You can take the girl out of the city…. but you can’t take the city out of the girl.
I wonder if this is entirely true.
What happens when you take the city girl OUT TO the country?  Drop her off there.  And then she spends the entire second half of her life in the country?

Well… I’ll tell you what happened.

It is lot like when you bake that coarse salt on the outside of a soft pretzel.  It is still the same old soft pretzel underneath… but it isn’t nearly complete without that salty finishing touch.

I am still city underneath.  But I have a lot of country on the outside.

Now granted, I don’t own a pair of cowboy boots or anything.  I don’t know anything about planting crops… or building barns.   I’m not even sure what you would feed goats.   But I sure do love to be out in the middle of this rural-opolis.

I love to drive down the road, and see the fields full of corn, and beans, and cows… and such.  I love that the roads which connect my home to the grocery store…. pass pastures where horses gallop.  And large red barns, and streams, and wooded density.

It is healing to go outside and feel the nature surround me… entirely.  No concrete, glass, and steel, rising up to the heavens.  Just tree limbs, with an assortment of aviary wonders.

It seems nice that we don’t have an 89th Street, or a 54th Avenue.  Or 111,000 people per square mile… like in Manila, The Philippines.   Or how about the 24 million people in Shanghai, or even the 8.5 million in New York City.

I feel awful lucky to be out in these parts.   It feels easy to breathe the air out here.  To take a walk.  To lie in the grass.

Yes, I love the nature of it all.  The people are slower, and easier about most things.   Sure… the salt of the earth can be found anywhere… with any kind of people.  But the country has become the salt on my pretzel.  The thing that makes my life filled with flavor.  It truly has become my second nature.

And I like it here.

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. ~John Muir (1838–1914)

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. ~Albert Einstein