Though Joanna and I have visited Colorado only briefly a few times, we have spent a fair amount of time in the Rocky Mountains of both the United States and Canada.
We have “seen it rainin’ fire in the sky”: Bundled in blankets after midnight on a summer night, we lay in a roadside ditch that would put us at exactly the right angle to watch the Perseid Meteor Shower. We’ve hiked cathedral mountains, seeing clouds below us. We’ve enjoyed the solitude of forests and streams, seen eagles fly, and spent lots of time around campfires or basking in the kind of incredible starlight that (because of light pollution) most Americans never see. My doctoral dissertation topic actually popped into my head while I was fly-fishing, standing thigh-deep in “the serenity of a clear blue mountain lake” in the Sawtooth Mountains.
My wife and I also can relate to the idea of “coming home” to someplace we’ve never been. The Oregon Coast felt like home soon after we arrived, as did Moscow, Idaho, and Spokane, Washington. And though we lived for years together in other parts of Idaho, in Arizona and in North Carolina, none of those places ever felt like they would be more than stopovers on the way to somewhere else.
In short, we understand John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High.”
Lyrics here, with video (including some nice photos) below.
Love Songs for Joanna 