Ghost Ranch, N.M. ? Kansas University junior John Bellassai was in the dumps.

His grades were suffering. He recently split with his girlfriend. Already introverted by nature, he was feeling more and more isolated. He needed a break.

But instead of heading to Florida or Texas and the sort of orgiastic revelry for which spring break has become famous, Bellassai chose a more thought-provoking trip to the desert of New Mexico.

“Isn’t this place beautiful?” Bellassai said shortly after arriving at his spring break destination, listening to his voice echo down the canyon walls.

He was one of 19 volunteers, mostly KU students, who traveled last month to a remote 21,000-acre enclave called the Ghost Ranch, where they explored life’s big questions.

The former dude ranch is now a national conference center of the Presbyterian Church. It was once home to artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who fell in love with its spectacular natural beauty.

Commonly referred to by students as alternative spring break, the trip is organized each year by KU’s Ecumenical Christian Ministries.

Spring break heaven

Though the desert seems an unlikely spring break destination, it was heaven for those seeking volunteer work, spiritual renewal, a taste of native culture — and solitude.

“This trip has changed people’s lives and their perspectives,” KU senior Michael Lee said. “I wanted to be a lawyer, but now I’m going to be a liberation theologist for the Third World.”

¢ Photo gallery¢ KU Alternative breaks

The students spent one week on the sprawling ranch, some 40 miles south of the Colorado-New Mexico border, which served as the group’s base of operations as they participated in hikes, volunteer work and group discussions and explored the trip’s theme question: “What do I want my life to say?”

The day the group arrived, students hiked up Box Canyon, a narrow canyon lined with towering red mesas. For two hours, they followed a narrow stream and ultimately found its source — melting sheets of ice deep in the canyon.

Though the group included a broad spectrum including atheists, a Hindu and Christians, Lee said they shared one main concern.

“One thing we all have in common is we are all questioning what society values and trying to figure out what we personally value,” Lee said.

Connection to the past

Lee has made the trip five times, and over the years, he said, he has learned a lot from people in the nearby town of Abiquiu. Many residents of the village are descendants of the Anasazi Indians, a civilization best known for its cliff dwellings. The community struggles to keep up with the present while retaining the traditions of the past.

“In urban societies, there’s a tendency to look for the quicker, easier way of doing things,” Lee said, “but this comes as a loss to tradition and community, which is important to the Southwest.”

Before the Spanish came to the area in the 15th century, the Anasazi had begun building a vast network of irrigation channels, which transported water from nearby rivers into their fields and communities. Today, the ditches are still used.

Augustine Garcia, an Abiquiu elder whose family has lived in the area for three centuries, leads groups of volunteers and residents in redigging the ditches each spring. He’s a small man with leathery hands who wears a worn, leather cowboy hat.

“Just like a nice Martha Stewart,” Garcia said to the students in heavily accented English as he pushed the shovel deep into sand, jostled for leverage and tossed the load over his shoulder. The students laughed at his reference to proper digging technique and continued the blistering work. Within hours, they had dug a one-mile ditch for spring’s first rain.

“We admire you guys for coming here,” Garcia said. “We see those kids on spring break on TV, and it makes us sick.”

‘Connection to universe’

Since 1974, Rev. Thad Holcombe, pastor of Ecumenical Christian Ministries, has provided students with the Ghost Ranch option for spring break. He described his first trip with 25 students from the University of Tulsa as an “experiment.”

On this year’s trip, every morning Holcombe led a group of students up the side of a mesa to watch the sunrise. For 30 minutes, the group sat in silence, still, waiting for the first glimpse of sun. Void of the noise, confusion and distraction of their daily lives, participants reflected on life’s big questions.

But for some, the calm, rural atmosphere was almost uncomfortable.

“I can’t stand the quiet,” said Chicago sophomore Shelagh Jessop. Her nose ring and tattoos seemed out of place in the arid, rocky landscape.

She said she was “spooked” by the open country.

“I expected sand dunes and desert,” she said.

Her friends were miles and cultures away spending their spring break MTV-style in the glitter and revelry of New Orleans.

Said Lee: “You won’t find many students who want to come here for spring break; most are out boozing it up.”

But those who came to Ghost Ranch to work and reflect went home with much more, said Bellassai, a junior from Olathe.

“I don’t even know if I can express myself,” he said weeks after returning to KU. “It enabled me to feel a closer connection to the universe.”