Colorado Chronicles
I am not sure if this will actually become a series of blogs (I’m honestly not sure of anything right now), but I am really hoping it will; no guarantees though. I wanted to share with you all how exactly I got here, living out this dream of mine. Looking in the past, I cannot totally pinpoint a specific time when I started feeling a longing to live in Colorado. If I were to try, I would say at some point in college, my love of nature started blossoming and the joy I got from exploring, learning and appreciating it grew more and more. This deep appreciation for nature is something I felt my entire life; it’s something I consider a part of my core self. I remember being inspired by any courses or course work, starting in high school even, that educated me about nature and our environments. It resonates wholeheartedly with me to protect our planet and care about how my actions might affect the natural world around me. This was so deep for me that I centered my life around the concept and now dedicate my work to the cause: i.e. working as zoo keeper.
In college, my love of nature came through in my studies but also in the activities I did with friends. With them, I found a new freedom in hiking and exploring the Appalachian mountains of Georgia. Occasionally, we would either have an event that took us through the mountains to another city such as Nashville, Knoxville, or Gatlinburg. Sometimes we would escape to the mountains just for fun, for the day or the weekend. I loved it, obviously. As I continued through to graduation and started working as a full adult, I still loved filling my free time with being in nature. I even based the location of my first apartment on how “nature-y” it felt (I absolutely love my first apartment, shout out the Walton on the Chattahoochee in Smyrna, GA!). Once Covid hit in 2020, I found myself with what felt like a ton of free time because at the zoo, we started working 7 days on, 7 days off. So, on my off weeks, I would escape to the mountains, just me and my dog, Layla. It’s still our favorite thing to do together.
Since 2020, my confidence and love for hiking only grew larger and deeper. This hobby, activity, which my mom hates that I do by myself (and many others might agree), became a part of my identity. At work, I became known as “someone who hikes” and would not want it any other way. As myself and the natural world around became reliant on each other, I found myself wanting to explore so much more. From solo-hiking, I gathered the courage to embark on my first solo-vacation. In 2021, I visited Colorado for the first time, by myself. It was everything I had hoped it would be…
Well maybe not everything, because there is just never enough time to do all the things you want to do (even after living here for over a year, I still haven’t done half the things I want to). On this solo-vacation, my goal was to see if I liked it in CO enough to move here; did not take much though. The moment the plane’s nose starting descending into Denver International Airport (DIA, an interesting place in itself, but that’s for another blog) I was already falling in love. I stayed in a hotel near Cherry Creek, a suburb of Denver, but I had sedan that took my everywhere, literally. I drove that little thing around Denver, to Breckinridge, Colorado Springs, up Pikes Peak and back to DIA. I still believe the credit card I lost is somewhere in that sedan. Now after this magical trip, I needed to figure out when was the right time to move out here. I had a lot in Atlanta, working at the zoo as a gorilla keeper, living on the Chattahoochee River, and having most of friends close. I just was not ready plus there were a few older gorillas that I worked with and knew they wouldn’t have much longer so I wanted to see out their care until it was time to say goodbye. I definitely felt more ready for change after they passed away, but it still took me a year because I was working on getting my masters.
A lot of my masters thesis was centered around studying coyotes within the southeast, particularly in the city of Atlanta, so it didn’t make sense for me to leave until I finished that, but once I graduated, I was more than ready. So ready that I decided to go for it without even having a job out here. If I am remembering correctly, I think my last day at Zoo Atlanta was scheduled for March 15th and I found out I got a job working as vet assistant at the Dumb Friends League on like March 3rd or something. My last day ended up being March 25th because what’s one more week? After that though, I set my sights toward Denver and never looked back!
