The Hills Were Alive

If the Heavens are the Throne of God, and the Earth His Footstool, then the Rocky Mountains must be the very spot where He rests His feet. When we were children, the hues of deep forest green and dusky blue pines and spruces, and the flickering of green aspen leaves against white and black trunks provided a tapestry of smells and sounds that refreshed and nourished our spirits. Thirsty for water pumped through rock formations that bade us drink for the taste of springs secreted deep in the earth, we filled our cups. The cold streams and rivers that ran in abundance provided the cleansing noise of rushing water spending itself against stones rounded with the effort of a million years. Falls spilling over magnificent cliffs terrified with constant thundering that this was Hallowed Ground. We were ancient as the woods and waters once settled within the canyon walls. We roamed and climbed, finding secret places of moss hidden beneath the long branches of shrubs at the water's edge.

Evergreen and Estes Park were places we frequented, but our father and mother loved the road and we searched out places like Rabbit Ears Pass and Steamboat Springs. In plateaus we found mining towns such as East Cliff, Middle Cliff, and West Cliff. We wandered through museums where our father talked with locals about UFO sightings reported there. Through the languid, pleasant years that seemed as though they could not possibly end, we explored both sides of the Continental Divide, witnessing the astonishing metamorphosis from forest to arid Pleocene bluffs
eerily brooding over dried seabeds now watered by two rivers.

We were at the pinnacle of Earth's diversity and beauty, and most precious of all, a family. The songs of road trips often came from Broadway musicals, frequently The Sound of Music, as my sister and I harmonized together. At the end of the day we would make the drive, long or short, back to our home, colors, sounds, and sensations memorized and implanted, a part now of our genetic makeup.