Witcher Mountain

I spent the first half of my life believing that it was the people that made the place—their laughter, their light, their energy—and to an extent that’s true.

A home feels like a home when there’s love in it.

My first house was one part home and two parts bitterness.

Joy and warmth were rare. In the presence of my mother they were hard won, pried from her hardened heart with my father’s tired and calloused hands. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t be with my sister and I all the time. He couldn’t be there to buffer my mother’s anger or shield us from her razor-sharp tongue. Keeping a roof over our heads kept him away until the evenings and his weekends were sometimes spent trying to make up the difference in our bills.

So, much of my childhood was hiding. I stayed tucked up in my room building cathedrals out of my Legos. I ran laps through the yard, escaped to play gymnastics and soccer whenever the season arose. But no matter where I went or how far I crawled under my bed, the oppressive air that filled the house never eased, until I felt it creeping into my own heart, like a terrible disease might turn me into a very miserable reflection of my Mom.

When I was eleven, however, and very near being dragged under by the emotional current in our house, Dad came home with a miracle: twenty acres at the base of a wide peak called Witcher Mountain.

It’s the place that made me.

I lived in the city of Colorado Springs all the way through to my early 20s, but I grew up on this beautiful plot of land.

From the first and through the years this would become my sanctuary, the haven I would run away to until the year 2020, where it has now become our “forever home”.

Out in this wilderness—tucked between the backside of Pikes Peak and the high reaching crests of the Rockies—I would finally hear my own voice. My mother’s cruelty never found its way up here, because although my dad intended it to be a space for all of us to grow together, she would always despise and avoid it.

My weekends were spent exploring every ridge, clearing, rocky outcropping and gnarled tree. I watched thunderstorms rise over the mountains and flood the valleys with rain. I made snowmen in empty fields and fell in love with the silence of a world sleeping through winter.

I learned that a gust of wind can dry your tears and when it blows strong enough, even ease the weight your sorrows.

On my bravest day, I conquered the trail up to the top of Witcher Mountain alone, with just my first and forever beloved dog, and a small sidearm. The view from up there, while indescribable, was nothing compared to what I felt inside—the pride, the hope, and the peace in that moment.

Witcher Mountain taught me to dream.

But life has a funny way of bringing you back to its harsh realities.

I was getting older. There was more weight on succeeding in school than chasing clouds up in the mountains. The hour-long trip between the Springs and Witcher became more of a chore and the hope of finally building a home up there to live permanently was dwindling with time and my mother’s health.

She was suffering with COPD emphysema, a consequence of 40 years of smoking. At the same time, she was getting worse, I was getting ready to graduate from high school a year early.

Somehow my future was rolled like a dice between our ever more abrasive relationship and my acceptance to CSU in Fort Collins, a town nearly two and a half hours away.

I made it to college for one year. Then I came home.

It would only be a couple of years after that that she would pass away. I stayed with her, walking together towards that grave—enduring her hatred, her regrets, her anguish along with my father and sister. We held her hands even though she had long ago abandoned holding ours.

And the entire time Witcher Mountain sat far off in the distance, so far that I couldn’t see it. My mother very nearly sold it out from underneath us in her last year of life. I will always feel blessed that her heart grew warmer before we said our goodbyes, and she changed her mind before she made a choice that couldn’t be undone.

Our parting was tragic and traumatic and painful, but it was filled with forgiveness, even though there was never an apology.

Two more long years would pass before I would see Witcher Mountain again.

When I finally did, I had changed, but the magic there was still as strong and warm as ever.

This time I brought the love of my life along with me, a man who would help me walk through the sharp reeds of grief and see me through the hardest and most beautiful battles that would happen in the coming days.

My father was there too, a little more tired and a little older, but with a heart that was healing at last. My sister joined us as well, with the two newest additions to our family—my niece and nephew.

I can’t describe what it’s like to watch the next generation, these little embers that will someday grow into the fires of tomorrow, running wild through the same grass that I used to play in. Seeing them smile, hearing them laugh and singing with them as we explore this vast place together is a memory I will hold fondly forever.

Then came the house. A dream come true for my Dad.

