One of the things my wife and I have been thinking and talking about is how we are going to be handling family traditions. Of course, almost every family has to go through this; which traditions from which family do we want to keep, and which family will we be visiting for which holiday (or visiting us)? We are truly a neolocal society now, and this threatens a lot of traditions. Although our parents all live in the same area, we live hundreds of miles from them, hundreds of miles from my sisters, 2 hours from my brother, thousands of miles from my extended family, and across the country from my brother-in-law. There is no family near us. We have friends, of course, but we will be moving not too far from now, and they won't be. It hits me a lot harder than I thought it would, probably because at times I a can be extremely extroverted. Back in college, when I lived with my family, I had dozens of friends I could see at any moment, and did see every day. Traditions were easy to make and easy to keep.
Despite being so far from our families, I had always thought, even as a child, that there would be certain traditions, certain experiences that I would share with my own children. One of them... is gone now. And perhaps permanently. I remember going to the Flying W Ranch as a child, and I went almost every time I visited Colorado Springs. It was always fun to see the old west town, to visit the stores, to try the food, to listen to the cowboy music sung by the Flying W Wranglers. I stirred the imagination as a child, and as an adult it makes me nostalgic. Or at least it used to...
According to this article from the NY Times, the Flying W Ranch is gone. I knew it was in danger when my relatives who live near it told us it was surrounded by flames. But now, it is confirmed gone. The wildfires that ravaged the West have burnt everything to cinders, and the band is running out of money. It seems unlikely that it will be rebuilt or that the band will survive. I always imagined going there with Adelaide, seeing the look on her face, buying her a cowboy hat, showing her how to hold the little metal plate so she wouldn't burn herself. I feel like a piece of my childhood was destroyed and a piece of my future robbed from not only me, but my entire family.
