Why I live in the country
We live on a bit over 4 acres, on an unpaved graveled dead-end road. Our nearest town is 9 miles away and provides us with a Post Office and not much more. Closest full service grocery store is a bit over 15 miles and a decent restaurant is closer to 20 miles. The gravel road is dusty in summer and muddy in winter. We can expect at least two power outages each year from trees taking out overhead powerlines.
This afternoon Eileen and I took Eileen’s Border Collie/Australian Heeler mix for a walk in the woods. About 1 mile up the road is a gated logging road. We regularly walk there, as it runs along the top of the ridge is flat and easy to walk.
We left the road and entered a year old clear-cut. You would expect that to be kind of depressing, but the views across the valley were tremendous. It was a beautiful day. Blue sky and relatively mild temps for this time of year.
About half way down the clear-cut, Eileen quietly said ‘Look to your left”. There about 50 yards away were three Roosevelt Elk cows, quietly browsing on whatever was available to eat. We were downwind from them and, because they didn’t catch our scent, they didn’t know we were there. We stood quietly and watched them a while and then Eileen climbed up on a tree stump for a better view. One Elk saw the movement and started away from us with the other two following. Then we saw 1, no 2, no maybe a dozen Elk cows starting to move through the unit. They dropped down a gully out of our sight and then up on the other side. Not a dozen, but more than 25 cows with 4 or 5 yearlings. We’ve seen one or two at a time up here and knew there were larger herds, but this was the first time we’d seen such a large herd outside of the game reserve in Jewell.
Sometimes living this far out in the country can be an inconvience, but the joy of seeing animals like this, closeup and only 2 or 3 miles from our home, makes us very glad we live were we do.
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