I live in paradise.  My house is on the edge of the country.  There is a farm a quarter of a mile away.  goats3Within a mile a family has chickens, goats, and horses.  I love seeing the baby goats when they are so tiny.

The view from my large living room window is another portal into paradise.  I watch a steady stream of birds come into my view.  Birds I have never seen anywhere appear at my feeders like the magnificent red bellied woodpecker.  About once a year I see the exotic fifteen-inch red crested piliated woodpecker although it is far more likely I hear its wild cackle first.

We even had a brush or two from the local black bear who now stays away.  Our four dogs who now are enclosed by a large wooden picket fence now frighten him away.

There is so much beauty here and sometimes I do not see it.  I forget I grew up in the city–a large town.  I can see cottontails play outside from my kitchen window.  My two friends, a couple I have know for years, are going to visit us next week from NYC.  To them this is wild country.woodscreek I now have to view the land from their standpoint, change my perspective.  It is too easy to become blind to your surroundings.  Somehow I need to lift the veil that has grown in front of me and again see the beauty around me.

I had fallen in love with Central Pa.  I knew things had changed when once I was coming back from NJ (where I had lived for the past two decades) and I thought, “I am coming home”.  It is paradise here and I have to remind myself of that fact.  Every time I drive up the Juanita Valley, my breath is taken away by its magnificent view of the River and its surrounding mountains.  Even closer to home, when I drive into town from the back way and peer down into the Susquehanna River Valley, I can easily imagine I am viewing the fjords of Norway.  The universe is in my own backyard.  All I have to do is open my eyes.  It’s here.  I do not have to travel to Maine, Alaska or Hawaii.  It is all here.  Paradise.

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