My New Hometown

Main Reservoir

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I walk with a group of people I met in a Silver Sneakers exercise class at Carmody Rec Center in my beautiful hometown of Lakewood, Colorado. Main Reservoir is where our walking group walked today. It is 1.9 miles from my house. If you look really closely that's Green Mountain on the horizon.

I wasn't born here and I wasn't raised here, but this is my hometown. I don't have to go anywhere to be in vacation country. The skies are almost always blue. The snow melt water is clear where it's shallow and blue where it's deep.

Where I was born and raised the water was red -- Oklahoma Red Earth red. You can see those red ponds and lakes and creeks and rivers from high in the sky. Now, don't get me wrong. Oklahoma is beautiful, too. In its own way.

Oklahoma's most beautiful feature is its sky. In an Oklahoma wheat field if you lie down on the ground and look straight up, you'll see nothing but sky. No hills. No trees. You can hear red-winged black birds whistling to each other. And if the wheat is ripe enough, you can hear the wind rattle the grains as it sweeps across the field.

Thunder and lightning and gust fronts can bring you rain in Oklahoma. Or not. If there is rain, you can smell it before it falls on you. And in a hot, dry summer, that is the most glorious scent in the world.

If you live in Oklahoma, you go some-where-else when you go on vacation. When I was growing up we went either to Galveston on the Texas Gulf Coast or to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Now I live year-round in the middle of a vacation.

Kountz Lake in Belmar Park

My walking group walked here last Thursday. That's an island out in the middle, favored nesting grounds for Double Crested Cormorants, Snowy Egrets, and Blue Herons. This property was once part of the Bonfils family's estate. They were the Denver Post Bonfils.

The Tuesday before that we were at the Stone House.

                                                       

                          Chickory Plant                                                           Bear Creek.
               It grows wild at Stone House.                       Bear Creek runs through the park at  

               It's identified as a Noxious Weed,                Stone House. The creek heads up near

               but grind its roots and brew with                  Mt. Evans the highest of the Chicago     

               strong coffee, serve with beignets                 Peaks in the Front Range. Those are
               and you have the taste of New Orleans.        the mountains you can see from Denver.

                                                   
All this with easy access to an international airport, an excellent ballet company, a Level I trauma hospital, more professional sports teams than I ever imagined possible, the Denver Museum of Science and Nature, nice people who've moved here from all over the world, Starbucks that will soon be serving beer and wine, The Tattered Cover (my second favorite independent bookstore,) and my favorite husband.

What more could I ask for?!