The Herron Update: The Great Outdoors

I often dream about what it would be like to live somewhere in the middle of nowhere on a big piece of land. Our kids could run free in the outdoors, we could have some chickens and a dairy cow (that the kids would have to milk), and I could avoid people to my heart's content. There is a country song that starts out, "Well, I grew up wild and free, walkin' these fields in my barefeet. There wasn't no place I couldn't go, with a .22 rifle and a fishin' pole." I hear that and I want it for my kids and I wish that they could grow up like that. Don't get me wrong, I know that I romanticize the "country lifestyle" in my mind, but I still often think about how great it would be.

Sometimes, in my dreaming about how great it would be to live in wide open spaces somewhere, I forget about how great it is right here. Granted, we can't have a cow and I can't send Jake out to shoot us a wild turkey for dinner (which would give him tremendous pleasure), but we do live in such an amazing place. We just have to share it with a lot of other people. One of my favorite perks about our particular location is that if we walk a few houses down to the end of our street, we get to a trail that leads us directly into a wilderness park. Jay and the kids love to ride their bikes through there, and I like to take the kids there to just explore and enjoy nature. I don't take advantage of it nearly as much I should though. And, I can't exactly let the kids run free there - you know, on account of the occasional mountain lion, and the fact that it is not our personal property and, therefore, crazy people might also be running free there. But, whenever we spend time there, I always promise that we will do it more often. The latest activity of choice "down in the dirt" (as the kids refer to the area at the end of our street) is shooting practice...