One aspect of living in the country that has taken me some time to adjust to is the quiet and solitude. Having lived only in a city up to this point I was used to being surrounded by sounds and people. Cars driving by the house, people walking their dogs, joggers, kids on bikes, neighbors coming and going and doing yard work. The only traffic here are people driving to and from work, most of whom we don’t know. That changes in the spring and fall when we all have to share the gravel roads with the farmers in their tractors. The sounds here are traffic from the highway if the wind is right, an occasional train whistle from the Union Pacific tracks, and the coyotes some nights. During storms we also hear the wind howling across the fields and through our trees. Of the two acreages closest to us one is occupied part time and the other lacks a house, with only outbuildings on the property, which makes for very quiet neighbors. Not having any stores around has made us tend to bundle the stops we make when we drive into town, to save time and gas. Neither one of us is complaining about any of these changes, nor would we want to go back to the city. Such a major shift from the familiar, even when desired, takes time to settle. So far so good.

There have been rabbits here long before we bought this acreage, and in the winter some live under the machine shed. I have tried blocking and filling in the holes they make but they still get in. A few weeks ago the dogs chased one into a chain link fence next to the shed. In it’s terror to avoid the dogs it became lodged half way through the fence and was screaming as the dogs chewed on it’s hindquarters. A horrific scene to discover. It was dark and by the time we had called the dogs off and could make out what had happened, the poor creature was too far gone. I grabbed a rifle and put it out of it’s misery. The next day when I could see I went out to remove the rabbit from the fence and it took me several minutes to finally get it free. A reminder that not everything about living in the country is pleasant. The packs of coyotes that roam our area got close enough a few nights ago that we worried about the safety of our two dogs, especially Marley, the oldest at 11. We called the dogs into the house, knowing they could assume the role of the doomed rabbit if surrounded and attacked by a pack of coyotes. After a recent overnight snowfall I went out during the day to check the mailbox with the two dogs. I smiled as I noticed our yard was crisscrossed with hundreds of rabbit tracks.