The Pasture That Has Everything

    One neighbor.  That’s all we have.  We’re like Vatican City, a neighborhood of our own surrounded by everything else.

    The “everything else” in this case is a huge pasture belonging to our neighbor.  It happened that way because our neighbor moved this house to the site back in the 70’s when he was first married. 

      When his father died, his mother moved into town, and he and his family moved to the parent’s vacated home.  His house is on the north end of the mile long pasture, our home, on the south end.

      The pasture is a source of lots of things:  like firewood, for example.

     Wild life, like pack rats (here they may collect unmolested, at least by humans or their pets),

    

     Electric power for Midwest Energy (ours comes from the local REA coop)

     Yucca (better known as soapweed in this country)

     A little running water, most years,

      And a spring,

    There’s mystery and tragedy,

       Mile makers on the road to progress,

      This benchmark shows the elevation.  The actual numbers are hard to read, but I believe they say 3000 feet above sea level.

      Our house is built on the west side of an old road bed, the former route of Kansas Highway 25.  The road bed is grassed over but the bed and the ditches remain.

    Varied scenery includes rock formations,

     An old homestead,

1.  

     And some great views.

     When we first lived there, we rented our house.  I had time to take a Sunday afternoon walk.  Now, I spend most of my outdoor time working on the house.  Firewood provides the only excuse to make a pasture visit.  The old truck and the buzzing chainsaw dispel the notion that you have stepped back 200 years into the past.