Thankful Day 17: Where I Live
#17
Where I LiveDon't get me wrong, living in a rural area has many downsides. One of them being the lack of public transportation. Another a lack of single men. Sad but true. But something we have here that you don't find it a city is wide opened spaces. And the lovely creatures you can find there. These ladies live behind me and they adore apples. They are both pretty lovable though the one on the left is a little more picky about how much love she'll endure. Righty doesn't much care as long as it is plenty.
I don't know their names as of yet but I feel like calling them Laverne (Right) and Shirley (Left) until I find out their real names.
They are not the only creatures we have here in abundance. We've got lots of chickens, raccoons, wild turkeys, skunks (yeah you don't want to meet those), some bears (higher up the mountain), lots of deer, opossum, emu, alpacas, sheep, goats and cows!
Some are friendlier than others though generally they don't let you get to close.
Here is a baby deer eating the leaves of the low branches of our tree. There are nearly a dozen who live right behind us and wander into our yard nearly daily. They are quite beautiful to see and when they notice you some just look at you in wonderment while the older ones tend to leap away.
Here we also have a historic cabin where Mark Twain lived while he wrote his story about our town.
The Discovery Tree Stump. This huge tree was cut down by an entrepreneur in 1853 who concocted a plan to take the thick bark (just the bark!) on a worldwide exhibition and charge admission. He ran into a problem, though: it was all thought to be a hoax and people didn’t believe a tree could be that large. The stump itself soon afterwards did become a tourist attraction.
And up the mountain as you drive the trees get bigger and taller as we have the largest trees in the world (height wise generally, giant sequoias tend to be tall but more wide) the Sierra Redwoods. There aren't a lot of ancient trees like this but as you walk the trails you see tons of big trees both fallen and living.
I haven't lived here my whole life. I moved here when I was 14 right after my first year of high school which was the best year actually. I'd been here many times because of all the family. We used to visit in the summer and sometimes at Christmas. I grew up in Southern California in a city. Not Los Angeles, Ontario actually. I was used to walking over a couple streets and there being shops, drugstores, video stores, fast food. I walked 2 miles to school... literally that was the mileage from my house to my high school when in Southern California. Now it would be 5 miles of walking along a mild of nowhere highway to get to the high school instead of homes, stores and a police station along the way. Needless to say, it was something of a culture shock and yet I'm very happy about where I live. I do miss friendly neighbors who like to chat... cows just aren't that talkative but the people here are nice and life just tends to be simpler and less rushed.
What are you grateful for today?