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Sunshine, The Miracle Drug

    Hey, everyone. Wish you were here. It's spring here at the green retreat. I've been doing some chores this morning and now I'm sitting in the sun listening to my I-Pod. It's cool to have several thousand songs in your shirt pocket. Songs handpicked by you and for you. There's nothing on there for anyone else.
     This sunshine stuff is OK. It's hard to be depressed or irritable when you're sitting in the sun. Even here on the mountain there are flowers blooming now. Around the first of April we will have what I call the 'Green Out'. The hard woods like oak and maple and hickory will leaf out green and suddenly you are enclosed by this wall. It's a bit overpowering and it actually stops the noise from the highway from reaching the place. Not that there is much noise, anyway, from there. Noise takes people, mostly, and there are few of them around.
    There's a little country church about a mile or so away as the crow flies (quaint country expression ). Sometimes in the fall they will open their windows and if I'm sitting on the deck I can here them singing on Sunday mornings, ever so faintly.
    This is bird paradise and their songs are often the first things I hear in the mornings. I quit feeding them because they tend to make a mess. Some afternoons I can hear a buck snorting in the thickets west of the house. They are cool to hear as they proclaim to the world that they are male and bad to the bone. Sort of like a linebacker in the NFL.
    I have a number of trees that are dead and ready to fall. I used to be pretty good at laying them where I wanted to with a chain saw and a wedge, but I now do my imitation of an old hound dog. I just like to lay in the sun and let the big dogs run. If there was an app for running with the dogs I would buy it and run with the best of them.
       Let's see. If you guys were here, I'd take you for a walk in the woods. I'd show you where I had the disagreement with the mountain lion and where the younger one was stalking me. Then we would sit at the creek and launch a little pretend boat of bark and follow it as it went downstream, wondering where it would lodge. I'd show you where I found the dead deer and where the owl lives. We'd watch a hawk soaring against the blue sky and loving the thermals he has, now that warmth has returned to his world. Before the sun set, we'd have a beer and grill a steak. Maybe we'd chat about I-Pads  or sports or the rabbit who eats the tops out of my bushes. I don't have the heart to kill the little dude. He's just trying to make a living, like the rest of us. When the sun went down we'd go in and watch a little TV or maybe sing a few songs, here at the green retreat.
    Have a nice weekend. I'm CE Wills.   
   

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