“A crystal clear Colorado sky opens above us, a blue so deep it makes you dizzy. The occasional bright white wispy cloud dances across the firmament, punctuating the deep blue vault of heaven stretching over this paradise.” Neil M. Hanson
“I like the mountains because they make me feel small…They help me sort out what’s important in life.”Mark Obmascik
Colorado is like no other state in the U.S. With towering mountains and an abundance of rivers, reservoirs, and woods—it’s the adventurer’s playground.
What is it like living here, you ask?
Colorado is straddling an ATV on dirt paths, racing through the aspens and the sage brush. It’s smoky bonfires crackling in the night. It’s off-roading and rafting, dirt bikes and kayaks.
It’s wearing a flannel in every sort of weather: blues, greens, purples, and oranges. Lined with fur or thin as a whisper, they’re over your shorts or tucked into the jean.
Colorado is creamy hot cocoa, sleds, and snow tires. Snowflakes coating your eyelashes and hair—on the way to school, work, and back home again—the flecks glittering like stars from the light on your front door step.
It’s coveted fireworks from Wyoming and weekends in the Rockies. It’s road trips through Utah, dusty Nevada; summer getaways in Cali and weekends in Oregon.
It’s shouts echoing through the woods and laughter bouncing off of the boulders. It’s pierced silence when you crunch along the blanket of pine cones or gasp aloud at the top of a mountain’s peak.
I don’t think I’ll ever be happier than cruising down I-70 sipping on a coke, windows rolled down.
Never happier than unlacing my hiking boots and dipping my toes in a mountain stream.
Never happier than with the sun pressed against my shoulders and a fishing rod beside me.
Happier than the long nights gathered close in a familiar house—cars lining the street with friends and family, a cooler full of beer and dogs running around a muck.
Colorado—my home.
It’s where I’ve been reared and prepared for this world, and thus far I can’t see anywhere else I’d rather be.
If you haven’t been here, then you wouldn’t understand. This is Colorado, and it’s…everything, to me.
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