as we give things time

I have now lived in Colorado long enough that certain things are beginning to repeat themselves and thus are becoming quite familiar to me here along the Western Slopes.  I've witnessed two seasons of alfalfa cutting and the subsequent baling of hay as well as the removal of the overhead pipe for water transportation over Cerro Summit, one of the first landmarks I learned of when I came here.  

Cutting the alfalfa field on a warm summer's day last year in 2014.

Watching the sunset atop Cerro Summit in September of 2013.

I have watched the deer migrate to our front yard for the past two summers and even have seen them hang around for awhile this year.  Kind of a strange thing to think of, this living in an area where animals as beautiful as these frequent the neighborhood.  One time I did see a deer back in Hutchinson though, a small little fawn that had gotten separated from its momma somewhere north of 30th Street.  I just happened to be out on the front lawn at the right time one summer afternoon.  I heard some yelling and looked over just in time to see it scamper through the alleyway and keep on heading south.  That poor creature made it as far as the elementary school just a few blocks away from my house before being captured and returned to the woods by the nature center.

My first summer here~2013

The summer of 2014

Just a few nights back, right before the sun went down in the west on a cold winter's evening.

And then there are the sheep.  Not a couple or even twenty, actually more like about a gazillion. I saw them for the first time on New Years' Eve of 2013.  This massive group that seemed more like one giant moving ball of wool was grazing in the alfalfa field adjacent to our house here.  I had no idea they were coming and when I texted Mike to tell him what I had seen when I returned home from town, he told me that they come here every year to clean out what is leftover from the fields.  It was the weirdest of things to see them that day as I was momentarily convinced that a renegade band of wooly creatures had escaped from somewhere and had taken up refuge right in my own front yard.  Ends up that it was an organized escape and that for the next few days they would be our own new neighbors.  Mike saw them just a few days ago on the other side of the road in a field just a ways down from our house.  

They are back.

New Year's Eve~2013
That's a whole lot of sweaters, stocking caps, and mittens out there.

I would never probably have enough time in the years that remain in my life  to write a "how to" manual for surviving life in a new and different place.  Yet if I did, the main message that I would want to convey is the same one that was offered to me by so very many people who cared about what happened.  Short and sweet in only 3 little words.

"Give it time!"  

And you know what?  I'm really glad that I did.

Alive and well along the Western Slopes in the winter of my soon to be 60th year.