Sheltered between two Rocky Mountain canyon walls, my husband and I ascend the steep hair-pinned road. A deep sense of belonging settles as we view the beauty in silence. We have left the city behind in hopes of the serenity of clear blue mountain lakes, pristine heights and slopes of evergreens and aspen, and most of all tranquility.

I move in and out of present time as we climb. My parents and grandparents came over these hills the same as I, seeking respite from life’s chaos and pressure. They came to have fun, to lay their burdens down. There was nothing profound in their journey, yet there was and is profundity.

I picture them—their eyes falling on the same breathtaking beauty, smelling the pine, and hearing the roar of the stony ice- cold river—throwing their fishing lines out into the water, stoking camp fires at night, and laughing into the darkness.

Their presence in my life seem as big as the mountains before me. I’m never more connected to them, to the past as I explore their native geography.

I’ve felt this same connection around the world—England, Ireland, France, and the Mid East— where my ancestors have carved out a life and more significantly a lifeline for their generations.

I didn’t need ancestry.com to give me background. The heart often knows what the head does not.

-Bonnie Saul Wilks