I didn’t know until I heard it just now in a poem around the campfire that Linda cried the first day. It was only the first day of a week-long stay at The Home Ranch in Clark, Colorado. She’d met up here with her daughter and two granddaughters to spend the week together as a family. The menfolk were to join them a few days later as soon as they could pry away from work. Linda cried because Day 1 was already one day gone — she was already mourning the end of a week that was just beginning. She’d been here a couple of times before. She was here when Ken Jones first welcomed guests to the green-tin-roof mountain sanctuary he dreamed up and built with partners in a glorious valley surrounded by mountain peaks not far from Steamboat Springs. On that first visit, Linda couldn’t have known this place would get in her blood and become part of her life. This time she came for The Home Ranch’s 25th anniversary. She knows how it goes. So she cried.

Some of the other guests knew, too. They’d been here before. They knew how these 4,000 acres adjacent to national forest land welcome you with shimmering aspens. How quickly you fall into a Western rhythm of mountain light, clean air, loping horses. How attached you grow to the sight of those horses on the ridge, their silhouettes magnificent in the majestic landscape above the valley where you might be soaking in a hot tub after a day on horseback, having coffee on the deck at sunset, casting a line into the trout pond, standing in a field just watching the play of cloud and sun on Saddleback Ridge, the Zirkels, Hahn’s Peak…

Read the complete story about Home Ranch in the pages of Cowboys & Indians magazine at your local newsstand or call (800) 982-5370.