Originally Posted By: rharv
"Except for the fires. The fires are terrifying." QFT

Don't ya miss the lakes? The rivers? Salmon runs .. walleye ..
An eagle family moved into the area recently. I saw one of the adults and a few other people I know are reporting seeing adults and immatures.


The lakes, to some extent yes - but the area I was from in Oakland County, all the lakes are shut-in by homes on the lakes.

There's plenty of rivers here and the fly fishing is more fun to a hack like me - fewer overhead snags. Fish aren't nearly as big as steelhead, of course, but standing in a river with majestic 14,000+ ft peaks around is pretty therapeutic, I must say!

I miss the lush green trees, but not the fall raking and spring raking - my yard in Clarkston had about 30 mature Red Oaks, which shed leaves in the fall for weeks, then in the winter and then in the spring when the new buds come in. Weeks spent raking - those days are over.

I love to be able to see for 100 miles in many directions, and watch the weather roll from the front range out into the plains. You haven't seen majestic thunderheads until you can see the entire weather system cast out in front of you like those 1800's landscape paintings that look too good to be true. When the sun sets behind the Front Range, and the entire silhouette of the Front Range looks like it was torn from black construction paper then placed over a sky that's a pastel rainbow as far as the north is from the south.

Here in the Springs, because it's a major military town, we are all visitors and newbies, so it seems. There are not the generations of families that have lived in a 100 mile radius as long as Henry was giving out paychecks. Back in MI, I can appreciate the green in June, but after a day or two, I start to feel 'closed in' by the trees. My good friend who sort of is responsible for our leaving said that would happen and I didn't realize it until back in MI about a year and a half after living here. I itch to see the Spanish Peaks, faint purple on the southern horizon - 150 miles to the south, the way pointed by the closer and deeper purple Wet Mountains. There's a strange freedom one feels in breathing air that you can see through so far away. And eagles, you do get to see them quite close up all along the Arkansas Valley - seeing a Bald Eagle cruise for trout is a thing of beauty, I have to agree. And they have made a huge comeback up in Alpena/Oscoda area in MI along the Au Sable and Rifle rivers.

I do get to see bighorns and mountain goats, and an occasional bear, and the best was a pair of adult bobcats crossing the street right in front of our car in the mountain shadows neighborhood one night in the winter before the Waldo Canyon fire obliterated major portions of that neighborhood. It was actually shocking and beautiful simultaneously.

There has been deep change to me and my wife and our kids personally since moving out here, and having to deal with everything 'NEW' for the first time in decades; new doctors, new friends, new employers, new church, new schools, new roads, new scenery, etc. Incredibly stressful, but also invigorating. I have learned a little bit how to be a better neighbor and to really know my neighbors, that was a necessity here, and I'm ashamed that I didn't do a better job of it back in MI.

So, do I miss MI? I miss my MI friends and family. I miss a deep green horizon, but not the work and mosquitos that the green harbors behind it's beauty.

Last edited by rockstar_not; 01/30/14 11:50 PM.
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