Colorado

I started this post on July 9, 2004 - more than four years ago when I was visiting Tim and Linda Balough at their home in Alma, Colo. It's astonishing how much has changed since then:

Native Coloradans (Coloradians? Coloradoites?) are hard to find here in the high country.
It seems everyone I meet is from somewhere else. My hosts, Tim & Linda, are from Indiana. The guy we had dinner with last night is from Vermont by way of upstate New York. Walter, who lives down the road, is from Germany (Wehrmacht vet of WWII).
A couple we know in Indiana has bought land a few miles from here and plans to move out. (They signed the papers to start construction last month.) Linda's daughter and her husband have their house up for sale and are job-hunting here. (Jeff and Sylvia have been living their Colorado dream for about three years now with a home a few miles from Tim and Linda's place.) This place is a huge magnet for flatlanders and the pull seems to be getting stronger by the day.
Development is creeping up U.S. 24 from Woodland Park. Frisco and Breckenridge are exploding with new houses and businesses and property values here in Alma, long considered the wrong side of the tracks/pass from upscale Breckenridge, are soaring.
When Maria and I were out here in May, 2004 we spent some time scouting real estate out in east of Jefferson in South Park. The views out there are spectacular, but I shudder to think about trying to get around in the winter and what an enormous hassle it must be to shop for groceries and other stuff.
There are probably a half-dozen places I've visited in my travels where I've thought, "Yes, I could live here and be very happy."
The Colorado high country is one of them. Big Sur is another. Portland, Ore., is yet another. Ditto, Taos, N.M.; Shelter Cove, Calif., and Frankfort, Mich.
But that's big talk coming from a guy who's spent the 59 years of his life in the same state, living within a 100-mile radius of the place he was born. I think I could make the jump but it will take some serious prodding to get me moving.
Maria loves it up here too and says she's more than ready to pull up stakes, sell our house and my late parents' place and head for the mountains.
But she's a Gemini and is perfectly capable of having two opposing opinions simultaneously. The opposing opinion, in this case, is her attachment to family.
Her parents live about 10 blocks up the street from us. Both of her brothers and their families are nearby. Between them they have five nephews and two (make that four) nieces that she dotes on and she gets way off balance if she has to go more than a couple of weeks without seeing those kids.
My nearest son is about three hours from my house (Steve and his family have left Cincinnati and now live in Las Vegas.) and the other is about 2,000 miles away, so I'm not habituated to frequent visits.


So here we are, four years downstream. We're out of Indiana, but we're living in Arkansas. I never would have believed it. Not sure I believe it yet.