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Steamboat Springs — We learn our biggest lessons the hard way, some quickly and others throughout months and years. The greater the lesson, the clearer its reminder.

Here in the mountains of northwest Colorado, winters teach us about summer. A morning in late August prompts us to recognize the signal that another summer is coming to an end. The air has a different feel, a distinct cool crispness, prompting us to take note of how much we cherish long daylight hours, bare arms and legs, green meadows and the soft whisper of aspen leaves moving in the breeze. Having been raised in the South, where summer heat is taken for granted, as natural as eating, I learned the season's value by living through hundreds of inches of snow, mornings of shoveling and nights of driving through whiteness that envelops the dark.

That's what Sept. 11 has done for us. What happened that day, seven years ago, taught us to recognize what we already have seen but never particularly noticed. Four jet planes departed on supposedly routine flights that Tuesday morning, and, before the day was over, they had opened the minds of people around the globe.

Some of those people already were all too familiar with intentional murder of innocent victims; the surprise for them was its occurrence in the United States of America. Others who had grown up where such things never happened could not imagine murder even in a one-on-one situation, much less in multiples of a thousand. However, such was the reality they faced as television cameras pictured the scenes over and over again - a pile of rubble on the island of Manhattan; demolished walls of the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.; a gaping hole in Pennsylvania's countryside. Slowly, as the day's hours passed, in country by country, city by city, town by town, and person by person, a new awareness shattered old ways of thinking.

In Steamboat Springs, those who started their morning by turning on satellite news gasped at the scene appearing on television screens. Others, listening to radios on the way to work in cars and trucks, pulled over to the side of the road to hear again what they thought must be some mistake. Business on Lincoln Avenue was brought to a standstill as word spread through town. By lunchtime, children at school were being reassured by their teachers. By dinnertime, families were looking at each other and wondering what they would have done and what they could do.

Steamboat Springs was no different than Denver or any other city of the nation's middle states. People felt horror and sympathy. Communities in the coastal areas, however, felt something else - fear. No one knew how extensive the terrorists' planned attack was or what unforeseeable agenda might be scheduled for days to come. Law enforcement personnel, intent on protecting their citizens, reported for extra duty. Fire departments, hospitals and city governments stood ready and on the alert.

In the earth's second most populated city, men and women looked into each other's eyes and saw their fellow New Yorkers in a different way. Children watched as their parents respond to the grim scene that surrounded them with smoke and ashes and palpable fright. One and all, they felt the shock when twin towers imploded and fell to the ground. For seven years now, summer's last few glorious days have included a darkening shadow. Sept 11 is our reminder. We stop to look around, to recognize that our lives truly are summertimes to cherish.

Let's raise a flag today, not in superficial pride, but in recognition of those who died, in appreciation for those we love, and for this nation that protects us all. Let's live the lesson we have learned.

Harriet Freiberger is a freelance writer who has lived in the Elk River Valley since 1982.