healing retreat center to support people with health goals,” to Katrina building her mountain home with the help of friends and then manifesting Turtle Lake Refuge, “a nonprofit that promotes sustainable practices honoring the wild wisdom of nature and the health of the community,” to the Turtle Lake Organic Farm and the wide collection of people that have lived, worked, served, and been served through these offerings… it is as though a seed has taken root, grown, flowered, and dropped countless new seeds in the shade of generational generosity. These new seeds are being birthed again today in the lives of those who tend to the legacy, continuing to serve Raw Wild Lunches at the Turtle Lake Cafe from 11:11 to 2:22 on Turtle Tuesdays and Frog Fridays, who communally support each other and rows of produce at the Farm in the valley, who still hike the mountain passes to Telluride eating wild mountain greens, and whom you can meet each Saturday at the Farmer’s Market. I am deeply grateful for the leadership of a non-profit Board of Directors that will continue to manage the visionary gifts passed through the Blair Family: the retreat, the cafe, the farm, her home.

Durango Natural Foods graciously acknowledges Pat’s foundational contribution to our 52-year legacy as “a cooperatively owned grocery, providing our community with quality local, natural and organic foods” and also celebrates her daughter’s wild, raw spirit.  We are contemplating how to honor this shared legacy.

Katrina had said, after much searching, that her real medicine was community.  For those that know any part of themselves through her, we have all experienced a healing.  We are made whole together, in sacred recognition of the communal roots which will carry us through.