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I am lucky. After living in various major metro areas areound the country, as I approach 60 I find myself completing the first year of living on my wife's family farm, where we moved after selling our empty nest. Nothing has changed as I look out my window. To the east, a corn field. South is the road that ends in my barnyard, lined by trees and fields; north is our Big Woods and more cornfield; west is the creek bottom and wetlands. Maybe the wetlands has moved toward the house a bit in 50 years...but I still cannot see another house from my windows. Just fields and trees. Last weekend we had a family gathering and shot a lot of clays down in my mowed creekbottom, where it looks like a 3 acre park; the next day we zeroed in some long guns on the bench my brother in law brought. I have a big pile of dirt for a target backstop, and behind that deep woods and a rise in the ground. The small town west of here isn't what it once was-- still 2000 people there but the world-famous industry left 10 years ago and local income fell accordingly. But I can visit several cities in a half hour, or a major metro area in an hour's drive, so I have ready access to anything I want. No, progress hasn't encroached here. And I like it that way.
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