Posts Tagged ‘rural pleasures’
Remarkably Still
It was so cold outside this morning, it almost felt like winter. The key ingredient that was missing was snow. I feel sorry for places in the world that historically experience this kind of cold but don’t get the months of snow cover that I was able to experience growing up. This environment of things being frozen solid but lacking the beauty and softness of a season-long blanket of wonderful snow is rather sucky.
Still, it was an absolutely beautiful morning despite the lack of temperature. We didn’t have any degrees. Zero Fahrenheit on the thermometer.
While I was outdoors, not a single vehicle traveled our road. When no one is moving about within earshot, it feels like Cyndie and I are the only ones in the world. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It is noteworthy because of how rare an instance it is. The quiet was simply luscious. The air was still and the cold temperature seemed to lock everything in place.
The chilly air frosted whiskers but otherwise didn’t appear to bother the horses at all this morning. Compared to those warm days with fog limiting visibility, these cold, crisp days allow the horses easy viewing, which is much more calming on their nerves.
One other rewarding thing about cold weather in the winter is the clear skies that accompany it. When Cyndie pulled into the driveway last night, she stopped to capture the view.
The sun had dropped below the horizon, creating a golden glow at our horizon and lighting up the crescent moon and Saturn out in space.
It’s cold.
It’s still.
It’s beautiful.
It’s drearily lacking in snow.
There’s still time for that last one.
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Magnificent Days
We are enjoying magnificent weather this week for the month of September, although in the back of my mind the very summery temperatures echo too well some of the anticipated ramifications of the warming planet.
No floods or fires in our region at the moment. Just high heat (80°F!) and evolving colors in the tree leaves.
Wandering down the backyard hill toward the opening to the labyrinth, the leaves are still primarily green. Beyond that, there are brilliant splashes of gold, orange, and red showing up with surprising speed.
Our growing season seems to be ever-lengthening, but the end of this summer’s agricultural period is undoubtedly near. The declining hours of daylight aren’t being altered by the changing climate and plants don’t grow so well in the dark.
On the bright side, I think my lawn mowing might be done for the year.
Yesterday morning at work I received a sweet text from Cyndie letting me know that she heard “Rocky the Roo'” making progress on learning how to crow. She said his call had a definite sing-song inflection that was recognizable as the vague hint toward the ultimate “cock-a-doodle-doo.”
I wonder if the magnificent weather days will be just as mesmerizing with non-stop echos of rooster crowing reverberating across our valley. We didn’t check with any of our neighbors about how they might feel about the prospect. At the same time, none of them have ever asked us if their gunshots, barking dogs, hollering for missing cats, or high RPM farm machinery soundtracks have been any problem for us.
I think it a feature, not a bug, of living in the country.
Where pretty much every day is magnificent, no matter what the sounds.
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Rural Pleasures
We had the wonderful opportunity to drive through the cities to the rich countryside of Wayzata yesterday for the unfortunate occasion of a memorial service. Some of that time in the car spawned discussion about what might be next for us now that we no longer have horses. It is a complicated dilemma, although dilemma is too extreme a word.
It’s really just a question, one that could be simplified to the alternatives of continuing to live here, or selling the property and moving somewhere else. One of the first complications is that there is nowhere else I would prefer to be. We have become very accustomed to the space our little sanctuary provides.
Back home in the afternoon, Cyndie hung up the authentic Guatemalan hammock that our friends the Morales family gifted to us. In the shade beneath giant oak trees, I joined Cyndie to luxuriate in the open privacy of our little nature preserve. Then Delilah decided to join us, too.
We are truly blessed to live here. It is a real struggle to even conceive of leaving for something else.
Discussions have continued on the neighborhood group about our recent close encounter with a mysterious wild visitor. The fisher is too rare an occurrence for some to accept, so the opinion has shifted to a woodchuck.
That’s good news for us, as that would be much less threatening for our chickens.
Those hens seem to be luxuriating in the rural pleasures themselves. It’s pure luck that no predator has disrupted their ranks all summer and it seems to have inspired a dangerous, comfortable confidence in them.
One of them has decided she doesn’t need to use the nest boxes in the coop to lay her eggs.
This morning, Cyndie noticed a newborn cow in the neighbor’s pasture. Last week, she reported a group of five eagles soaring together, high in our sky. Delilah picked up a feather left on one of our trails by a wild turkey and carried it like a precious treasure for several minutes, ultimately dropping it with a vividly contrasting lack of interest.
Today, it is beyond my comprehension that there is any other place where I will be as happy living as our rolling hills in the rural countryside of west-central Wisconsin.
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Relative Something 