Build:

Verb.

1. To construct (especially something complex) by assembling and joining parts and materials.

2. to establish, increase or strengthen

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Building my bookshelf was easy. It’s from IKEA – complex enough to make one feel accomplished and proud of putting together such an efficient, beautiful piece of furniture, and simple enough that there is little challenge involved. I like that kind of building.

Building a home in a new apartment is less simple. My taste is difficult to describe and therefore decor is difficult to acquire – I don’t always know what I want before I see it, but when I see it I know I wanted it, and I work with and around it to make something beautiful. (I still haven’t found a lot of the things I think I want.)

But building a home means other things too. Like relationships. Memories. Places.

Building new relationships and new homes is hard. Much as I love the mountains, I don’t have anything like an old favorite hike, or a local place that is part of any tradition.

I’m starting, though.

I sometimes sit in a corner of the couch and tally up the memories I have in this living room, counting gatherings and lunches and laughter like beads on a string. Memories are piling up on my phone too. I’ve got selfies that I took for that one person who needed a laugh, and groupies with a little selfie-arm from that tall person who can hold the camera out the farthest. There’s autumn pictures from this year AND from last year – a stretch that I take particular pride in.

There’s a place too, up the mountain, that makes my heart happy just thinking of it.

Rampart Reservoir. Our favorite date (and we were separately quizzed on this, so I’m not romanticizing it.) The place where we got all those fun pictures and I wore my knitted yellow hat. The place where I picked out my favorite hill, and we scrambled off the trail over rocks.

The place where we took Luke and Jordan for a double date and played around with the old Minolta film camera – so much laughter bouncing between the hills. The place on the same range as where he proposed to me, kneeling in his hiking boots in a tussocky field with the peak behind us.

The place where the two of us old engaged people crept down the stream to sit on a sunny rock where they wouldn’t be able to distinguish a little kissing, but we could still keep an eye on them. The place where we always pull off the road to admire the sunset. The place where walking and conversation and adventuring and fellowship all run together like the stream, down towards the lake.

Yes, this is a good place, and these are good people, for building with.