On my recent trip to Colorado, I noticed a few women with their daughters in plain single color dresses, white aprons and white bonnets. My daughter glanced at them and then gave me a quizzical look.
Smiling as they passed us, I guessed them to be Amish or Mennonites. They were a long way from the traditional settlements I'd heard of and I felt the bonnets were a clue.
"Mennonites, I think," I whispered to my daughter. We went our way and I relegated this to the back recesses of memory.
Later in the day and a few hundred miles later, I had just finished getting said daughter settled into her dorm. As I was filling up at the gas station, two Amish gentlemen walked by and got into the back seats of a truck loaded with saw horses, wood and tools.
Wow, so there is an Amish community in Southern Colorado. I did a little digging and came up with an article from the Denver Post.
Not only am not in the habit of taking pictures at the drop of a hat, I read long ago that it was rude to take pictures of the Amish.
As it turns out, they settled in the Sangre de Cristo mountain area in a town called Westcliffe, which is near where my child goes to school. 'Near' being the relative term for anyone living east of the Mississippi. The area they've settled in is about the size of Connecticut. Farmers, Carpenters and Creators one and all.
There is something admirable about growing or manufacturing products of quality. Seems to me the Amish are doing what needs to be done out there in that lonely isolated plain.
Smiling as they passed us, I guessed them to be Amish or Mennonites. They were a long way from the traditional settlements I'd heard of and I felt the bonnets were a clue.
"Mennonites, I think," I whispered to my daughter. We went our way and I relegated this to the back recesses of memory.
Later in the day and a few hundred miles later, I had just finished getting said daughter settled into her dorm. As I was filling up at the gas station, two Amish gentlemen walked by and got into the back seats of a truck loaded with saw horses, wood and tools.
Wow, so there is an Amish community in Southern Colorado. I did a little digging and came up with an article from the Denver Post.
Not only am not in the habit of taking pictures at the drop of a hat, I read long ago that it was rude to take pictures of the Amish.
As it turns out, they settled in the Sangre de Cristo mountain area in a town called Westcliffe, which is near where my child goes to school. 'Near' being the relative term for anyone living east of the Mississippi. The area they've settled in is about the size of Connecticut. Farmers, Carpenters and Creators one and all.
There is something admirable about growing or manufacturing products of quality. Seems to me the Amish are doing what needs to be done out there in that lonely isolated plain.
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