The View From a Different Window: and here we have the mountains

It has been nearly 4 months since I made the journey back home to Kansas, a milestone as such for me. In the early days of being here in the state of Colorado, shoot up until this past summer, I drove the 611 miles back to the east and the prairies of my home state a lot. I used to keep track of the trips I had made since coming here for my first visit in January of 2013 but I have long since forgotten just how many there were in all. The very notion of not being back in Kansas since I was there to visit in very early August seems pretty weird to this once very homesick flatlander. Although I still have a deep from "down in my heart" longing for that place on the other side of the big mountain and the people that I left behind, I have found a niche, my own place here along the Western Slope of the Rocky Mountains. I don't cry every day for "home" like I did in the beginning and that's a good thing. In fact, I'm not sure I can remember the last time I felt homesick enough to cry for very long. I take it as a good sign, one that tells me I will be ok here and the truth be told, I am.
I remember when I first came here to live, now a year and a half ago, the mountains really bothered me. I felt swallowed up by them because it seemed as though everywhere I turned, there they were. Good reason for that of course. I live in Colorado now. When I first started to make new friends here, so many of them would ask me how I loved living in the mountains. My answer was always the same, word for word.

"I don't like the mountains and I wish someone would bulldoze a great big hole in them so I could see back home to Kansas!"

Things are different now and little by little as I have made my own personal peace with them, I have really come to appreciate the beauty that they provide us here and stand back in wonder as to how they were made in the first place. Although I wouldn't call myself 100% "all right" with them, I can at least say that I have made it to 90% and for a Kansas farm girl who would never have even thought she would live here at all, I'd call that progress.
In the very early days of winter last year while I was still going through bouts of loneliness for the life that I once knew back in south central Kansas, I worried all the time about whether or not I'd be able to cross over the mountains to get home at Thanksgiving and Christmas. If it wasn't the holiday season I was anxious about, then I'd be fretting over whether or not I could go home in January or February. I know, it was pathetic. Mike kept assuring me time and time again that we would have no problem getting over Monarch Pass, that they did their best to keep the roads open for the skiers during the winter. So we'd watch the weather on television and plan our trips accordingly, always leaving a bit of "wiggle room" as to the day we would head out for home. In all those many journeys back home to the Midwest, I never did have trouble crossing over Monarch Mountain. I did however get caught once in a freakish ground blizzard between LaJunta and Lamar, Colorado. It was a fifty or so mile stretched that seemed to go on forever that early morning in the dark of winter but I made it, safe and sound.
Mike and I will be making the trip back home to Kansas for the holidays with, as of today, just 40 days more to wait :) After this long of a time to go back there, it will seem strange to see the places along the way that we always do. The stretch from here to Canon City is a journey of not quite 200 miles. One of the first things I learned about driving out here is that a trip of 200 miles in Colorado is more like driving 275 miles back in Kansas. Those things called "mountains" just always seem to be in the way or something. Once we drive out of the Rockies, it's all downhill from there, literally. When we finally make it to the Kansas border (not quite 400 miles), it will be so nice to see the sign that always greets us and welcomes us back home again.

There were many times that I feared I would not make it here and would give up to return back to the place of my birth. How wonderful for me that "irrational" fear is gone now and rather than worrying, I look forward to what lies ahead. And as I have known all along and remember each and every day, God brought me here for a purpose. There was a reason for all of this to happen to me. Nothing occurs by coincidence in this life of mine or in yours either as all of us live out our part of "the plan". May God bless the road ahead for all of us, each and every day.

Some of the most majestic and beautiful mountains are to be seen in the state of Colorado. Here is just a small example of the scenery to be viewed along the way.