Waxing Sentimental...

I am a mountain girl.

I belong in the mountains. It is in my blood.

When I came to Utah, I scoffed at what people glibly termed “mountains.”

I knew mountains.

License plates proclaimed, “Greatest snow on earth,”

...but I knew better.

Utahans could just stay under their happy little delusion of grandeur. I was just here for an undergraduate education and then I’d go home to the colorful, cool, Colorado Rockies.

That was seventeen years ago.

I still can’t claim Utah as home. I actually refuse to claim that I am from here, even though I have lived here longer than I lived at home with my parents. This is not because Utah is seriously lacking in any given way, but simply because I belong to Colorado. I love being sunburned, snow-burned, and wind-burned.

I love skiing in the winter,

hiking in the summer,

and bike-riding in the fall.

I love long winters, short summers, and heavenly autumns and springs.

I love the blue spruce, rocky mountain columbine, and lark bunting.

I love fresh spring days hiking by clear cool mountain creeks,

crisp winter mornings riding up the lift

in the quiet serenity created by a new blanket of shimmering snow,

and cool autumn afternoons in the golden sunlight

streaming through the changing colors of the quaking aspen leaves overhead.

I belong to Colorado.

My mother was born in Oklahoma. As a young girl, she traveled to a small cabin in Crested Butte every summer. The only happy memories she has from her difficult childhood are set in that small house in that small Colorado town. Somehow, my memories of and connections to Colorado stretch back to those days.

I see fuzzy images of my grandmother wearing short pants with a button-up shirt and a scarf tied around her head. She’s laughing with friends and lighting charcoal to cook dinner.

I see grainy pictures of my grandfather walking and talking with men I don’t know. He stands upright and strong against the vibrant sky.

I see bright snapshots of my mother, young and smiling. She looks hopeful for her future but lives most fully and happily in that rare moment of pure contentment. The clean mountain air somehow cleansed and invigorated her.

My roots in Colorado started then—decades before I was born.

None of us lives in Colorado anymore. Three moved to Utah, one to Chicago, and one to Washington—but our roots run deep. Like the aspens, though we emerge far apart above ground, our invisible and complex root system connects us across those distances—and always connects me to Colorado. Wherever I go in life, I will always be a mountain girl.