Why I Could Never Live on Some Farm

Because our family business was in the Berkshire Hills in Western Massachusetts, I spent my first 17 summers in the country. I feel safer in the dark than I do in a street-lit road but still: I say give me human habitation, the opportunity to wake mornings and see the houses of others, like I did 24 hours ago.The moon was just setting when I woke at 6:30 and looked across the street .Two minutes later, the sky was just that much lighter:And by 6:45  - well, you can see the change. A few lights on here, a path yet unshoveled there.Where are these neighbors right this very minute and what are they doing?On Thursday at the height of that storm, my neighbors Carol and Jim ran and got their own gear and shoveled me out when I got stuck half in and half out of my driveway, with wheels that simply spun and an engine that raced and whined.Carol had been walking her dog and came upon me.Maybe a dog is the thing to get; then you're out there ALL the time, connected to your fellow man and trotting mornings past house after house, all filled with the sleeping and the wakeful and the little children just leaping from their beds ..