and yes, I miss the view

Sometimes, I sure do miss this view.  I can't believe that I'm saying that, especially since I spent my first 3 months of living as a newlywed and very homesick Kansas schoolteacher trying to figure out a way to go home again.  Yet, I do.

I miss the view.

There were times that I would sit at the kitchen table and look out at those snow and ice covered peaks.  They appeared as if they were part of a magical kingdom, one that protected all the inhabitants of the little place called Montrose, Colorado.  The mountains made a ring around us there in the quaint valley that we called our home,  for me over two full years.  For Mike, it was more like 20.  For as much as I hated the fact that mountain ranges and over 600 miles separated me from my beloved Kansas, I ended up loving those tall mountains in ways that I never thought I would have.

Ok, so I really do miss the view.

Mike and I left our home there now over a year and a half ago.  It was time for us to do so. Mike's job had been downsized and it really did appear that it was the moment in our lives to make a change.  That gentle "nudging" that we felt led us both to the plains of Texas and an area more familiar to me.  

So we packed up our things and we went.

This afternoon when I got home from school, Mike told me a package had come in the mail for me.  To my pleasant surprise, it was from my dear friend Debbie who teaches 3rd graders back in my old school in Olathe, Colorado.  The package contained the messages of her students (many of them were mine in the first grade, 2 years back) for my students at Big Pasture School.  Nearly 800 miles separate us now but holding that package of letters in my hand made me almost feel as if it wasn't so far after all.  

For that, I give thanks.

I'm looking forward to sharing the letters tomorrow with the 19 children along the Red River who now call me "teacher".  I want them to know about a wonderful state, a fine community of learners, and the people I called my "family" back there in southwestern Colorado.  

Sometimes the miles come between us.
Sometimes it seems like "forever" until I will see those good people again.
Yet the love of friends and memories of a life now lived in a different state are held tightly in our hearts.  Nothing can really separate us.

Nothing.

                         Before I was a Big Pasture Ranger, I was once an Olathe Pirate.