Category Archives: Colorado life

Saying Goodbye to My Dream, or the One-Year Experiment with Normal Living

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Dear cabin, I’ll miss you.

It’s difficult for me to even type these words, but here it goes: This is the last week of life at 10,500 feet above sea level for me. [insert sobbing noises]

At least for a year.

That’s right. We are conducting a grand experiment that involves moving from our beautiful log cabin at the top of a mountain, along the Continental Divide, to a larger home at a much lower altitude.

In other words, we’re trading crazy for how regular people must live. And I’m not sure I can survive it.

I’ve done a whole lot of writing and relaxing on this deck in the summer.

Why the move? A lot of reasons, I guess. My husband has given me 10+ years of living in a raw, often brutal climate. That’s pretty darn good considering I gave him three months when we first moved up here. He was a suburban boy who’d never used a chainsaw back then, a guy who practically lived in movie theaters. Now, thanks mostly to Netflix and heavy drinking (kidding), he’s adapted quite well. But he’s tired of the drive, which can be about as dangerous as it gets in the winter, i.e., nine months out of the year. He’s tired of the snow. (When Denver gets a foot of snow, we get three.) He’s tired of the hardships of mountain living, which can range from temperatures that hit 50 below for days on end, 90 mile-an-hour winds and mountain lions on the prowl for snacks like our son and dogs, to days without power and weeks without water. And I’ll admit these things wear on me, too, some days.

So the answer: We’re testing the lower-altitude waters by renting a home in the foothills west of Denver. At a whopping 6,500 feet. That’s 4,000 feet and two ecosystems lower than where we live now.

At the new place, we’ll have things we’ve learned to live without for over a decade. (A decade!) Things like a garage. Trash pickup. Newspaper delivery. The opportunity to grow things in the spring and fall. The ability to take a walk in the winter without putting on professional snow gear. The capacity to not have a week’s worth of blizzard supplies in your car at all times just in case you careen off the side of a mountain on your morning commute. It’ll be a whole new world for us.

So what’s not to like about the move? Why am I so grumpy I had to warn my family to stay away from me while we packed boxes this past weekend?

My neighborhood.

Because this was my dream. When I moved to Colorado, I knew I wanted to experience true mountain living, with all of its ups and downs. I didn’t want comfort; I wanted adventure. I wanted an authentic log cabin. I wanted to heat with wood that I cut with my own hands. I wanted to write in total peace and quiet, and thrive under the watchful eye of a golden eagle and the supervision of tall pine trees and groves of golden aspens.

Besides, I like the challenges this life presents to me. I like that I can’t get complacent here; Nature keeps me on my toes. I like that the air up here feels unlike any other air I’ve ever breathed. I like that the blue sky here is so crisp and so exquisite that it can make you literally gasp from the pureness of it all. I like that on a clear night, the dark sky is like a field of a million diamonds above me, stars so close you think you could really touch them if you tried. I like that I can walk to our meadow and see wildlife every time, because bears, deer, moose, elk, coyotes and foxes are our closest (and best) neighbors. I like that I can trout-fish in our creek or mountain lakes with my son all summer long and never have the same experience twice. I like that I don’t have to drive to get to hiking trails; amazing ones are outside my door. I like that I can snow-shoe or cross-country ski on my lunch hour when I work from home in the winter. I like that the summer wildflowers can be so breathtakingly beautiful that there really are no words to describe them.

Mostly, I think, I like that not just anyone can make it up here. I like that it makes me different. And frankly, I like what it says about me: I’m strong. I’m resourceful. I’m fearless.

I’m basically bad-ass.

And yet. Did I mention there was a garage at the new place?

So, I have promised to give this a chance. I will embrace my 2.5 bathrooms and the fact that I can now recycle at the end of my driveway. And I’ll try really hard not to get progressively meaner when fall and winter settle in, and I’m living in complete and utter comfort, with not a carnivore predator or a four-foot blizzard in sight.

I’ll also try to remember this quote from Winston Churchill: “We shape our dwellings, and then our dwellings shape us.”

After all, the mountain has shaped me in so many ways. But there are things the new place can teach me, too.

Right?

At least this way I’ll be closer to Texas Roadhouse and a good liquor store.

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Processing What Happened in Colorado This Week

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My heart and head are still reeling from this week’s mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora. My husband went to high school in Aurora. My mother- and father-in-law live just a few miles from the theater. My husband goes to just about every comic-book film premiere, usually the midnight showings. He wasn’t there this time, thankfully.

Friends and family keep asking how my five-year-old son is processing what happened. More than 70 people shot; 12 dead at last count; some still barely holding on. The youngest victim … 3 months old. The youngest to die … six years old.

The truth is, he’s not processing it. Because he doesn’t know about it. We’ve kept the TV and radio off. We live in the secluded high mountains, so no one has mentioned it around him.

I hope we’re doing the right thing. We just think he’s too young to have to deal with the overwhelming sense of insecurity this brings, even to adults. He’s too young to feel that the world truly isn’t safe out there.

Frankly, will I ever sit in a movie theater again and not look at that brightly green-lit Exit sign above the door by the big screen? That’s where the shooter entered. Kicked in that door.

I posted to my Facebook page, “Why why why?” One of my friends replied that some people are broken. I understand that; mental illness can make a person commit horrific crimes. I think I read that the shooter told police he was the Joker, from the Batman series.

But my response is this: People have always been broken. Why do they now turn to these mass shootings that so violently change lives in mere seconds? Because of the easy availability of automatic assault weapons? Because of how violent TV shows, movies and video games have desensitized those who are broken?

And why has it happened twice in this place I call home now, and that I love dearly? Colorado is one of the most beautiful places on earth. And peaceful, at least in the mountains. And the people here, I’ve found to be caring and warm and beautiful inside, too. But is there some major problem that I don’t see? The Columbine massacre was blamed on bullying. But kids have been bullied forever. Heck, I was bullied, and pretty badly until I learned not to care.

Is there less of a sense of community and helping here than other places? In my experience, I do find that people here keep to themselves more than those back home in Texas. Which I find refreshing, and it fits my personality. But that does mean that there are fewer people to call when you’ve had a bad day. I experienced this firsthand during some crises of our own in the past few years. During those times, I missed my Texas friends beyond words. Because my Texas friends would have been over here, forcing help on me, whether I asked for it or not. That “up in your business” philosophy that can be suffocating at times to introverts like me can also be exactly the thing you need when you’ve hit rock bottom. My friends here cared, but kept their distance, waiting for me to ask for help.

Is it because there are very few people in Colorado who were born and raised here? So there are fewer roots to ground people, especially youth? The Denver metro area, definitely, is home to many, many people who are from somewhere else, and who land here without support systems in place.

Is the mental healthcare system here more troubled than in other areas? Is there too little funding? A philosophy of looking the other way?

I don’t have the answer. (Though if I had my way, there would never be another assault weapon sold, ever. As Anne Lamott put in a post this week, talking to gun control opponents … we don’t want to take all of your guns away. Just the ones designed to kill hundreds of people in 60 seconds. I’m paraphrasing, by the way.)

So, where do we go from here? I wish I knew. Mom says I should move back to Texas, where things like this don’t happen. But then I remember Luby’s. Still one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history, with more than 20 people killed in a Central Texas restaurant.

If there’s a God, I hope He can give strength and someday peace to those affected by mass shootings. If there is a Hell and there is no diagnosis of severe mental illness in this guy, I hope he has a special place reserved for him there.

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