I don't think I can live at "home," again. I'm too happy with being close to grocery stores and restaurants and movie theatres. I love Springtown and my church family and having people close to my age around. But there are a few things that I love about Northeastern MO... and one of them is how beautiful it is.
Seriously, idyllic doesn't begin to cut it.
There at the end of the driveway is where I used to wait for the bus. Every morning- for many years.
And this is the view from that vantage point... "The road goes ever, ever on..."
It may sound weird but this is one instance where I vastly prefer the Rankin-Bass animated Hobbit/LotR movies. That song was much better for me as the folk-sy song as heard below- Though I really remember it to the beat of the sadder version with different lyrics that is on the right. Either way I prefer this song.
Anyway, as I was saying...
There is an old barn out behind our house... It's pretty well falling to pieces, but it's really pretty, too, in it's sad, forlorn way. There is probably a parallel to be drawn somewhere from that old barn... either to the loss of the farming way of life, or to the aging dependability of "home." That barn is kinda like the giving tree.
There really isn't a bad view all around my house. It's rather nestled into scenery.
And that scenery includes cows. You see, not all land is good for planting crops... (Aka all the hilly, beautiful stuff) but that just means you throw some cows onto it- and then they calve, and then: idyllic.
And this my friends is probably why I tend to dislike "country" style interior decorating... Because I grew up in it... only it wasn't on the interior, and to see it anywhere but the outdoors makes it feel fake... or dirty.
Of course it's also the reason I have a bent towards nature designs and a love of western shirts with pearl button snaps that defies all logic...
Rhonda and the kiddos went home so that they could be at their church to help out with sound tonight and tomorrow, so tonight has been much quieter than the past few nights have been and it makes me reminisce. I've lived in the same house all my life. I was brought home from the hospital here and we never left. Coming home always makes me feel much taller for a few days, because I remember it from a shorter vantage point for so many of my memories... But it also brings back old feelings... especially from Jr. High and High School. Growing up in the country (especially this far out in the country) is very very different from growing up in a big town- or even just "town." It's beautiful, and it makes you pretty comfortable with silence, but it's also lonely. I have a tendency to believe there are fewer people in this world than there actually are. (One, because people in my life have a tendency of popping up somewhere in my past or at the same time in multiple ways.) But also because I'm at the place I will always call home, and I could walk outside right now and see every star up in the sky... and probably be the only person outside for miles and miles and miles. That tends to make you feel like we are pretty alone in the universe. I know there are those of you who think this sounds like a little piece of paradise on Earth, but I guess it just proves that I'm an extrovert, because it makes me sad... and wistful... and melancholy.
I think that's the worst thing about cancer... and death.. It's ability to make you feel so keenly alone, even when surrounded by people who want to be there for you and who love you.
Or mayhaps I just feel this way, because I listened to "Road Goes Ever On and On" too many times.
Or mayhaps I just feel this way, because I listened to "Road Goes Ever On and On" too many times.
Hard to say. Oh yes, hard to say.
The pictures are beautiful, and capture the feeling you describe - beautiful and lonely. Of course, that's another extrovert talking. :) Happy Easter!
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