Like the rest of the country, not everyone in the greater Roaring Fork Valley agrees on everything, or ever could. Our life experiences, circumstances and core beliefs bring us to different conclusions. But I can’t help but wonder if we’re ignoring an opportunity to unite that’s right in front of us. That there’s something we stare in the face every single day. Something that really needs us to unite around it to survive. It’s this beautiful place where we live.

Proximity may not equal love, but that people want to be here is evident every time we head out to work. We travel between different towns, different counties and even different mountain ranges just to reach our jobs. We endure housing challenges, high taxes, transportation nightmares and limited family or “me” time for the sake of being here.

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that endure as long as life lasts. There is symbolic as well as actual beauty in the migration of the birds, the ebb and flow of the tides, the folded bud ready for the spring. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature – the assurance that dawn comes after night and spring after the winter.

Rachel Carson