Life in the Midwest....

I moved to the midwest from the "real west"....... Wyoming. The view from my window changed from wide open spaces, sagebrush and mountains to the exact opposite. In the state where I live there is quite a bit of open farm ground but it is usually bordered by deciduous forests making it hard to see very far in any one direction. This gave me a slight amount of claustrophobia in the beginning, but I have become accustomed to it and now love it as much for it’s own kind of beauty as I loved Wyoming when I lived there.

People ask me "Don’t you miss the mountains?" Yes, I miss the mountains but I don’t miss the winters that lasted for 9 months of the year, nor do I miss that instantaneous transition from summer to winter with no distinctive fall. Fall in the Midwest is just....well spectacular! The air gets cool, but just for a couple of hours in the evening and a couple of hours in the early morning. For at least three glorious months we enjoy 70-75 degree days and cool nights....perfect for sleeping or having a fire in the fireplace. The color of the world becomes gold and red , burgundy and purple, and you find yourself thanking God every day for letting you live in a world so truly beautiful.



Winter comes on slowly, days get gradually shorter, and sometime after Thanksgiving we get our first dusting of snow. We rarely get feet of snow here, it’s measured in inches and will come and go all winter long giving us brief warm sunny days when there’s no snow and you can remember what warm weather feels like.

When my HH brought me here for the first time to meet his parents I left Wyoming on a cold day in December, it had been cold for weeks...I mean below zero cold, never warming above 5 or 10 degrees during the day and dropping into the 20 below range at night. The morning we left for the airport I went out to start my car and when I touched the steering wheel it literally shattered ..... the vinyl covering was so brittle that it cracked all over changing from a smooth surface to one slightly resembling an alligator purse. Just a few hours later we landed here, got off the plane on a December day and the temperature was 65! I was in heaven and HH had me hooked..

Spring is sweet smelling and crisp, the flowers start to peek out of the ground just about now...early in March we see the first signs of life above the ground,

the snowdrops have already bloomed (in February) and the forest begins to get it’s carpet of trout lilies and jack-in-the-pulpits. The sap flows in the maple trees and we start making maple syrup, the buckeye buds start swelling on the branches, they will be early to leaf. Spring skies are the best of the blues we get here, the summer heat and humidity doesn’t obscure it’s clearness yet and a sunny day is truly a happy sight.

Even Summer with it’s temperatures high and moist are a joy for me, the landscape becomes absolutely lush with green, lawns here are measured in acres and mowing just about has to be done on a riding mower unless you really want to spend all summer doing it. Yards here are full of flowers, flowering bushes, and all kinds of color....the weather makes it easy. Gardens grow well and the hardest part is keeping the deer, raccoons, rabbits and squirrels from getting everything before you do. I sometimes have the feeling I’ve been transported into Mr. MacGregor’s garden.....the fauna abounds!

Before I moved here I thought the midwest meant Nebraska and the Dakota’s....I really never knew what the Midwest was, where it was, or why anyone would ever want to live there. When I go home to Wyoming to visit people are astounded that I still live out here. The culture is different to be sure, the people more urban, the cities more sprawling, but there is beauty everywhere and I’m glad I’ve been able to see and understand that there is life outside the Rocky Mountains where I was born and raised.

When I get a little homesick I remember how thankful I am to live here, in my little log cabin in the woods....I think of the early settlers to our part of the world and how they painstakingly drained the swamps and cranberry bogs, cultivated the fields and tended the forests and made something productive out of a big wet part of the country. The "pioneers" to our part of the world were as happy here as those who traveled further west....life is truly what you make it and evidence of a kind and loving Heavenly Father is everywhere if we choose to look and see.

I’m so thankful today, and every day, for the beauty of God’s creation, it lifts my spirits, enlivens my senses and gives me joy. I hope you all see the beauty in your life today.