With the very best of intentions yesterday, Mike hauled his tent over to the house from the storage shed and set it up on our front lawn. We have never done any camping together and we wanted to see if the tent was all in order and then use last night as a kind of "dry run" before entertaining any notion of heading to a favorite spot in the mountains for the weekend. By mid-afternoon Hotel Renfro was up and ready to be slept in.
Seven hours before bedtime last night~
I wish I could say that I was a camper but after last night's experience, I think I may have failed miserably. After 4.5 hours of lying on a sleeping bag inside of a tent set atop the grass of our front yard, I gave it up. My back, hips, and shoulders (shoot it was really my whole dang body) were saying to me, "What the heck is this? Are you crazy?" After tossing and turning in somewhat fitful sleep, I woke Mike up to say that Sally the Dog and I were heading in. I finished up my last 3 hours of sleep inside our 100-year old farmhouse, atop the comfortable mattress of our bed. Mike's tent sleeps four very easily so I think that the next time we do this (if there IS a next time), an air mattress will be in order. Mike is still out there and sound asleep, obviously much tougher than his Flatlander wife would be :) I admire anyone who can do that, especially thinking of our friend Norman who does it on a regular basis as he travels across the country on his 3,000 mile plus hike.
In my 13 months of living here along the Western Slopes, I have thought many times of the pioneers who came west so long ago now and helped to settle the Territory of Colorado allowing it to become a state in 1876. Holy cow, they didn't traverse the mountains on nice , modern day highways like U.S. 50 or Interstate 70. They weren't driving cars with AC and GPS devices. There were no cell phones with towers strategically placed along the way to call AAA for help when they forgot to fill up the tank or any time that they inadvertently ran over a hazard in the road that gave them an immediate flat tire. Those guys came by wagons or oxcarts or even by foot and I'm guessing that they kept their bellyaching to a minimum. They were determined to make their lives here and that perseverance paid off for them. I've read several stories written about early day Colorado history while I've been living here. Time and time again, accounts of early day settlers freezing to death in the deep dark of winter while they got caught in snowstorms was pretty much commonplace. Shortages of food and other supplies just added to the overall very dismal picture of early day life here. Morale had to be at the level of "rock bottom" but they "soldiered" on and made their homes here in the great Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
Now fast forward more than 125 years or so and here I find myself living along the Western Slopes. When I go back and forth to Kansas to visit family and friends, I do so from the comfort of a car that makes the long 611 mile journey with little trouble. I sometimes worry about the weather over Monarch Pass but I have the luxury of adjusting my departure times according to whether or not the Weather Channel predicts a major storm to come through up there. I keep in contact with my family and friends along the way to let them know that I am fine and one thing I am sure of and the one thing is this~ I am glad that I was not a pioneer, that the good Lord knew I would make a much better Kansan turned Coloradoan in the year 2014 than I would have in the days of the pioneer times.
It is an interesting life here, one filled with plenty of opportunities as well as a myriad of challenges. I surely have come a long way since the first day I set foot upon this clay-filled soil as a lonely and homesick farmer's daughter from the great Midwest. My attitude has improved a hundred-fold and if asked how I like living here, generally speaking I will remark that I'm glad that I finally got used to it. It's "ok" in Colorado. That it is my place in time now and that I was truly meant to be here. Every once in a while, I still revert to the somewhat "sucky" attitude that I had about being surrounded by mountains and not being able to see forever like I did living in Kansas. Just the other evening, the check out clerk at one of the local stores got to talking to me about my being from Kansas and she told me that she too was a "Jayhawker". She had asked for a transfer from the store she was working at back in Lawrence for a new position out here in Montrose. The lady was quite nice and when she said to me, "How do you like it here?", I replied about how much the mountains had bothered me even still today well over a year since I arrived. I'll never forget her response to that when she said, "You ARE a flatlander, aren't you?" I guess she is right.
Well the day has begun anew and on this the 21,424th day of my life I have no real idea of what awaits me. And although I was not created to be a pioneer wife who came with her husband to the great American West with a wagon load of their most needed possessions, I was chosen to be a modern day pioneer of sorts as I went from one extreme to the other in establishing a new life here with my husband Mike. As I sit here looking out the kitchen window and soaking in the scenery of my new surroundings, I'm grateful for how far I have come in both distance and in my attitude about the changes that I have encountered. Do I have a ways to go yet? Oh yeah, I have quite a ways. In faith I go forward, because I am way more determined to make it here just fine than I would ever be afraid to try in the first place. My life is filled with blessings and if you are reading this, then please consider yourself one of them. Have a great day friends and family, wherever you are on planet Earth. I'm thinking of you all and holding you close in my heart.
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