Rural life is satisfying in lots of ways and troubling too. One of the good things is that people don’t make appointments to visit. They just drop in, always for a kitchen visit in the winter. Sometimes in the summer, they don’t get past the vegetable garden, if that’s where they find you, because they usually just want to chat or invite you out, or sell you a concert ticket or ask for your help.

The troubling part of life in the country is that there are some people who are isolated, sometimes because they don’t drive and sometimes because family life didn’t work out. We had a neighbour, a WWII vet, who was a bit crusty. Maybe that’s why he was feuding with his adult daughters. They stopped stopping in. He lost his licence because of poor eyesight, but even then his old friends and neighbors did their best to keep him company and take him places when they could, but he knew he had lost his independence and it was hard on him.

Another troubling feature of rural life is industrial farming. You know that behind the walls of large pork and poultry barns that animals are not living a life they would choose. They are, usually, inside for life, bred to order and, in one, final assault on any hope for redemption, they are packed in large trucks and sent to packing houses where they are hit over the head and sliced up for bacon. Chickens are packed in plastic crates, stacked 10 high on transport trailers and driven to slaughtering facilities where thousands are hung upside down, shocked to death and then beheaded on their way to chicken parts or soup.

Economists will tell you we couldn’t feed our populations by raising animals any other way but there are places where it is legislated that animals must have access to the outside or at least be free of cages. We have a few chickens who share a pasture with our cows. They return to their coop at night because if they didn’t they’d be raccoon food. 

If I were going to come back as an animal but couldn’t choose to be a cherished pet, I’d don’t what I’d want to be. Do you?