Snow in Colorado

We just got a 20-24 inch snowfall here. The wind whipped up great drifts so measuring is not precise. Having lived for over 25 years in Colorado I should be used to the snow. This is nothing. For more than 15 years we lived at 8,500 feet in elevation in a very rural area although my husband commuted daily to the Denver Metro area. The first year in Conifer there were four different snows with 3 to 4 feet at a time! I thought there was no way we could survive there for long but I had the energy of youthfulness, and promise of the invincibility that comes with it as well. It was a great place to raise our children and so much better I believe for them than a city school. Maybe that is my own prejudice since I was raised in rural North Carolina.

The farmhouse my grandfather built in 1917 still stands although it is empty, moldy and crumbling. Back in Western North Carolina, no one dares tear down their old home places. They stand greying and crumbling, loved from a distance. And I love that about the culture back there. The best thing about my grandparent's farmhouse was the front porch. It's porch stood about 5 feet about the yard, tall enough to survey the whole of the valley before you when you were only 4 or 5. It was equipped with two great old oak porch rockers and an old fashioned swing that hung on chains. What child wouldn't love the adventure of all that! The swing could be an airplane or a speeding car at a moment's notice. The rockers were so sturdy and when you got them rocking fast and wildly they were the farm dogs greatest fear. No sleeping dog stayed on that porch with a combination of children and rocking chairs! Tails be gone!!!

As a child I don't remember much traffic on the road in front of the house. It is not that way today. I often wonder what a passerby thinks when they see the old house. Little do they know what treasured memories linger in my head. Deep from the recesses of it I hear the sound of the slamming  screen door even now. That is a comforting sound not heard with the ears but with the heart.

Well, I will close for now and sit for a while looking out at the snow and let those inner sights and sounds do their magic.