An​​ Alta Journal reader responds to “The Case of the Missing Chacmools” by Geoffrey Gray. Got something to say? We’d love to hear from you! Email letters@altaonline.com. Please include your name, city, state, and phone number so we can contact you. Letters may be edited for brevity and clarity.

CLOSE TO HOME

The spirits told me that it’s time I wrote in!

For a houseboat trip on Lake Shasta last weekend, I decided to bring some of my magazines for reading material. My latest issue of Alta, of course, came with me, along with the current issue of Sunset Magazine, and an old pick from my pile of unreads, the December 2020 issue of Vanity Fair. The VF was read first, and there was an interesting article called “The Princess and the Shaman,” about a man who called himself Shaman Durek (from Foster City!) and the Princess of Norway and the cultish overtones of their relationship. A quick Google search revealed that they were able to wed this summer. Like one of my BFFs says: Good luck with that, honey!

Then I delved into the Alta and the excellent story about Carlos Castaneda and the missing chacmools. This group seems less like a cult of personality and more like a cult of money. My gut feeling is that the chacmools are living fat in Mexico with the help of some creative accounting here in the USA.

All of this brings to mind when I was a teenager, reading my mom’s New West magazine, about a controversial pastor named Jim Jones and his followers. They decamped to Guyana shortly after that, and no one could foresee the tragedy that unfolded. I remember the whole state of California was in shock at the time, and one of Mom’s coworkers lost a cousin in Guyana. It seemed very close to home.

I do love Alta, and thank you for all your hard work. Sometimes it makes me laugh (Pioneertown, an old dune buggy stop for our family, now a hipster enclave!), and sometimes it makes me cry (the women of Round Valley; Baja, where I traveled the back roads in a dune buggy and saw an amazing, different world, now a hipster enclave), but I always look forward to the next issue and to all the new things I will learn. Besides, the spirits really want me to keep up my subscription!

Thank you!

Lori Lumbattis
Cottonwood, CA