I got a chill the other evening when I drove into our driveway and noticed that the barn doors were open wide and that the lights had been left on.

Brevitt voiced his concern that Wade was nowhere to be seen even though his car was parked in front of the house looking ominous with its removed hubcaps, Wade’s mode of pimping out his Subaru.

It was getting dark and the skies opened up to the heavens, yet again, and fear began to set in. I couldn’t stop the cold, dark and deadly images from flashing into my head. What if what I thought I knew of Wade was really just all a façade and he was not handling all of this pressure as well as I thought he was?

Suddenly he appeared, walking toward us from the field behind our house as if straight out of an English painting. He had been checking on the ditch water. Muki, who was in the middle of eating her dinner, began her territorial barking. The food that she didn’t gag on sprayed across the kitchen floor and the boys and I stared at her in disbelief. Her puppyness is constantly a source of amusement to us.

Tears came to my eyes as Wade approached in his raincoat and wellies. He came right up to me enveloping me in one of his great big bear hugs, “It’s so beautiful here,” he said and I thought about how sad it is to let go.

(Wade walking to the ditch)

The next day I came home to a big, shiny “For Sale” sign that had been put up by our Realtor and I felt physically ill. I slumped down onto the floor of my favorite porch with Muki on my lap and let loose some tears into her fur as Realtors drove by to check out the new listing. They’ll be no denying, we love this property and can’t get ourselves to embrace this change that we must make.

There’s something to be said about living in a basin with snow capped mountains all around and a Monastery up the road radiating peace and good harmony amongst the bears and mountain lions.

(Elk Herd crossing the field behind outside our house)

The morning after we moved into this house, in March of 2008, eight coyotes played in the sun outside our windows as we ate breakfast.

As the days get warmer, we have noticed a bird that comes out at dusk and dawn. We can’t see it but we hear its warlike song and I tease the boys that there is a tribe of Indians still living out in the fields, wearing nothing but loin clothes and a bow and arrow.

Living here in the country we have gone back to our roots just a bit where we drink raw milk from Maisy who grazes in the pasture behind our house and where Tucker visits the neighboring chicken coop to coddle a freshly laid egg in his little excited hands.

Many of our neighbors are closely connected to nature and the land. It is a community that somewhat reminds me of my youth spent in Massachusetts where neighbors mostly kept to themselves but when the door was opened it radiated warmth.

Wade will miss calling our neighbor Ross to come over late night to gaze with him into the inferno of one of his infamous bonfires and I will miss his wife Michelle who feeds Tucker her deliciously organic food when he runs away from home and ends up in her kitchen.

We will miss Beth and Kent, a wonderful couple who are always traveling or working or playing in their yard together showing us what life can be like when the children are gone. They keep their trampoline up so that they still can hear the sound of children playing in their backyard.

And we will miss Renee, our Swiss neighbor, who delivers to us delicious loaves of chewy European bread from his brother’s bakery.

Wade and I will miss the enormous window in our master bedroom designed to evoke the feeling that we are sleeping outside and I’ll miss the long walks and bike rides up the dirt ranch roads where the bucolic fields eliminate my insanity and bring me to a far more peaceful place.

(Riding to the Monastery)

I’ll miss watching the boys ski in our backyard on Wade’s gap jump while the mountain range changes scenes with the weather.

I’ll miss drinking coffee on the front porch swing as the sun rises and the rooster crows, the one that replaced the unfortunate ones we were responsible for losing.

Wade and I worked so hard on this house, designing it to perfectly fit our family and it is sad that we will have to let go of our Stage II dreams of landscaping rocky paths, flower beds, lilac trees and vegetable gardens and turning the barn into a super cool boys place with a pool table and an old red sign saying, “Cap & Cork Liquors, Wine and Beer.”

(our house warming party. Architect, Mike Doyle, in the center)

This and so much more is what we will miss. If only we didn’t have to let go.

**For listing information call Jim Cardamone at Mason and Morse 970-963-3300. Tell him you heard about the house on his sister-in-laws blog.

Tonight at dinner I asked my family to take note that I was actually w earing a short sleeved shirt without a sweater on. It probably was the first time since the last warm day in the Fall that I was not wearing my old three ply cashmere sweater and my hat and gloves at the dinner table. My boys, including Wade, looked at me as if I were crazy, shook their heads and continued their conversation about 360’s, ramps, jumps and music.