I’ve been looking at some old photos from Colorado, checking out wikipedia pages about all the peaks that don’t tell me as much as I learned about the place while I was out there, and in general…just reminiscing.  

It all makes me very sad, and I’m realizing how much I’m going to miss it this summer.

I’ll finish up school in a couple of years (I highly recommend the 6 year plan), and I honestly can’t tell you if I want to be an engineer.  I’ve said this a lot before.  I love learning about engineering and everything it entails, and when I leave college, there is nothing else I would rather know about…but when it comes down to it, I would be much happier working on cars than designing them.  Heck, I enjoyed selling horribly made souvenirs and putting up with America’s worst tourists because of where I was and who I was with.  And none of that will land me an engineer’s salary.  And I’m ok with that.  

Now, I love the job I have now.  I’m learning a ton, and I’m having a blast. Birmingham though?  Let’s not talk about it.

I miss Estes Park, and not needing my car.  I miss being able to walk to the grocery store.  Want to check out RMNP?  That’s fine.  It’s just over the fence there at the end of the back yard.  What’s humidity?  Being hot is for people in Florida, and being cold…well, they’re always colder in the crab boats on the Bering Sea.  And tornadoes?  They don’t exist above 7500 feet, C.

All this is just to say that I don’t think I’ve figured anything out yet.  All I know is that I might need a few solid years back in Colorado before I know what I want. And I don’t mean Denver.  Maybe not even Estes Park.  I mean one of the valley towns beyond the front range.  I want to be that city slicker from back east who has to earn his place in a small town where everyone already knows each other, where it’s tough to make ends meet at the best of times, but also where true community and fellowship is.

I tend to threaten to do things for a long time before actually doing them.  I “threatened” to get my ear pierced for years with the promise of being disowned by my dad :), but I eventually did it.  The earring is gone now.  I figured out I’m probably better without it, and I think he would agree. The time was right for the earring, though.  I had money with nothing else to spend it on, and it was a whimsical decision one day in Fort Collins, as it should have been. Just doing it was better than waiting a week to see what somebody else would think about me getting an earring.  

And now I realize that I’ve been threatening to up and move to Colorado ever since my first visit there in 2007.  But unlike the earring, the time is just not right. Maybe in a year or two.  Not now, but soon.  Very soon considering I’ll be 23 this year and time is running out for me to “grow up.”  

And that’s something everyone I know and love, many of whom will probably read this at some point, will have to be ok with.