Tag: colorado

Musings

[Blog] Front Range Summer

Faith Hakimian

The summers here are beautiful.

I notice it most in the mornings, I think, when the light is still golden and gentle. You can tell even then how hot the day is going to be, whether the temperature will simply coax and encourage a population already drawn to the outdoors to spend as little time between four walls as possible or if it will edge into something more heavy and oppressive. At least, until the afternoon.

Those who have lived here longer say this isn’t how the summers usually go, with storms rolling in and claiming an hour or two in the late afternoon for impressive shows of rain and thunder and lightning. It’s not every day, but some weeks it seems like it happens more often than not. Familiarity doesn’t make them any less stunning. Not when you feel the thunder as much as you hear it. Not when it shakes the walls of the house that seemed so thick a moment before.

The hills and plains are still so green. Full of tall, thick grass, feathered at the top and almost silvered. It moves in waves with the frequent breezes. Here and there some other plant has turned a dark and brownish red, painting contrast through the fields. And the sunflowers! And the columbine! The one standing in long ranks here and there, all tall and yellow. The other scattered and blue along this hillside or the other.

The summers here are beautiful. I’m so glad I’m here.

Musings

[Blog] Mountains

Faith Hakimian

It’s been just over six months since moving to Colorado, and the mountains still take me by surprise. They’re beautiful. So beautiful. Right now it’s usually right around sunrise when I drive in to work in the morning, and with all the snow that has fallen this winter the taller peaks are all still white with snow, and they turn a brilliant pink when the early sunlight hits them. Some mornings there’s towering clouds just beyond them, either penned in or held at bay. On others they’re half hidden in mist.

I can’t quite see them from the house; we’re just low enough, just tucked enough into the hills to hide them. Until I make that first turn onto one of the bigger east-west roads. Then they’re there, huge and impressive, so stunning they take my breath away.

When I lived in Santa Barbara, I felt almost the same way about the ocean. There’s this one big hill in particular where the road runs up it long and steep and curving, and when you crest it the Pacific is suddenly there, immense and beautiful, the waves a slightly different shade of blue and green every single day.

But I think, if I had to choose, I love the mountains more.

News from the Writer’s Den

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As I mentioned at the beginning of this month, life went unexpected right at the end of January and is only slowly returning to normal finding a rhythm again, which took just as much of a toll on my still shaky writing habit as you’d expect. That being said, the good news is that I’m gearing right back up again and should be posting up the (much longer!) story I’d meant for January by the end of this month as well as making more progress on Tanner and Miranda’s various adventures. Ambitious? Maybe. But also doable. Either way, I’ll see you all next week with another new blog.