Do you regret your move to CO? (Denver, Colorado Springs: houses, landscaping)

[Minier]

Why or why not?

[McGowdog]

Why would you regret a move anywhere. My brother once told me, "There's no education like travel." Where ever he's at, that's the place to be! He's cool wherever he's at. But as a whole, he can't be far from the ocean too long.

When we were living in the San Fernando Valley when I was a kid, he'd go back to see his last name donor in Lamar, Colorado. Then he'd come back home to visit us and he was off to Catalina Island to buy his first pad and work his first steady job as a butcher. Then he turned 16. You could say he grew up kind of fast. He'd stay in the Valley while we moved off to Southern Colorado. He'd visit us from time to time and finally moved to Denver in the early 80's. When he got burnt on that he joined the Peace Corps and spent the next 5 years in Jamaica. He came back to Colorado and stayed until his hood froze shut one cold winter morning. He got pissed and moved to Florida where he resides now.

Move around, see the world. You can always return to where you've been, but you might as well plant a few seeds along the way. Wow! Aren't I a poet?

[livecontent]

Sometimes, yes.

Good things can be said to able to grow up and die, in the same area. Your total experience can be totally tied to your environment, you age the buildings age and you can see it; you can visit your old schools; you can go under the same tree you had your first kiss. You can visit local sites that your father brought you as a kid. You will grow up with people from an early age and experience them your whole lives. If your are fortunate if all your relatives live in the area, there is continuity that you can feel from one generation to the next.

Yes, when I moved from the area that I was raised there was a loss. There are values to seeing, living in other places. It is nice that we all have a choice. There are gains and benefits to both paths of live.

[vfrpilot]

We moved out of the San Diego area 3 years ago and have no regrets. We still visit because our older kids still live in SoCal. Everytime we visit we become more convinced our move was a good one. We don't hate San Diego. It's a beautiful area with argueably the best climate in the world.
But weather here is not all bad and the scenery is amazing. We were lucky in that we found a great house in a great neighborhood in a great school district. Great, great, great...the quality of our lives have definitely improved.
Good luck

[Minier]

McGowDog: Poetic, indeed! Thanks for the wisdom - I will take it to heart.

livecontent: I know what you mean. For me, my parents moved us as kids and so I've been "homeless" in the way you speak of for a long, long time. There are a few places where I can return to "see the past" but none that is quite "home". I'm sure there's something nice about having that. There's also something freeing about not having that.

Vfrpilot: No regrets sounds great! Where in CO are you?

[vfrpilot]

Vfrpilot: No regrets sounds great! Where in CO are you?

We're in Monument. Kind of a suburb just north of Colorado Springs, 45 minutes south of Denver. Monument is higher than the rest of the Front Range and so we usually get the worst of the winter weather. It's usually cooler in the summer though, and we have more trees.

[jazzlover]

I can't say that I regret my many years in Colorado. What I miss--and what I have posted about often--is that so much of way Colorado was in my youth has been wantonly destroyed by greed, stupid growth, and the homogenization of America. All of the trophy houses, water diversions, fancy landscaping, sprawl, and trendy architecture that has been lavished in Colorado over the last half century can never replace the natural heritage of the state that has been sacrificed to permit the proliferation of that stuff. Colorado is one of those places where we stupid humans can do very little to improve on what nature created. I wish that we would quit trying.

[Katarina Witt]

It took a long time to get used to Colorado with its bizarre weather patterns, different culture, etc, but now I love it! We moved here from central Illinois; I grew up in W. Pennsylvania.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by jazzlover

I can't say that I regret my many years in Colorado. What I miss--and what I have posted about often--is that so much of way Colorado was in my youth has been wantonly destroyed by greed, stupid growth, and the homogenization of America. All of the trophy houses, water diversions, fancy landscaping, sprawl, and trendy architecture that has been lavished in Colorado over the last half century can never replace the natural heritage of the state that has been sacrificed to permit the proliferation of that stuff. Colorado is one of those places where we stupid humans can do very little to improve on what nature created. I wish that we would quit trying.

Whenever I fly in an airplane the one thing I notice is that there is so much undeveloped land - especially in the western 1/3 of the US. Much of middle America is farms.

I think I remember hearing a statistic: If Manhattan had the population density of Alaska, there would be 16 people living there.

A quote I found to be interesting: "There's no shortage of water in Colorado, just a shortage of pipes."
William Mulholland designed a gorgeous system of aqueducts, siphons, and pumping plants to move water from the Owens Valley to the parched Southern California. Can this be done on the Front Range? (I realize there are a lot of PO'd people in the Owens Valley who don't dig on their water being used to fill swimming pools and irrigating flower beds in the hills above LA.)

I also recall seeing signs near Buena Vista (on the way from the Springs up to Ski Cooper) that read something about "Don't steal our water". Not sure what that was about hydrologically.

[Kibbiekat]

PLEASE do not create an LA here by diverting water like they did in California! If there isn't enough water to support people, maybe people shouldn't live there!