This one is about finding home.

When Dax was just four and a half months old we packed up our things and moved from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Castle Rock, Colorado. Tim had been hired by Douglas County as their new Water Resources Manager. It was June 2008. I did not want to leave Santa Fe - a place I had called home for nine years. I did not want to move away from family. And I certainly did not want to have some 400 miles separating me from some of my dearest friends.

I moved, physically. I didn't have much of a choice in the matter. But emotionally and spiritually I remained tied to a city where homes have been made out of mud and hay since the 1600's, Hatch chilis are roasted on street corners, and fragrant pinon wood is burned in kiva fireplaces. Santa Fe had profoundly changed me. I thought I had the world figured out until I moved there. And then I met the most intelligent, creative, and non-conformist folks who showed me how to embrace "different" and "alternative" and to stay true to myself.

So because I resisted settling in to my new home town of Castle Rock, I treated this place as a temporary stop on the way to something better. It probably didn't help that we rented for the first three years we lived here. The rental home served its purpose. It had a huge yard for Dax to perform his bike tricks in and an area for growing vegetables. It even had a rhubarb patch that I got two pies out of every late Spring. But for us, renting was synonymous with rootlessness. We felt restless, unsettled, and merely visitors in a town we had now called home for three years.

And then that all changed this past June when we finally purchased a home here in Castle Rock. Waiting three years to buy goes to show that not settling for a home in a sprawling sub-divion pays off! We could not have found a home more perfect for us. As I write my blog today I sit in the cozy office looking out at a backyard of white pine, cottonwoods, gambel oaks, and aspens. The leaves which have gone from green to yellow are being blown off the trees. I see no people. I see only woodpeckers, mountain chickadees, and red squirrels and hear the gobbles of the wild turkeys in the distance. It's just the way we had envisioned our home to be.

From the stunning views of Castle Rock and the Rockies beyond from the master bedroom to the screened in porch that is so lovely to sit in on sunny mornings, I'm in love with my new home. And now when I visit Santa Fe I miss it a little less each time and that's a good thing. I don't want to pine away for a place I'll probably never live in again. I want to be fully present in the place where I reside. We have finally put down roots and it feels like now we can start growing again.