The Rural Appreciation Society

I was reading the latest Ian Rankin novel when I took this photo on a rainy Saturday.

I had the house to myself this morning - Mother is due home from Georgia tonight and Dwayne hightailed it into town shortly after he got up (which was right after I got all the chores done). And because I worked at school yesterday, and tomorrow night is the opening of the play I'm in, which runs until Saturday night...
...I needed a slow morning.
I slept in until six o'clock then promptly fed all the wild birds because it snowed last night so everyone was looking for a little bigger buffet this morning. I did the chickens, who are not happy about the snow, and fed our indoor menagerie.
Then I flopped on the yoga mat for some much-needed stretches ahead of a long day at the computer, then I realized the house was cold so I made a fire in the wood furnace.
That's when the country boy rolled out of bed and rolled right out the house.

So I sat with my coffee and my book in the living room, wrapped in a blanket, while the wild birds flitted outside in the trees, from feeder to feeder, and the cats watched out the windows, and the dog lay on the love seat in the dining room.
Peaceful.
When I took my mug to the kitchen sink to rinse it out, I looked out the window at the chicken coop and beyond it, to the field. No deer out there this morning.
Then I wandered into our bedroom, and stood at the window and took another look from another angle at the chicken coop and the field. And the woods and the sky.
Breathing space.

This is why I'm working so damn hard at my writing. This is how substitute teaching is motivating me.
I want to be home in the mornings. I want to be home to have these long, slow mornings of doing chores and doing yoga, of drinking coffee and reading books. I want to be able to stand at my windows overlooking all that space, all that grass and tree and sky.
I want to be inside the peace.
I want to be part of the breathing space.
I want to enjoy living where I get to live.
This is my daily meeting of the Rural Appreciation Society.

This isn't about being lazy and not wanting to work. This is about having a chance every day to be slow and quiet and watchful. This is about wanting to be one of a dying breed of people who wake up every morning GLAD and THANKFUL to be living in rural Nova Scotia.

I want to be able to walk across the fields and through the woods while I can -- while we are both still here.
I want to be able to breathe in the fresh clean air -- while there are still trees cleaning it.
I want to be able to hear the squelch of the water in our river valley ground.
I want to be able to look up and see nothing but blue sky (or stars), I want to look down and see the tracks of deer and raccoons and coyotes in the mud.
I want to walk through the wildflowers in July and August.
I want to listen to the ospreys calling for fish from the river.
This is where I live. This is where I am inspired. This is what keeps my brain and my body healthy.
This is why the Rural Appreciation Society exists.

As poet and rural/environmental activist, Wendell Berry, wrote, "The primary motive for good care and good use of the land-community is always going to be affection, which is too often lacking."

Pussy willows on a morning walk.