I don’t think you really need to acclimate to 3,500 feet, but every time we head up to the mountains, it always takes me a couple of days to feel I am settling in. It’s usually around this time, on a Saturday night, that I think about sitting out on this porch, and how I’m only just now starting to relax, and regretting that we will be heading back home the next day.

Of course, this trip is a little different. We are heading back tomorrow, but in a few months, this same house will be the place we are calling home, for the next year or so–the house that my wife’s grandfather built for her father and mother as a wedding gift.

Still, there is going to be much acclimating over the next few months. Even the dog will have to adjust. He is normally pretty high strung–he gets anxious if everyone isn’t all together as one pack. Going out in public with him is almost always more struggle than it’s worth.

Yesterday and today, though, we brought him out climbing with us. He had a blast, and was calm around other people. Today, after a day at the crag, we brought him to the downtown area of our new home town. There was a festival going on, and the weather was perfect, so the place was teeming with tourists. My oldest son and I bought a plate of barbecue for lunch and sat on a stone wall to eat. Our dog Finn hunkered down beside us and just watched people walk by. He even accepted a few pets on the head.

I’m not naive enough to think that “everything will change” once we do finally settle up here in the mountains, but at the same time, I do feel something shifting in all of us.

And I am open to see where this path will lead us–each individually, and as a family.