Taking me back to 1970, the time of long denim skirts, the ones with the fabric inserts front and back, made out of regular old jeans, all cut up. The hair, long, and braided with feathers. And see-through tank tops with no bra. And never any make-up or plucked eyebrows. That was me. A hippie-chick with a good nursing education on the road.

The trip out West was to Colorado with Bosco, my Puerto Rican artist-boyfriend. We were just twenty years old and leaving New York City, trying for a more spiritual existence. My parents received a little airplane napkin with a tidy note stating that I had left home. It was time; I was twenty after all. We landed in Boulder and got a room at the Traveler’s Motel. Actually all the rooms were now tiny apartments for rent—by the month, or year if you could stay longer. Our room was #6.

Bosco worked as a janitor at Head Ski and I as a volunteer RN at the People’s Clinic, a free medical facility in close proximity to the community hospital. Artists seem to always need straight gigs and nurses are always in them, so while Bosco turned custodial, I ran the Methodone maintenance program and the VD section of the clinic. All manner of people drifted through this place—looking for drugs, to get off drugs, to get cured of their pregnancies, or checked for sexually transmitted diseases.

And then Lena came by looking for a bit of prenatal care and a baby-catcher. She was in the last month of her pregnancy and hoping for a good outcome. John, her old man, was a sweet guy and stuck by her. She asked me if I would deliver her baby in the school bus where they lived up out of town a ways north. I said, “Sure.” And it just so happened, that labor and delivery nursing was my favorite specialty in school. By the time I graduated I had palpated many gravid abdomens, done a quantity sufficient number of vaginal exams, and had witnessed many births. I knew what it was like to have a baby, though never had “caught one” myself. Yes, I was up for this job and told the couple to come get me at room #6, Traveler’s Motel, when it was time. There was also a hippy family doctor in town that might want to come along. I would invite him as a back-up.

The night it happened, there was a knock on my motel-apartment door and a long hair asking if I could come now, out in the snow and wind up to Nederland Camp grounds—Lena was in labor. We gathered up the doc and trucked up there. When we arrived, she was already active, breathing and sighing and relaxing in between contractions—seemed like a real pro for number one. Calm and collected I got to work, patting, rubbing, and counting the minutes between the rise and fall of her abdomen.

The big yellow school bus smelled like pot, cooked food, and body fluids. Set up inside like a chicken coop, the beds were small slats where the seats used to be. Its inhabitants were all real hippies wanting either to smoke it or drop acid to make for a more vivid birthing experience. Real professional that I was, I declined the drug route to my ultimate high, but the hippy doctor partook of some LSD, stating he had attended plenty of births and knew what to do even with his eyes closed. Lena, John, and I, with our senses intact, sweat and grunted and pushed and pushed until the little baby emerged. My hands curved naturally over the process—head first, body restitution, then shoulders—whoosh—gooey little girl with an even, controlled entrance into her new home, the school bus world. She breathed and cried easily despite the pungent environment—first-breath combinations of marijuana and bean soup.

When the sun shone in the morning, the Park ranger knocked on the bus door, inquiring about the bloody mess in the bucket outside. Just a placenta, we reassured him. Lena had had her baby.