Snow Pix Near Skating Rink.and Other Things

This photo was taken before the driveway turned into an Olympic-sized skating rink. That's Baby Dog in front of the cabin. I had rain on Christmas, which reduced the size of the skating rink from Olympic-sized to pond-sized. The area in front of the cabin is now semi-clear of ice. The area out by the lane is also not too bad. It's the center area that doesn't get sun from the open space of the two-lane road or the cabin itself that's really bad. The mountain in the background is called Neff's Hill. Sometimes I can see the porch light of my neighbor over at the bottom of Neff's Hill. There's no one living in between us, just a valley, a pond, a stream and more woods.

Yesterday, I finally found the anti-skid stuff that I like to put into the driveway. Until yesterday I only used that ice melt stuff that I don't like because that was all I could find.

Monday was a great day for me. No more holiday, nothing left to buy, better yet, nothing yet to clean up. I stayed home, walked the dogs, did some housework, did laundry and read. I think the biggest difference between how I like to live in the woods and how more urban people live is not my scenery. I try not to be simply a suburbanite with a longer commute. To me, living in the woods means trying to live in a way that's attuned to nature. Realistically, it means I make a conscious effort not to just jump into the car and go some place for entertainment or because I forgot something on my last grocery run. To me, it means finding entertainment where I am. It means not running to the store if I forgot it on my weekly trip. It means avoiding as many of the lures of civilization that I can, for as long as I can.

I try to slow down the pace of my life, and the only way I know how to slow it down is to not do 20 things in a day. Do you ever wonder why our vacations feel as though they race by? It's because we try to pack a huge amount of activity into that wonderful week. The less activity I do, the less quickly the time passes. At my age, time is starting to feel as though it's at a premium, like something precious. I don't want it to pass any more quickly than it already does. So I try to slow down time by doing less, and doing more of what I choose to do where I am instead of somewhere else. An hour spent reading feels a lot longer than an hour spent in a movie theater. An hour spent walking in the woods feels a lot longer than an hour spent in a mall. I prefer making my hours feels as long as I can make them.