There’s a town in southern Colorado that sits in a valley below the Greenhorn Mountain, 80 miles from the New Mexico border. It’s a distinct feel, everywhere in Colorado is. It hints around as if playing with the idea of being southwest. Not quite New Mexico. Not quite the ski resorts Colorado is famous for. Southern Colorado’s beauty and simplicity is usually forgotten about by most. We’d like to keep it that way. We live on ranches or in small houses in our small towns or on a few acres just outside of town or in cabins in the woods. Not too many tourists want to spend much time here, not a lot of transplants either.
Southern Colorado is where the prairies of the east build in waves to a marriage with our quiet mountains. The Wets, Sangres and Twin Peaks are a few of the ranges that hug our valley. Pikes Peak is to the north of us and can be seen from certain views. It is my strong opinion that southern Colorado is a hidden gem rich in history and unlike the rest of Colorado landscape, we stay untouched, undeveloped and unseen by the rest of the state. It’s like a beautiful little secret only the locals know about. We have drought years and wet years. Wildfires and floods. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, in the spring an Albuquerque low will blow in and drop feet of snow, and the air will be left with a calming sensation that only our neighbors to the south can provide. It also causes momma cows to calve, every. time. We have black bears and deer that roam around town like dogs. Antelope, bighorn sheep, lions and coyotes that sing their bedtime songs. And when the air cools to just the right temperature in September, the elk bugling will chill your spine in the early mornings and late nights. I love it here. Home.
I was born and raised in southern Colorado at the top of Main Street in the town of Rye, in the same two-story house that my mom grew up in, with the same two lilac bushes in the front yard and the same apple tree in the back. She hung our sheets and jeans (sometimes our underpants) out to dry on the same line that her mother used. There was a large dip right in front of my swing set, directly below the tallest pine tree on Main, where my mom and her sister decided they wanted to build a pool one day….without permission. I always thought it was smart planning, the shade beneath the tree. My childhood home was the second to last house on the street before the road curved into thick pine trees that led up the mountain straight ahead. I loved that house. I still can’t drive by it today without becoming more emotional than a grown woman should be about a house. When I was fifteen my parents built a new house on land where my dad could have a barn and his horses out the backdoor. A dream he had had for a long while.
The first nine years of my life I was an only child who relied on the neighbor kids to be my brothers and sisters. And they were. Luckily a Mormon family lived behind me so there were always more than enough kids around at all times. They assisted in providing some of my most cherished memories. We spent most summer days playing in the Greenhorn Creek, most nights playing flashlight tag or picking nightcrawlers. At nine years old my mother had my one and only sibling, a sister named Kaley.
When I was a little girl, I was enamored with movies and books that told stories of men and women that had risked everything to move west and start a new life braving Indians and the wild ways of the western states. So much so, that my mom bought me a bonnet to wear while my imagination took ahold of me in our backyard. I also had an old prom dress my aunt gave me to play with, that although it was bright red, gave the feel of the bulky dress’s women wore back then. When I was five my parents bought me my first horse, a paint mare I named Ginger. My dad and I would ride up on the mountain hunting elk and deer sheds. I would pretend around every bend was an Indian camp with teepees and hides drying in the sun just like I had watched in the movies. Later as an adolescent it was Vietnam and the 60’s and 70’s that grasped my attention. My mother, who grew up during those years, gave me clothes she had saved from her childhood and dresses my grandma wore. I will never forget the excitement I felt when I wore those clothes. It was as if she had given me a treasure chest filled with the most beautiful and interesting articles of clothing I had ever seen. Later, as an adult, my husband would drive two hours out of the way in upstate New York just so I could lay eyes on and walk through the field where Woodstock was held in 1969. That was also a gift I will be forever thankful for. Still today, as an almost forty-year-old, I will never stop romanticizing about those time periods in American history.
When I was nineteen, a few days after Thanksgiving, I was persuaded to meet a cowboy whose family owned a string of Christmas Tree lots. I walked in, said hi, and left thinking “oh well” because that cowboy showed absolutely no interest in me, not saying hardly more than “hello.” Later that night he called me after he had won a team roping and was feeling high on life. The next day I had agreed to ride along with him as he delivered Christmas Trees to Big R stores in neighboring towns.
Jay wasn’t a total stranger to me. He also grew up in Rye. He is six years older than me but we had the same coaches, we had some friends in common and both had the same second grade teacher, Mrs. Ragan, who happened to be my mom. I had heard my dad and others talk about Jay and his brother for years because of their success in rodeo. A year after I walked into that tree lot, Jay and I had traveled the United States and part of Canada together with his brother chasing their longtime dream of making it the National Finals Rodeo. And they did. The saying “through blood, sweat and tears” is to be taken very literal when referring to rodeo cowboy’s aspirations. Every time we would return home from traveling, Jay’s brother would always say “there is nowhere as beautiful as this” as we would dip back into the Greenhorn Valley. It was a year that I will never forget, one we talk about often, sharing stories from the trail with our friends, family and now our two sons.
It is mundane and too simple to refer to Jay as my best friend because he is that but so much more. We have built two houses together, and working on a third, resorting an old dude ranch in the shadows of Pikes Peak. In the first house we built, a one-bedroom barn house, Jay started a business using our tiny coat closet as an office. Jay took his small idea and built it into a large company with employees, a fleet of trucks and trailers and a multiple state reputation of being a kind and fair businessman. He is a person of integrity, intelligence, talent, humor. In our twenty years together, we have faced the loss of a best friend, infertility, cancer, three very stressful health scares with our babies and other heartbreaks. But our good times, the laughter and stories we tell of happiness far outweigh the bad times. The bad times are just speed bumps and have built us up and made us stronger together.
Jay and I have created a life together that we are proud of in southern Colorado where it all began for both of us. We are home here with our memories of growing up beneath our beloved Greenhorn Mountain. Jay still rodeos but mainly around the Mountain States Circuit (Colorado and Wyoming). Our two boys and I go with him often. Beau, our oldest son has started roping and competing in junior rodeos, which is exciting. His main love is basketball and baseball. Payson, our youngest loves all things horses and anxiously awaits the day he can compete himself.
I spend a lot of time in my greenhouse. I had always wanted a greenhouse. After I was done with chemo, to celebrate, Jay had one built for me. Time has no value and is never wasted while I’m in my greenhouse. One of my favorite things is watching my kid’s little hands dig in the dirt and plant their soon to be salad or salsa. I cook, bake, take care of my boys. Sometimes you can still find me skiing and hiking. Western and war movies will forever be my favorite. I still watch them as often as I can, especially in Colorado’s cold months. There’s nothing better than baking fresh cinnamon rolls and watching a movie during a snow storm, except maybe listening to my favorite music while I bake said rolls. The only other thing I love watching more than movies is a high school basketball game that turns into a barn burner. Also a Colorado winter specialty.
And now that both of my kids are in school, I have my days to myself to create jewelry, to write and to cook, which is what I have always wanted for my life. And to continue day dreaming about those pioneer women feeding their families on the dusty prairie. The west forever! Although I did retire my bonnet.