Tuesday, 30 June 2009

• I Like Where I Live

  This is something I found while searching for writers-contest-entry material. I thought you guys would like it. :) Enjoy!

   

   

             Having grown up in a small city, I have always seen nature as a priviledge. When you can climb only one tree across the parking lot as a child, and when your “yard” is a small patch of green in a long row of other patches, the treasures to be found in a real forest are invaluable. I had a wonder and awe for the parks I visited as a child, and relished my taste of the rugged outdoors on every camping trip.

              In time, I met, fell in love with, and married a man who had grown up in the country. I left the city, with hardly one backward glance, to boldly embrace my new home among Amish farms and open fields.

              Naturally, I had some adjgusting to do. Shopping for groceries was no longer a convenient stop, but a chance to multitask “in town” for the week. Freshly-killed deer in the beds of pick-up trucks was considered normal, even festive. Passing a buggy every two or three miles became an accepted travel hazard and was dealt with as quickly as  possible, lest the driver three cars behind get impatient and pass everyone in one gambled run, up a curving hill. Including the geographic and cultural anomalies, I enjoyed my transition.

              An insatiable observer at heart, I have had ample opportunities for noting the idiosyncratic country way of life. But for me, the summit of pleasure in my new home will always be the view from the back deck. Open, untilled fields surround me. Three Amish farmhouses, all with smoking chimneys and all with several horses that meander along the fence line, sit with self-assured purpose in the distance. When I look up, an uninterrupted expanse of sky gazes back at me, reminding me in every one of its colorful moods –from impenetrably black and glittering with stars, to a clear, swelling blue with trailing wisps of cloud-- that I am but a small thing in this world. I have the gift of a perfect sunrise, wild with the joys of red, orange, and pink, over a thick line of woods along the horizon nearly every morning. And when it rains on a sunny September afternoon I can actually see the end of the enormous double rainbows. The view of all this never fails to bring me solace.

              I am at peace in my home. The farmhouses and fields encourage contentment within me, joy in simple things. And the sky—all the splendor of clear summer days and of crisp star-dusted winter nights—the sky above me on the back deck in my country house brings back all the old childhood wonder of untamed Nature.

              Yes, I like where I live.

   

  What do you like most about where you live? Is it something you had to transition to or something you've always been familiar with?

  ~Literary Victoria

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