"...if I take just one more step, it'll be the farthest I've ever been out of the Shire..."That is a sentiment that I can constantly relate to when I'm visiting the Rockies. After a year of poking my nose down every dirt road and mountain top that I could possibly find in the Colorado Rockies, I'm always finding more of them, excitedly looking at new landscapes that I don't recognize, expecting to discover an abandoned mine or town at the end of the road, or simply disappear into the mountain somewhere.
Of course, what actually happens is that there is never an end. There are always crossroads and instead of ending in the mountain, you go over the mountain into yet another valley. However, the feeling of each new discovery never goes away, and going down a known road again, Samwise's statement always comes to mind as I go just 10, 25, or 50 more miles further down that road past where I stopped before. But the important discoveries aren't normally due to distance. It's simply new perspectives. As I sit here 2,000 feet above Boulder, a town already more than a mile above sea level, I can almost touch the clouds on this overcast day, and feel the real mountains that are towering over me that I can't see, but know.