Life looks different already—dramatically different. I found a place an hour and a half east of Longmont and I’m mostly moved, but still have a little more to bring out here before I’m truly settled in. I’m in a little town, although it barely qualifies. The streets are unpaved, the houses old and ramshackle. There are horses and geese and tons of stray cats in the middle of town. The population is somewhere in the 400s and I think that includes some surrounding farms. It’s such a small town I feel Collin can have the run of the place and I’ll have no need to worry. In Longmont I’d only ever let him go down to the stop sign at the corner of our block. It feels so good to be able to give this to Collin—kids are meant to be able to ramble and wander aimlessly. This seems to be the perfect place for that.

Every commute I’ve made so far, back and forth from here to Longmont, has had me choked with emotion. I’m overwhelmed with how beautiful the land is. It feels like I’m only beginning to get a taste for the true nature of this state. For eight years I lived in suburbia—it could have been anywhere, in any state, a truly generic experience. Now I can finally experience what Colorado’s really about. I’m surprised how the landscape is triggering a flood of memories and emotion from my earliest childhood. I remember how on those weekend trips to Prince Gallitzen State Park I would stare out the car window and deeply soak in the land, the farms, the old red barns with the Marlboro ads on their roofs, the old silos falling in, the cows,…. Even by late childhood that landscape was dying—so many farms sold off, the barns collapsed, new homes put in, but rural Colorado here and now so deeply reminds me of the land in my earliest, dearest memories. How my heart aches! How deep is that longing in my chest—and yet, here it is again. How healing this could be for me. This is exactly what I most need. It feels so good.