Watching Colorado Burn

Our family has a real identity crisis...

Minnesota is our home, but Colorado is our home too.

My husband, a Minnesota native, and I, a Colorado native, have literally split our time between our two childhood homes. We have been married 14 years, and this year marks exactly seven years lived in each state. Our pattern of late has been schoolyear months in Minnesota and summer months out west. That's why I find myself under a cloud of smoke and reeling with frustrated helplessness.

On Wednesday, I cried softly as I drove the familiar stretch of highway between Denver, my childhood home, and Colorado Springs, the area of the world that has arguably shaped and defined who I am.

Alone with my thoughts, I drove toward the smoke, noting the lines of cars, trailers, and campers that were hurrying the other direction. I was driving to pick up our oldest.

Tuesday night, Big Sprout stayed with some of his friends in northern Colorado Springs, friends he has had since preschool.  After the group of them had finished their annual Air Force Academy hockey camp, he texted me that the fire was getting really bad, and he was going to his friends' house for a game of airsoft and a sleepover. I struggled with the decision to leave him there while we all watched helplessly. The fire terrifyingly jumped the ridge and started to devour part of the city we love.

I knew he was safe, so we decided to stay out of the way and pick him up on Wednesday.

I couldn't, however, pull myself away from the images...the live reports...the mind-blowing footage.

It's beyond surreal.

I couldn't even really process at the time why I felt so overwhelmed.

Over the past few days, I have started to understand why this is so devastating for me.

I started spending part of my summers in Colorado Springs when I was nine or ten years old. Annual soccer tournaments took us to the Air Force Academy year after year. A couple of my teammates lived in the springs, and as I got older I would stay with them for that long week and other times through the year. I definitely did a lot of my growing up there, and so much of my life can be tracked back to places in and around the city.

Air Force Academy:

• Summer camps, tournaments, college soccer and basketball games, Colorado College hockey games while the World Arena was being built, football games, Stanley Canyon hikes, youth hockey games for the team my husband coached, chapel weddings and services, fly overs, and graduations

Colorado Springs and the surrounding areas:

• Four years at Colorado College...the transition from child to adult...growth and identity-shaping.
• My husband and I met there, dated for four years there, hiked there, camped there...fell in love there.
• We lived in Monument for six years
• I trained in and around the springs so I could run the Pike's Peak Ascent
• Our oldest was born there
• I taught at Cheyenne Mountain High School for three years (an evacuation site)
• Some of my closest friends live there
• We spend arguably half of every summer there.

Home is where your heart is, and Colorado Springs is as much home as my current house in Minnesota.

I'm heart-broken.

I hurt for the friends I know who are evacuated...I hurt for the friends I know who have probably lost homes (in one case two homes!!) I hurt for the people I don't know, but whose lives are forever changed.

My life is forever changed.

What I have loved about coming back to the place where my roots have so clearly dug themselves is that I could expect what I have known.

What I have known... will never be the same.

That's why this city grieves.

For those who have lived here their entire lives, for those who have recently begun to call it home, for those who have memories of visiting this incredible and majestic place; as a collective whole... we grieve an irreplacable loss.

There is so much yet I need to process. So much yet I need to let myself feel. So much more I want to do...

There were times this spring that I hesitated to come to Colorado at all.  I can't fully explain the overwhelming sense of apprehension, but it was unlike the way I have ever felt about coming back here for the summer. I don't want to say I had a clear premonition, but I definitely had a sense of foreboding. There was something so distinctly different about my preparation to come. I was anxious...worried...and I had a really bad feeling, but I knew I needed to come.

I am glad I am here with my husband through this...that our family is safe and able to help in even small ways. For anyone else who might have ties to Colorado Springs...or other places in Colorado that are going through similar wildfire chaos, or who feel compelled to help how they can, here are links to the best ways to do that.

The American Red Cross - Colorado

Help Colorado Now

Colorado Springs News Outlet Resources

Care and Share Foodbank of Colorado Springs

Fire forces change...and eventual re-growth. This is the summer of change..most certainly. I can choose to change by growing...or re-growing as the case may be,  or I can choose to simply let change happen to me.

No doubt...I choose to grow.

We are all faced with unpredictable and consistent change. The challenge is to find ways to grow, and share about those changes as we go.  Feel free to email me with some of your own growing pains. Challenge is meant to be shared.  choosingtogrow@meaganfrank.com

www.meaganfrank.com