Walking with the Soul of My Family’s Land

Since January, I’ve been splitting my time between my home in Buffalo, New York, and our family farm near Greeley, Colorado.

Not long ago, I wandered out onto the 130 acres that my father once farmed, owned, and ultimately sold—land that is now dedicated to educating schoolchildren and community members about the rich value of Northern Colorado’s natural landscape.

In 1996, my parents made a painful but necessary decision. They sold that parcel of land for gravel mining. For my dad, it wasn’t just a financial choice. It meant letting go of a place deeply woven into our family’s history. But they needed the money to make ends meet.

For the next twenty years, massive machines rolled across the land, pulling gravel from its depths and reshaping the terrain. When the mining ended, the equipment moved on, leaving behind a transformed landscape.

In 2017, George and Betty Hall—the owners—donated the land to the Poudre Learning Center Foundation. Because of their generosity, the deep blue pond, rolling hills, wetlands, and ancient cottonwood trees remain undisturbed. The land is now a living gift for generations to come.

This land will never become a subdivision.

There will be no streets named after trees while the real trees are bulldozed.

I’m sure dad would be overjoyed.

Imagine standing here 10,000 years ago. You’d have seen remnants of a retreating glacier, its enormous weight scattering gravel and rock across the prairie—materials that would one day build roads and cities. You’d have seen buffalo roaming, hunted by Native Americans. Later, railroad tracks would cut across the plains, and cattle would graze the grasses. My ancestors would come next, planting corn, alfalfa, barley, pinto beans, and sugar beets—often in weather more brutal than you can imagine.

The German mystic Meister Eckhart once said, “Nothing in the universe resembles God so much as silence.” When we step into silence, we enter the presence of the Divine

And there is no truer silence than what you find in nature.

In our noisy world, silence can feel unfamiliar—even uncomfortable. We fill every moment with sound, with screens, with chatter. But nature offers us an unclaimed stillness, a refuge from the clamor of modern life.

Nature is also our oldest and wisest teacher. For 3.8 billion years, it has been solving problems, creating beauty, and adapting with extraordinary ingenuity. Many of our most profound innovations are inspired by its designs.

But beyond its wisdom, nature gives us something even more essential: a timeless space for renewal. So, if you ever feel stuck—creatively, emotionally, or spiritually—step into nature’s stillness. Let it restore you. Let it remind you of your place in the greater whole.