Matthew Aaron Wasserott

If gravity is love of earth the mountains teach us how to fly and bring us back as rivers flow.

You never need to wonder why the wild will take your breath away — that’s how it is in Colorado.

I love her dreaming ranges, marmot rocks and columbine.

I love the rush of mountain air snow pluming off the peaks and top knots of the pines, the quiet everywhere. Her great rivers get up and grow.

They carry the topsoil of the soul to the primal ocean far below.

I love the bluebird and the whisky jack, the black bear and the antelope, the cattle drive, the buffalo.

I love the canyons of the Ancient Ones. Maybe they vanished, maybe they’ve never gone.

Remember them among their dwellings, pinyon cliff and watchful crow, the painted hands and animals,

coyote’s canny, covert lope, the mesas and the grasslands, the Spanish names, the Ute,

Cheyenne, Arapaho, the fancy dancer, Indian flute, the story waiting to be told as old, as new, as now as Colorado.

I love the switchback trail, the wide brim shading a rancher’s eyes, the cat you never see that sees you

under the bluest-ever skies.

Step out on a dare, and see you’ve come here for the freedom just like me.

To camp above ten thousand feet is to breathe the air of gods and drink with rainbow trout.

Some come out west to beat the odds and find out that the sky’s the limit, some simply stare — no end to it, the way you can love a land and quite a few of the people in it.

Give me the sage in sunlight, warm even in winter. Give me the moonlit snow. Give me the book cliffs and the farms, the wildflowers of Colorado.

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