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To quote from the book Huerfano: A Memoir of Life in the Counterculture”, paradise is:
Mike and I had an interesting conversation yesterday about retirement. I was talking about how strange, but wonderful it is living here in the southern Colorado foothills, when I said, “This was really your dream, but I love it!” So he turned to me and asked, “What was your dream?” I was totally stumped.
So I asked him when he started thinking about it. He said he began dreaming about it in childhood. That was when he first imagined having a tremendous view in a rural mountainous area. The man has always had so much more vision than myself.
The culture-shock continues at this end. I remember daily my surprise when we first moved here from busy, expensive Fort Collins last summer. Walsenburg is very small, quiet and poor. Back then, every time I went out to my car to go somewhere I would think, “Where the hell am I?” Ours was a move from one of the richest cities in Colorado to the absolute poorest. Yes, this was a challenge to the way I saw myself.
About once a month we would go eat breakfast at the local greasy spoon, that cafe that has been on Main Street for a hundred years. Phyllis, the owner, cook, and waitress would always ask, “Where are you from?” We would always answer, “Here.” It took her a few months to accept the fact that we would be coming back monthly.
Let us all have a moment of silence for those poor souls in California and Washington, who are suffering through their second season of devastating wildfires out west.
I know of what I speak here. We had a couple a few years ago, west of Fort Collins. I will never forget one morning there, when I woke up to smoke all over our suburban neighborhood. The smell was that of a campground outside.
Here in rural southern Colorado we are experiencing smoky skies over the mountains, and bright red sunrises as a result of the fires far west of here.
On a brighter note, Mike has completed the outside enclosure for Rasta, our micro-pup, so he can go outside without becoming lunch to the numerous wildlife around here… you should hear the coyotes at night!
This is the first time in my entire life that I have felt truly free, and why not with a view like this out of my picture window?
It admit, it has taken me longer than I ever expected to adjust to life in and then outside of small town USA, but now I cannot even imagine going back to suburbia with all of that noise, pollution, traffic and high anxiety.
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 