II.  Recent History

I have lived out here in the country for twenty two years now, among the echoes of who-whooing owls at night, circling red tails catching drafts, and the occasional bald eagle.  The chittering wake up calls of juncos, jays, and rusty-breasted robins are the harbingers of spring.  Coyotes sing out at night and deer graze their way through the blueberries and down on into the woods of “my” twenty acres and the forests beyond.  It is a shared existence here, even though I have tried to reserve some space of my own, building a deer fence around the garden and clearing trails into the trees for daily morning walks.

I have come to know the nuances of seasons; the first tingling feel of late-August fall in the air, before the maples begin to turn, the sweeping grace of snow on heavy-laden fir branches, and the incredible quiet in the meadows as I snow-shoe down into the woods.  The long gravel driveway turns pink in spring with blossoms feathering down off flowering cherry trees, and the neighbor’s horses whinny as I round the corner in summer with a t-shirt full of apples picked fresh from the orchard.

I do my best to be a steward here; picking up the windfall from winter storms, handy with a chainsaw until a new artificial shoulder ended my she-rah days.  I clear away branches and the trees that have surrendered to ice and wind and soggy Oregon winters.  I mow down scotch broom in the summers (never native here and very pesty) and find the resting places of deer, their soft beds of grass nestled into corners of the meadows.  We all find sanctuary here.  Even the squirrels are comical (when they stay out of my walls) as they chew off cones from the branches of one of the big fir trees close to my house, dropping noisy little bombs down to the deck and raining down their treasure.  We co-exist, the animals, the birds and berries, all of us living here among the trees, grateful.