He’d owned this property for nearly twelve years, but he could never afford to build the cabin he always wanted for us.

When they broke ground for the foundation on the top of a hill we used to walk together when I barely reached his hip, it was like it was meant to be. There was no need to blast the volcanic rock that dominated the landscape. The shape of the house fit just perfectly into the slope.

The well was drilled with ease and a mistake on the framing helped bring about the most beautiful view from a living room I have ever seen.

What used to be a weekend getaway became a home.

Not a land to just visit, a place to thrive.

That first summer our days were spent outside, in brilliant sunlight until the afternoon storms would roll in. We finally had a deck to sit and watch them from, in a random lineup of camping chairs nestled neatly beneath a wooden covering.

We’d listen to the ran drip off the soffits and when the lightning (which was always wild and purple and seemed to reach up to space), the kids would splash in the puddles and the mud.

It wasn’t long before I wanted a little one of my own, but that was a much more difficult road. I’d been battling a disease that was strangle my reproductive system since high school, and getting pregnant was one shade shy of impossible.

I was terrified and heartbroken. On the evenings when the air was warm and the skies clear I would look out at the horizon, at the billions of stars glittering in a sea of black, and I would pray with all my might.

“If I can have this one thing, just this one, I’ll never ask for anything else.”

A month later we had our miracle, my own little star. Two sticks, two lines, and a house filled with my excited screaming.

The next nine months were agony. I was sick, in pain, and carrying my son was beyond difficult. But I would go back and do it over again a thousand times if it meant I could still have him.

Despite kidney stones, a kidney infection and being stuck in the hospital on the eve of my own wedding, I still somehow made it.

Months before we had looked through venues, but my heart was set on being married in the shadow of Witcher Mountain.

On a small ridge behind the cabin, we said our vows as the sun was setting. At twenty-six weeks pregnant I married the love of my life with a small crowd watching. We danced on the deck, ate our dinner on the gravel of the long driveway and stayed until the moon rose.

Though it was hard to enjoy some of the moments with the amount of pain I was still in, it could never have been more perfect.

In the very same clearing I used to run through and dream, I had taken the first step into a journey I couldn’t have imagined back then. A place that was once my escape, was now the promised road of my future.

The greatest gift I have ever been given was born in early November of the same year after a long and difficult labor that ended in a C-section.

I had spent nine months wrestling my own body for that little life and now that he was in my arms, I was overcome with so much love I thought it would carry me away.

He spent his very first holidays in the cabin, where I was able to enjoy him and recover in my favorite place on Earth.

Witcher Mountain had gone from a hideaway to a focal point for the entire family—three generations existing in one place. A history that started with my father’s dream had unfurled into a bed of opportunity and hope.

Our kids learned things here that they may have never had the chance to anywhere else.

From sledding…

To snowboarding.

Dirt bikes…

And archery.

Our three honeybee hives have not only been a learning experience for the kids, but for us as well—how small things make great impacts, how humbling it see the strength of a creature so tiny it barely fits in the palm of your hand.

The sunsets here make you stop—they command your attention and remind you that there are still colors in the world you’ve yet to see.

The magic here, or whatever you think to call it, even finds its way into our dogs, in particular our sweetest girl, Rhea.

She was adopted at two-years old after being abandoned at the shelter by her abuser. The first year we had her was fraught with fear and setbacks. She would crawl nearly everywhere when you let her out of the house and had separation anxiety so badly, she would drag my wedding dress into her bed.

But when she came up here, all that terror melted away. She became playful, happy, and even now she runs across the hills as if she can fly.

A million more memories are etched here, in our hearts and our minds.

Five thousand words would never be enough to convey how special this place is. To say that it changed my fate is an understatement. Even though I’m lucky enough to wake up to its beauty every day, it still has the power to bring me to my knees.

These twenty acres will always by my home, a sacred bit of earth and sky that soaked up my tears, gave my dreams wings, and carried my virgin hopes on the wind.

It isn’t where I was born, but it was where I was reborn, where I found God and the sun, and if I am at all blessed enough, it will be where I die—

In the shadow of Witcher Mountain.