Living in rural USA

Rewilding, some positive nature news at last!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

If you tire of hearing ever more negative news about how we humans continue to pollute and destroy the earth we depend on for life itself, try watching this five minute story from this week’s CBS Sunday Morning. Trust me, you will be glad you did!

Rewilding: Letting nature take over

Rewilding is a progressive approach to conservation. It’s about letting nature take care of itself, enabling natural processes to shape land and sea, repair damaged ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes. Through rewilding, wildlife’s natural rhythms create wilder, more biodiverse habitats.

By growing native, drought-tolerate plants here, we have encouraged the return of wildlife, birds, bees, etc.

This idea/story offered me a sign of relief, showing me that sometimes nature wins in a great win-win way for people too. This is what my late father was always talking about, letting nature take over, because she did a great job up until now! This is also what we have tried to do on our own three acres in southern Colorado. I just do not comprehend those who buy land in the country and begin mowing the crap out of it immediately. We hated “yard work” when we lived in suburbia, and guess what, all the birds and bees and other wildlife there also could not tolerate it. They need biodiversity to thrive. Rewilding is a form of ecological restoration aimed at increasing biodiversity and restoring natural processes to the land.

Why is it so hard for man to simply leave nature alone to take care of itself? Why are we so convinced that we need to “improve” it? We as a species must learn the answer to this question before we “improve” ourselves into complete extinction.

Our perspective on our present and future

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

I just realized this past week my new life theme: “Quit trying so hard!” After struggling my whole life for more, I find great relief in simple contentment, my own version of living in the present.

Acceptance releases everything to be what it already is!

If you pay attention to the messages from our culture, you find a constant barrage of: You can do better. You SHOULD be better. The sky is the limit. No matter what your age, do more! To that I say, why? Yes, I understand why younger folks might benefit from hearing that theme, but get real. With my lung and brain limitations, this is as good as it gets, and I would like to feel good about that.

Another theme I hear all around me these day is the comfort so many of my friends find in their families, especially their grandkids. That is wonderful for them. Mike and I have never been big on family and neither one of us were into kids. Reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw in Denver ages ago: “Thank you for not breeding.” I remember thinking, “Wow, nobody ever thanked me before!”

Mike and I have been environmentalists forever. We believe in building native gardens and solar homes, using fewer natural resources and living a simple life. We find daily meaning and satisfaction living close to nature and we each have our own ongoing creative projects.

The one desire that keeps coming up for me, is a strong ‘need’ to spend some time on a beach somewhere near the ocean before I die. I have spent a few of my most glorious days on earth on the beaches of Cane Garden Bay, Tortola (BVI), on the Kona Coast of Hawaii and at Pattaya in southern Thailand back in the 1970s. So I say, take me away now to any isolated, beautiful beach! I have some purely intuitive urge to go back to where we all came from.

Re-thinking your dreams

/ Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

In the past year or so, in times of pandemic and forced introspection, those are the best times to re-think your dreams. I meet many down here in rural southern Colorado, who ended up here because in their 50s or 60s they spent some time reviewing their life, and decided that they were finished with cities.

I have found this place to be a magical alternative to city life.

My husband Mike had been dreaming about just such an existence for decades when we moved here in 2014. I was a bit further behind him in dreaming big enough. I couldn’t visualize it like he could. I worried about the isolation. I had never lived so far out of town in my past. It was a new experience for me. But it didn’t take me long to appreciate the morning silence, the birds, the plants, the beautiful weather, the snow…

Only certain types of people appreciate these qualities, mostly the quiet types who find it easy to entertain themselves with numerous avocations. I was never a big shopper. I didn’t go to bars or restaurants much. I have always found my own mind fairly entertaining with the assistance of books, movies, etc. And we are total weather watchers.

Watching the ever-changing clouds and weather over the Spanish Peaks is a lovely pastime.

So you see, the kind of people who move here and stay are very self-selected. They have chosen to check out of “normal” American life. Buying the next cool thing isn’t their thing…

Not that we aren’t always re-thinking our dreams, and we know we have the freedom to follow new ones here.

Can you risk a whole afternoon without worry?

/ Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

Sometimes it seems like I was born with a lot on my mind. Starting with the “terrible twos” I have been perpetually asking why. I think too much, I worry even more, and I can still never figure out what may happen next. I guess I was raised to expect the worst, or else this is simply the human condition – more brains than we know what to do with!

So on this blissfully relaxed snowy day, miles from almost all human beings, I wonder what might happen if I stop thinking and worrying and embrace the peacefulness of this moment in time.

Should I risk this level of non-vigilance? What might happen if I stop thinking for a while? What if I feel as free as the falling snow for just one afternoon? There’s always tomorrow to get back to my worries…