{"id":864,"date":"2004-06-16T09:54:12","date_gmt":"2004-06-16T14:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/?p=864"},"modified":"2004-06-16T09:54:12","modified_gmt":"2004-06-16T14:54:12","slug":"on-life-in-the-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/2004\/06\/16\/on-life-in-the-country\/","title":{"rendered":"On life in the country"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/tommangan.net\/archives\/images\/gravelroad.jpg\" width=\"397\" height=\"258\" border=\"1\">\n<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been taking walks in the country just about every morning since we moved<br \/>\nhere. I&#8217;m posting this pic because it seems to best summarize the nearby scenery.\n<\/p>\n<p>Our place is near the top of a local mountain range, so there aren&#8217;t many people<br \/>\nup here. The main road (don&#8217;t worry, this isn&#8217;t it) comes up from town, runs<br \/>\npast our place, turns into a one-lane stretch of pavement a few miles down,<br \/>\nthen goes back down the hill into San Jose. This morning, for instance, I walked<br \/>\nthat road for 60 minutes and had three cars pass me. <\/p>\n<p>Words and pictures don&#8217;t do proper justice. They can&#8217;t convey the sound of<br \/>\nsongbirds&#8217; conversations or the feel of a breeze that might&#8217;ve gone ten thousand<br \/>\nmiles across the Pacific to get here. There&#8217;s no smell of fresh horse poop or<br \/>\ndamp dogs running in the yard.<\/p>\n<p>The gravel road here goes past a farm where a guy raises goats and sheep. When<br \/>\nI walked by the other morning, they started baying at me &#8230; like maybe they<br \/>\nwanted me to come by and catch up on the latest gossip.<\/p>\n<p>In town if you find yourself alone, you almost immediately feel lonely; maybe<br \/>\nit&#8217;s because there are so few creatures to keep you company. I can walk down<br \/>\na road up here and experience complete solitude for maybe 60 seconds at a stretch.<br \/>\nThere&#8217;s always some critter dashing through the underbrush, or a hawk soaring<br \/>\nway up there, floating on the thermals and waiting for that critter to do something<br \/>\nfoolish. <\/p>\n<p>What I love about the country is that it was here for eons before I came along,<br \/>\nand it&#8217;ll still be here for eons after I&#8217;m gone. Puts our puny little human<br \/>\naffairs in perspective. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been taking walks in the country just about every morning since we moved here. I&#8217;m posting this pic because it seems to best summarize the nearby scenery. Our place is near the top of a local mountain range, so&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/2004\/06\/16\/on-life-in-the-country\/\">Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,41],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}