Colorado

“A woman may crave to be near water, or be belly down, her face in the earth, smelling the wild smell. She might have to drive into the wind. She may have to plant something, pull things out of the ground or put them into the ground. She may have to knead and bake, rapt in dough up to her elbows. She may have to trek into the hills, leaping from rock to rock trying out her voice against the mountain. She may need hours of starry nights where the stars are like face powder spilt on a black marble floor. She may feel she will die if she doesn’t dance naked in a thunderstorm, sit in perfect silence, return home ink-stained, paint-stained, tear-stained, moon-stained.”

Clarissa Pinkola Estes – Women Who Run With Wolves

Kristin Horni‎When We All Lived In The Forest (the group) 12 hrs · Colorado 💜

Kristin Horni‎When We All Lived In The Forest (the group) Colorado 💜

This certainly looks like the top of the Manitou Incline in Manitou, Colorado where I used to live. I so loved it there. And there were many clear nights of skywatching, days of hiking. Dogs ran free, time was easy.

I know I’ve posted this or something like it, a photo of kissing camels. My backyard. Today once again I’ve been asked how I could leave Colorado for here. I always respond the same—a matter of being able to breathe. Yep, the tale of oxygen. The need for that which seems so simple—in and out. It’s amazing what that lovely oxygen does for the body, the organs, the ability to think. But I loved it there. I loved the place we lived in, the condo, the people, the dogs in the park, playing and running and loving. The running creeks, the backyard mountains. I had no desire to leave, only a need. The need to breathe.

And so it is that life has its way with us. A way that drives us into a vehicle, bags packed, Tula and Squeek in their seats, Willie Nelson singing “On the road again.” The way of it, the way of life. “Them’s the breaks, kid,” someone said. And so it is, how we sometimes put one foot in front of the other and go someplace other than where we belong, where we want to be. The place we still long for, a breath away in our dreams.