The farmhouse has been empty for twenty years except for my visits to do some farming and gardening, some sitting on the porch viewing and walking the fields and forest, at first, with my children and then many times alone. I felt I was as much a part of the land as were the groundhogs that holed up in it and the bob whites that nested on it. I believed, and still do, that mental health and spiritual peace depend on closeness with nature. The move to the farmhouse by my daughter was to allow the boy to grow up in nature to see the birds and rabbits and other animals and to walk the fields and forests as his grandfather and mother had before him.
From an essay in the Huntington, WV News.
