I just woke up and can hear (and barely see) a spooky hoot owl in the oak tree outside the window at my friend’s house. There are noisy bullfrogs in the cow pond, tree frogs, crickets, various other night insects, and very distant coyotes. Two nights ago, I heard whippoorwills singing from their nesting area around the swamp/sinkhole. Sometimes the horses come up near the house and graze. You can hear them chewing! Of course, the roosters will begin crowing in about five hours, so it’s time to get back to sleep!
P.S. Matto, if you’re awake in NYC, you’ll like this since you’re into nature recently! (But do take care of yourself as advised on your other thread.)
FYI- I am on a much needed mini-vacation in West Virginia. I get to go to Confession, hear Mass, and hopefully, receive Communion tomorrow before starting the long drive east. Except for the distance from around Trenton, NJ to NYC, I consider the drive part of the vacation.
.Nature sounds are so beautiful and healing. I love remote and rural. We aren't rural enough to hear the detail of rural sounds I like - except at night when it is quiet. When I mioved here our neighbor had a few sheep and I loved hearing them at night. It sounds like you are enjoying all that wholesome stuff. Wow, so quiet you can even hear the chewing! Love it.
Right now the weather is lovely and our windows are all open, and I am bothered by the rise and fall (particularly the rise) of road sounds in the distance. I do love our home, but road sounds during the day I do not like.
.Every year after I converted, until I moved here five years ago, I went on a silent retreat at a monastery, and it was very rural. Country quiet - all day and all night. The retreat house was a mile (or two?) walk to the Abbey and we were always (individually) walking to the Abbey for prayer, day and night. The Retreat House had a large side yard with an old barn swallow population, swooping and diving, with only their sweet sounds breaking the sacred silence.
I miss them. I miss those retreats, and the beautiful annual blessing of silence and prayer. My husband is looking forward to us going on a retreat there together, and finally, this coming summer, I think we will be able to.
.I imagine you also will miss those country sounds you are learning to love, too. : )
. My drives to my new job (two diff. locations) are beautiful, scenic rural routes. My new Mon.-Friday. There were more possible job opportunities in the other directions, that would be going into heavy traffic, highways, and cities. I feel
so blessed that I will have a country drive to work every morning! One of the two locations I drive to will have NO traffic lights ALL the way there! The route starts alongside a long and unpopulated park lake that beautifully mirrors the low mountains and forests encircling it, then a dam that is sometimes a giant waterfall, and some lovely antique farms. Lots of woods, stoney streams, ponds, and country homes.
.So I know what you mean about part of the drive being part of the vacation.
.When we visit my cousin in south Jersey, from where we are in New England, it is such a tough drive once we hit the approach to NYC. And once in Jersey! The NJ turnpike is surreal!
Twelve lanes! I found it positively frightening at first. While I still don't like it, I try not be too stressed, as the lanes at least are divided in groups, as we drive through the barren landscape of giant gas/oil storage tanks and electrical power transfer stations. But it is tricky each time we approach near NYC, as our GPS continually tries to steer us off our route and east, into thicker and thicker city traffic, with all it's highways and exits everywhere, into more and more congested traffic, til we wait in long lines of mostly-stopped traffic, as many highways are also funneled over that one Geo. Washington Bridge - and not the Tappan Zee Bridge that we have tried to direct our GPS to. We do all we can to avoid that nightmare of a bridge (GWB), which must have some deal with the GPS companies to channel
all area cars into it, because rerouting the GPS to avoid it is a LOT of work, which must be performed
while driving....
.