This is
beautiful. This place. I can see it so clearly. This image, this country. There is beauty in the openness, in
the shadows from the trees, in fresh snow on the ground, in the quiet
solitude, and in the smoke curling up chimneys. There is charm in the warm wave from a neighbor in the distance, a lone traffic light beckoning from afar, and the sight of a doe lifting her head briefly - a warm cloud of breath escaping her snout, before she bounds off into the woods.There is something in this
serenity that reaches deep down into my soul.
I love the country so much - so much. I did not realize just how much until I no longer had it.
There are many people I talk to here that don't get it, this yearning I have.
"It's so lonely in the country, nothing around. You have to drive so far to DO anything. How boring."
So, I try to describe it for them. They don't see that it's NOT lonely, that it's enchanting and warm, even in the chill gray of winter. They don't see that life sparkles in the country and tickles within, stirring as the city can not. The earth hums in the country. It sings with the changes, a new song every season, a cyclic symphony. Soft windchimes tinkling in the spring breeze, trilling crickets on hot summer evenings, honks of geese flying south in the crisp autumn sky, and the crackle of wood burning in the fireplace on a cold winter's night.
They think I'm crazy and laugh. They do not know. They don't miss what they've never had. Here in this city, the earth is silent, subdued. She's covered up to the point where all that can be heard is her inner rumblings of discontent. Occasionally, if you go far enough away from the noise and press of people, you can hear her gurgling, trying to be heard above the roar. She is waiting for someone to listen.
"Why go there?" they ask me shaking their heads, "It's only a dried up riverbed."
"It's a pulse" , I say. "An artery that leads to her heart."
It's a connection, and here I hold her hand, rubbing my thumb along her wrist. They do not understand yet for they have not heard her cadence.