Geneva Glen

Nestled in the foothills of Colorado is a place that is as familiar to me as the beating of my own heart.  It is a place the is a part of my history as well as a  place that is a part of my present.  Geneva Glen is a summer camp.  Each summer kids from all over the country and at times, all over the world, come to hike, climb, swim, ride horses, and just enjoy being a kid.  Even as a child I knew this place was special.  I knew that it was a part of my heritage.  My great grandfather was a part of the story from the beginning.  He spent weekends there building the first lodge that still stands today.  There is a sense of coming home, of belonging to this place that even though it was been many years since I spent my summers there.  Some might say it is in blood.  I don't know if it is, but I do know that it is a place that gives me peace.  It is a place that connects me with family and it is a place that I find myself visiting even if I am thousands of miles away.  My children are the 5th generation of my family to walk these mountain trails.  Can they feel it in their blood?  I hope so.  We all need a place to call home.

When asked to describe the landscape of the place that I was born in Module 2 I automatically started thinking of the formation and geology of the place that I described above and then I remembered that although this is the home of my heart, it is not the the home of my birth or the following years.  I was born outside of Chicago, Illinois.  Most of the Illinois is part of the Central Plains.  In my mind I had to struggle with a way to describe a plain so I thought about what it meant to me.  In my mind a plain is a flat area.  This doesn't really fit because I remember rolling hills.   Like much of our landforms these plains were carved out from Glaciers during the Ice Age.  I know I learned this idea that the place I lived some how was carved out by a massive sheet of ice years ago.  Now though, years later I live only a few miles from a glacier that I have watched retreat over the years.  I can go up and touch the rocks that only a few years ago were covered with ice, now I can understand the power and the force that created this landscape of my childhood where I played and lived... now that is a connection!