Real Colorado Found in Pueblo West by Chuck Green One year ago this week, my wife and I cut our umbilical cords and left the security and womb of the big city for a new life in the big open spaces of Colorado. We both had spent our entire adult lives in the Denver area - for me it meant leaving behind a 34-year career at The Denver Post, and for her it meant ending a 35-year career in the Denver Public Schools. For both of us it meant an adventure into a new frontier, a small-town lifestyle that neither of us had experienced since our childhoods of a time long ago. It's the best move either of us ever made. When we moved to our new home, which we had built on a golf course in the town of Pueblo West - a rural-like village of 22,000 souls with no big-box stores on the horizon - we were concerned that we'd miss the hustle and bustle of the city, lifelong friendships, longtime colleagues, the familiar sights and sounds of our everyday lives. Would we feel isolated? Would we be able to replace old friends with new acquaintances? Would we regret such a sudden, dramatic change in our personal worlds? Our concerns and fears melted the first month in our new home. Visitors from the big city have returned home, telling us (honestly, we believe) that they envy our new lives. Most have returned for a second look, not entirely certain that what they saw on their first tour wasn't a refreshing mirage in what they had expected to be a desolate landscape. But it's for real. When we walk our dogs around the neighborhood at night, we don't just see a few stars in the sky. We see the Milky Way. Last night, on our 20-minute walk, we paused one time as a single car passed by. Between our house and the 6-mile-long reservoir where our Sea Ray cruiser is moored, we have to tolerate two stop signs - signs, not lights. There are only three stop signals in our village, very few street lights and no parking meters. The mail carrier and the UPS deliveryman and the FedEx driver all are familiar faces. The county sheriff left us a message on the telephone welcoming us to town. We have joined the arts center and the historical society and the Rotary Club and the local golf club. We have attended banquets and charity events and neighborhood gatherings and intimate dinner parties. I've worn a necktie once in the past year, and my wardrobe consists primarily of denim jeans and golf shorts - year-round. The sunrises and the sunsets look as if they were produced by a Hollywood special-effects studio. Cottontail rabbits and coveys of quail stop at the artificial watering holes and feeding stations that I tend daily, and once in a while a little red fox can be seen making his rounds after dusk. Do we feel isolated? We try to avoid trips to Denver, making the trek only about once a month for unavoidable appointments. Entertainment? In recent weeks we've traveled the 40-minute distance to Colorado Springs to see Bill Cosby and Jay Leno on stage, and we've already secured tickets to see Jerry Seinfeld in January. My wife, once an indefatigable shopper, thought she would miss the offerings of the Cherry Creek Shopping Center and Park Meadows Mall. Now she doesn't have to fight the cross-town traffic, the jammed parking lots and the crowded stores to run up the credit cards. Now the world's marketplace is available at her fingertips online, and her purchases are usually on our doorstep two or three days later. We have yet to meet a surly waitress or a store clerk with a couldn't-care-less attitude. I once had a letter to the editor published in the weekly newspaper about a pothole in a street, and it had been fixed by the time I drove by the next afternoon. We aren't alone in our discovery of an easier, slower life. Our new acquaintances come from Florida and California and New York and Illinois and even from countries in Europe. Like most of them, neither of us regrets the decades we spent in the big city - life was good for us there. But when the time came to move on, and once we took that first scary, bold step into the unknown, we never looked back. I worked my entire career in Denver, but I always wanted to move to Colorado. I'm glad I finally did - it's a very happy anniversary. (Chuck Green, veteran Colorado journalist and former editor-in-chief of The Denver Post, syndicates a statewide column and can be reached at chuckgreencolo@msn.com) Published: Wednesday, November 19, 2003, Pueblo Chieftain