I’m going to be weird…

Some people might say I can’t and other’s will tell you it’s my natural state.

The Thinking homeschoolers’ self-service carnival topic is suppose to be about a sound, smell, or taste that you find comforting.

I’ve been wracking my brain for a topic and then finally realized that it isn’t a sound, smell, or taste that I find comforting.  I mean, I love the smell that comes from working on a horse, or the sound/smells of walking into a barn full of horses on a cold day and it’s toasty warm from the body heat they are giving off.

But it’s a sight I find comforting.  It’s the sight of trees, lots and lots of trees, and colors, either all the shades of green that they take on in the spring or the rainbow that comes in the fall.

The first time I realized how comforting the sight is was when we’d come back to the north-east after living in California.  I enjoyed the sand-colored hills of California with their dark clumps on trees down in the cracks between them, but I have very clear memories of driving back across country and seeing the heavy, GREEN, trees everywhere and just feeling much much more at home.  It just felt right.

And even now, having left California 9 years ago, I watch the trees leaf out through the spring and love it. A drive through the woods or a walk through the woods just clears my head and makes me feel centered and at peace.

It probably goes back to growing up where I did.  We owned about 100 acres on the side of a hill and there were two ways to get there.  The “main” route was over a neighboring hill  and as you crested that hill, you could see the horses’ pasture spread out – half wooded and half open fields.  Seeing that spread out when I’d come home from first college and then life, was always the point at which I’d be “home.”

Hubby will tell you that I still love woods and hills.