another reason

as if i don't gush about this place enough...

(this is the view from the top of the hill above the ball field.  the park.  and the entrance to the hundred acre woods.)

a local magazine published some reasons to love colorado.  {i hope you don't mind me editing out the place names...just to keep some privacy...and not mentioning exactly where i found this...just in case.  let me know if you really want the link to the article and i'll email it to you}

this was the reason i liked :

No. 5
Because this isn't heaven or Iowa—it's Colorado

{ ESSAY } It was 1988 and my youth baseball team from {a town nearby} was chosen to play several games in {the town i live in}, a former dynamite-manufacturing town a few miles northwest of {another town}. To get there, my mom had to drive her midnight-blue Trans Am for 40 minutes on a dirt road and then crumbling asphalt, back to dirt road and, finally, to Main Street, where the park stood alone at the edge of town. ❖ In the impenetrable darkness of northwestern, rural {county we live in}, {the ball field} was something out of Field of Dreams. Standing at home plate, the lights—low-hanging and intense—made me feel like I was on a stage. In the distance, shadows of trees and prairie scrub loomed over the left-field fence, the edge of the Earth seemingly just beyond center field. The rest of Colorado always seemed to melt away as I strode to the plate. On particularly warm nights, moths clustered around the light poles and I'd find myself marveling between pitches at how their flapping wings looked like confetti fluttering toward the dirt infield. ❖ I was never a power hitter, but I could slap the ball through the infield on command. A few times that summer, I pushed the ball between first and second and split the outfielders. As the ball rolled, threatening to fall off the edge, all I could see was the reflected whiteness of the players' jersey numbers as they turned and ran into the darkness. ❖ More than 20 years later, I drove out to {the town i live in} with my family. My two kids and I got out of the car and raced headlong for the dugouts. The field was frozen in time, unchanged from how it looked in my memory. We played for a half hour on the greening outfield grass. Then dusk fell, and the field's old lights flickered and clicked on. We ran the infield. And then I stood at home plate and looked out at the vastness beyond center field. I pretended to slap a ball up the middle, and then I ran, my kids in tow, dirt kicking up behind us. Between first and second I looked toward the outfield fence, and for a second I could see those outfielders' numbers glowing in the dark. —Robert Sanchez

it's just like i said.  this place is magical on so many levels.  for so many people.  even people we don't know.

 (we moved that little bench to the top of the hill overlooking the ball field.  one of the dads mows a path in the field so the kids can get through the tall grass.  they love to go watch...especially at night when the lights are on.  obviously the players can't see up there...but the littles whoop and holler and cheer for the players, trying to make them look.)