THE Citizen is so grateful for you, our members and contributors, for helping make this daily website a reality. And we were overwhelmed with the beautiful photos submitted to our “Thankful to live in the Valley” gallery. Take a look and see this wonderful place through the eyes of those who love it.

THE Elephant Rocks BLM area (foreground) on the west side of the Valley offers unlimited trails for adventuring in hiking, biking and cross country skiing, while the magnificent Sangre de Cristos (in the distance) provide mountain climbing and hiking challenges not for the faint of heart (or inexperienced). In between these two mountain ranges lies the Valley floor, with a variety of plentiful crops to feed both humans and animals.
– John McEvoy (johnmcevoyphoto.com)

Family!! – RoseMarie Vanderpool

THE beauty of the Valley requires NO FILTER! How lucky we are to live in such a gorgeous place!
– Connie Robinson
I’M so thankful to finally live here after finding myself drawn to this mystical valley, time and time again throughout my life. – Barb Reed
THE promise of the Theatre being built brought me here and its realization has connected me to the SLV. – John H. Taylor
ALAMOSA School District Child Nutrition Director Gwyn Smith and Ruth Frye, child nutrition lead, with the cafeteria staffs at Alamosa Elementary, Ortega Middle and Alamosa High. We’re thankful for all their hard work and all the healthy and nutritious food they prepare for our students. – OMS
My Love. – Chris Lopez
I’m thankful for our local independent book coop! – Ally Stone
WE’RE thankful for the sunsets, and the memories of those we had a chance to share them with. Jake’s Mom and his stepdad (who passed away suddenly, recently) on one of their many pilgrimages to the valley to see us.
– Jessica Larriva and Jake Gefell
The night skies are always wonderful. – San Mon
Bev DeVore
Teotenantzin Ruybal
Dionne Allen
I’M thankful for Great Sand Dunes National Park where we can literally get some perspective on the Valley. This photo was taken during a cross-country hike along the spine of the park in the summer of 2022, showing the dunes at sunset. – Chris Ray
Thankful for this girl and her relentless love for the outdoors. – MaryAnne Talbott
The amazing scenery everywhere to photograph! – Kevin Milder
This is why I love the Valley: beautiful sunrises and sunsets. – Eli N Sherry Martinez
A wonderful summer night. – Dianna Gutierrez Marquez
Timothy Hastey
SEEINGthe sun peek out from behind Blanca Massive every morning to greet me on my drive to work. – Chrissy McKinney
Jo Moore
Beautiful mountains, wonderful people. – Mary Jones
Changing of the Seasons in the Mountains of Colorado: San Luis Valley
I can smell the seasons changing with the slight hint of impending winter. There is a newfound crispness to the air, an elemental earthiness. It meshes and infuses itself with the wholly magical freshness of mountain air made purer by the cold. The wind blows and the Aspen trees shake their branches in effort to cleanse themselves of old growth – sending magnificent soft and crispy leaves in familiar shapes twirling in an ancient and cyclical dance, and clothing the welcoming ground in a manifold array of crimson, orange, and yellow hues. The exhausted land yawns and begins to settle into resolute quietness in only the wise way nature knows how. Wispy tendrils of wood smoke from chimneys will soon lazily curl to the sky in silent homage bringing a nostalgic fragrance of nature’s own incense. Time slows, even creeps, subtly unraveling like an infinite spool of thread encouraging us to mimic it with our own slowing and rest-hungry bodies. To observe nature is to be wise. The change of the seasons teaches us when it is timely to slough off which no longer serves us like Fall, retreat into hibernation for healing and grounding like Winter, be patiently and newly reborn like Spring, and to rejoice in full splendor radiating like the sun in Summer. Soon, fall will be over and winter will come in her ethereal grace bathing the land in frozen gifts from the heavens. Ice crystals will fall like trillions upon trillions of tiny shimmering diamonds coating the undulating ground in velvety, blinding white softness. From time to time, the snow will come heavily, muffling all sounds, and creating a thick gray opaqueness to the sky as it shelters the land in its own protective cocoon. I look forward to it as if I were a child again. It opens my eyes as well as my heart to the ever-evolving and ever-present beauty that endlessly surrounds us. There is no better wonder than nature and there is no better nature than the San Luis Valley. – Angela Haynie