It is a truly beautiful place, where I live. I awoke this morning and looked out the window. There was a gentle whooshing of the wind blowing through the trees; sunbeams of light surround every tree of the forest all around me. The sound of singing of several tiny birds drift across the land and on the ground several tiny blue birds’ hop along the stream on the old buggy trail, supposedly our driveway. The trees gently sway in the breeze letting go of the remnants of last year’s leaves, preparing for the new buds in anticipation of the spring and gentler weather of the cold harsh ice-filled winter.

In the distance can be heard the familiar sound of a chain saw cutting down the dead wood, making room for the new growth. An occasional moo from the cows that live on the other side of the forest can be heard. The sky is a light blue with thin stripes of white gently moving clouds. After several days of rain the ground is drying with the tan earth quietly laying where grasses will some day be. Around the yard piles of leaves can be seen that will soon be burned to rid the yard of seed ticks and other tiny insects that would eventually cause trouble in the infestations that resided there until now. There is a wall of foot length logs stacked from tree to tree forming a natural wall of privacy and calm in the once expanse of vast forested land.

There are no traffic sounds that are familiarly heard in cities, no buzzing and bustling of people all around. Missing are the blocks of espresso bars, local banks, jewelry stores and fashion storefronts. Down the road in the town you will find only one little country restaurant that has been part of the small town for generations, small block buildings where businesses grew now long abandon. Maybe a small post office with the only big blue mailbox in town in the front, with houses that were once filled with entire families now only occupied by the elderly parents that have long since given way to the new generation that moved into the big cities to find careers and life.

As you travel along the two-lane road you see field after field of pastureland occasionally divided by a row of large trees or a steam. Sometimes you will drive past an area where a chain link fencing has stood for years around a small square of land that was once known as the protectors of America, and are now just abandoned missile silos, no longer used with electric lines that go no where.