JOURNAL: September 8, 2006

There’s been a “country” feeling in the air recently. I live in a part of New England that is still relatively rural, and I was especially aware of that the last few days. Driving to school, I passed quiet pastures with horses grazing, and the woods along the road seemed, in my mind, to be those of old farms. I pictured the barns and the farm houses set back from view, hidden in valleys where cows grazed and hay was stacked. I continued to have a pastoral feeling while I was teaching at school. Whenever I walked outside, there was a sense of open space, especially when I walked around in back where the playing fields stretched back to the big pasture. Everything seemed utterly bucolic. I could picture the old days when farm animals, perhaps, pulled wagons and plows across these very same fields, probably over the very ground I was standing on. The sky was blue and full of light – perfect, I thought, for the growing of crops and the grazing of healthy cows.