I came up in the west. I was born out of this dry dirt amongst cacti and yucca and baked in the high desert sun.

We love birds. I recognize the songs of dozens of songbirds in this area. I know them as they fly through junipers and cottonwood, their flashes of color or earth flitting through branches.

I know the plants here as well as I know anything. What plants are medicinal, what are edible, and what just looks pretty, ’cause God is a mighty painter here in this land.

I have more wrinkles than women my age in humid climates, and my skin is a little leathered and tan, and my eyes are the same color as the vast rolling sky out here. I can ascend thousands of feet up on a morning hike with little to no oxygen. I am from here.

My grandpa was a cowboy here, chuckwagon and all. Ran in the rodeo circuit for a bit. He drove cattle all the way from Sterling to Estes Park one summer as a boy. Now, that may not sound far, but you go ahead and look at a map. Most folks wouldn’t like to drive that distance. My grandpa will be ninety-six this year. A lot can change in a state in a hundred years.

My husband is from here. Our children are from here too. We know the skyline of the Rocky Mountains as good as we know the lines on our hands, but could not tell you the names of all the fourteeners. They’re just there, and that’s that.

We are from this wild land of dust devils and tumbleweeds, of sagebrush and antelopes in pastures where suburbs will soon grow.

Now, many folks have called me a gypsy, but they are mistaken. We’ve only had bad rentals and questionable neighborhoods that kept us moving. We are only a hundred miles from where we started. Born in Denver, when it was smaller.

We have rustled up our courage. We hear winds from another place. We are taking flight. Finding our wings. Flying with the birds south to where the songbirds sing bluegrass.

Grab your fiddle, we are moving to sweet home Alabama.