Living on the Spine: A Woman's Life in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains

by Christina Nealson

It’s the rare woman who creates the opportunity to discover who she is outside of others’ expectations. Facing forty, a spiritual vacuum and a daughter who was college-bound, Nealson moved into the rugged mountains of Colorado in search of a “different kind of learning.” Untethered from the roles that defined her - mother, wife and psychotherapist - she endeavored to live one year alone within the movement of the four seasons. She built a small, remote cabin and marked the passage of time with the moon and sun as she melded with landscape and the wild beings who inhabited her terrain. She stared down bears at midnight and dug her own spring as she carved her existence with her horse, dog and two feral cats. Ultimately, her one year pilgrimage turned to five, as savored solitude and sweat delivered her to revelations about women’s inextricable tie to survival, nature and Eros. Living on the a book to behold and be held.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir

178 pages, Paperback and Kindle

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Kate Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nealson's language is so well-crafted and precise that her memoir is as much poetry as it is prose. She structures it around the solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days of the pagan calendar, telling us about the animals she sees and the rhythms of her life in each season of the year. Her style is austere and spare; readers who enjoy lush detail may not find this to their liking. Yet contained within the bare-bones style are moments of deep feeling: the beauty and violence of nature, fear, loss, longing, erotic encounters when her lover visits, the richness as well as loneliness of her self-imposed solitude. Nealson is no inexperienced 20-something; her book is grounded and made more meaningful by her being over 40 when she first moves to her solitary mountain cabin.
Readers who wouldn't choose such a life can nevertheless be enriched by reading of another who experienced it and can describe it so beautifully.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this slim, thoughtful book, but I wish it had had a better description so I would have had a better idea of what to expect. The book says that it is a record of a woman's life alone in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains (living in the southern Colorado part of the range specifically). A more accurate description would be something like: "The journal of a woman coming to terms with the gradual end of life alone in the Sangre de Cristos as she develops a life partnership with a man. (Includes graphic depictions of sex.)"

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this a long time ago but I remember it fondly.

[Nicole Meiklejohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can find my review on StoryGraph: link

[Kiandra Haaf · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this every year since it was published. The evocation of my favorite place on the planet, the Sangre de Cristo mountains in Southern Colorado, is so accurate and intimate in its detail, I feel like I am breathing the air again. Having the author's companion as my professor at Colorado College helped with the visual and emotional imagery. If you are not passionate about nature, do not read this. If you think people who practice alternative, nature-based faiths are crazy, don't read this. You'll think she's nuts.

[Mckinley · Rating 1 out of 5]

I pulled this off the shelf when retrieving a book next to it. I liked the idea presented on the back cover yet found reading it not what I was expecting. While that is not a bad thing, I found this too scattered and random to follow with interest and difficult to follow the events and their significance.

On a cynical side, it reads like she tried to take her private writing and turn it to a commercial purpose. It's so all over the place. I guess the appeal might be to burnt-out, neo-hippy, new-agers.

[Karen Shanley · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved this story from a place dear to my heart! the sangre de cristo mountains in southern colorado.

[stellajames · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. She could have done so much better than musings on her moons. Otherwise ok, and beautifully Pagan. Just got to be too much after a while.