Friday, May 4, 2018

RETIREMENT

June 15, 2013
Comment to Ian's blog, A Wayfarers Notes

When Larry first retired we purchased a house with 14 acres of land in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in South Carolina. Some was open, some wooded. There were trails through the woods which crossed over to neighbors' property. Paths or trails on private property are not for public use in the US although you can legally cross another's property without trespassing. We enjoyed our woodland; in fact it kept us from hiking elsewhere as much as we might have.

But the point of this comment is that I decided to put a bench overlooking our tiny creek so that I could sit and read and enjoy the solitude in peace. As it turned out the bench never had anyone sitting on it. Since the woods were our own woods we looked after them, harvested firewood from them, and improved them. If I sat down they immediately began calling to me to clip, or pull down, or clear away, or tract down something I hadn't seen in a few days. Anyway I wanted to interact with out little ecosystem; there was no pleasure in passively observing.

Larry called our place Beulah after Blake's state where the contraries as equally true. I called it Shadowlight but it never really caught on.

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