Country Living

Listening to: Dispatch, "Water Stop"


This is why I love living in or near the woods:


Sorry the picture's so small, but if you look right in the middle, you'll see a deer. She ran through the field just as I was passing the door. A rarity, that--they usually come out at sunset. We've seen four at a time, at the most.

Another shot, just as she was returning to the woods:

That's a bit better. And here's some more wildlife, spotted on Saturday:


Yep. That's a turkey. Even living in the woods all my life, I've only ever seen wild turkeys once before, driving down my dad's road. And he lives WAAAAY out there.

Of course, seeing all this wildlife is a bit sad, too. Just two years ago, the land where our apartment complex now stands was forest. These animals have been run out of their home, and now only have a strip of forest to live in. With the rate of development down here, I'd bet that even that strip will be gone in a decade.

That's why I could never live here permanently. I would look around and see nothing but beautiful forest and wetlands being torn down and mowed over, and WalMarts, Bojangles, and million-dollar housing complexes built in their place. It's already happening, actually...I just haven't been here long enough to see it firsthand.

No, give me rural Pennsylvania any day. I much prefer to live in a place where few others want to live, than a place where everyone wants to be.

I'm funny like that.