We thought we had found our new home.
We visited the Rockies this weekend, expecting to move somewhere near Colorado Springs. But the Springs didn’t impress us that much. So we visited Denver, but we realized moving there would just be trading one big city for another.
Then we drove across half the rural countryside around those areas, thinking Boulder or a small town might be better. But we didn’t really fit in with the people there. We must have driven over 600 miles, this way and that, to no avail.
We found a couple of beautiful towns that at first we thought would have been perfect: Manitou Springs (the one with the view of Pikes Peak) and Woodland Park. But… with a lurch of the stomach and cry of the heart, we discovered we both have altitude sickness.
And there are several other reasons we’re not cut out for mountain living. We spoke to one Manitou Springs landlord for quite some time, and the first tipoff that Manitou Springs is not right for us was the realization that every morning that it snows — which is many mornings, spread out across 4 or 5 months — you have to go outside and shovel snow for an hour. Apparently if you slack off even for one day, the sun melts the snow into ice and damages the sidewalks.
Then there was the fact that hardly anyone has a washer or dryer, and even fewer have garages. Now, I’m not trying to be picky, but I don’t want to have to shovel snow off my scooter and carry my laundry up and down a 10% grade!
The clincher? The landlord told us stories about the previous tenants, a French couple who had apparently never seen wild animals before. Not even raccoons. So the landlord put some peanuts on the porch, expecting to attract a few raccoons and squirrels for them to coo over.
But instead, they woke up to a much bigger animal. In his best imitation of a French accent, he had us both rolling with laughter as he recounted the tale: Early in the morning, he got a phone call from the couple. “Yoseph! Zere is a friicking bear on zee porch! And zee window ees open! Come make eet go away!”
He was watching the drama from his own window, and he calmly recounted how the bear was simply weeding through the peanuts a few at a time, lazily blowing away the chaff every few minutes, not hurting a fly. He told us the bears are actually very friendly, and all you have to do is tell them firmly, “Go away!” and they’ll leave.
But then there is the mountain lion. He is not so friendly. The landlord explained that when you see it on the porch, you have to make yourself look very big, wave your arms around and make lots of noise, and slowly back into your house. And then just wait an hour before you come out.
And he was totally serious.
I could just see it. “Hi, um, I’m running a little late this morning, sir, sorry. The mountain lion won’t let me out of my house.”
Between the animals and the shoveling, we decided that life in a small mountain town is not for us. What with the churning of our stomachs and pounding of our heads, we also decided that life in a large close-to-the-mountains city is also not for us.
So instead of moving to Colorado, we’re moving back to the plains. A place where it snows, but you don’t have to shovel for an hour every morning for four months, and you certainly don’t have to worry about bears on your front porch!
Posted in: The Girl's Life by thegirl
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