Vallecitos Mountain Ranch Retreat Meditation Center

When you set aside daily obligations and go on retreat at Vallecitos you are reminded of the stillness and courage that reside as your deepest nature. Our practice as an organization, as well as our meditation retreats, reflect our deepest intention to make a difference in the world – to respond to the state of our times. It is through you that the qualities of kindness, wisdom and compassion come home and into your communities.

Awakening in wild nature at Vallecitos has the power to create lasting change. We are custodians of the land, inside and out. With intimate groups of less than forty guests at any one time, you are assured of attentive support from caring staff, teachers and volunteers.

A three-week Outward Bound Course in the Weminuche Wilderness of the San Juan Mountains introduced Robin to the wilderness in 1987. Since that time, the wilderness has been a friend, teacher and sanctuary. Robin returned to Durango in 1989 to attend Fort Lewis College, graduating in 1994 with a B.A. in philosophy and a B.S. in chemistry. Late in college, she felt a calling to become a physician. After finishing medical training in Denver, she returned to Southwestern Colorado in 2003, serving as a physician of general internal medicine. Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center is a 135 acre ranch surrounded by 300,000 acres of Carson National Forest in the Tusas (Beaver) Mountains of northern New Mexico. It is a rich high alpine ecosystem situated at almost 9,000 feet above sea level at the very southern tip of the Rocky Mountains.

The place we call Vallecitos today has long been indigenous land. The Jicarilla Apache and Utens used the area for seasonal hunting and medicine and food gathering. Many artifacts have been found around the ranch showing use during the 13th century by Anasazi including an arrowhead by the Buddha tree dated 2,000 years old. This land has been a place where people come together, gather and then disperse time and again

The Ranch is a wildly diverse biological museum. The land has never been logged and cattle have not grazed here since before WWII. Every mammal in northern New Mexico has been sighted on the ranch from deer and elk to bobcat, lynx and black bears. We are also visited by beaver, muskrats and porcupines to name a few. It is a rare wetlands habitat with over 60 species of birds and over 50 varieties of grasses and flowers. The Buddha tree is estimated at 600-800 years old as one of many in an area that contains the largest old growth forest in the entire Carson Forest.

In 2006 the dharma drew her in because it offered a way to develop a deeper level of compassion and kindness than she had previously known. Wilderness and nature have been an integral part of her practice, as natural landscapes and their inhabitants are reminders of the importance of connection, kindness and compassion, and help her embody these qualities more authentically in all aspects of life. She has attended meditation retreats at Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center yearly since 2010, repeatedly drawn by the land for the sense of connection and the spiritual home it offers.