Comments on: Dreaming rural life http://jeremycherfas.net/wp/Archive/2008/01/22/dreaming-rural-life/ I never touched it, honest! Sun, 06 May 2012 14:35:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Eats Wombats http://jeremycherfas.net/wp/Archive/2008/01/22/dreaming-rural-life/comment-page-1/#comment-9333 Eats Wombats Tue, 22 Jan 2008 23:59:14 +0000 http://jeremycherfas.net/wp/Archive/2008/01/22/dreaming-rural-life/#comment-9333 I have a honking big novel sitting on the shelf unread. Wait... is it "true" and therefore not a novel? -- I can't remember. It's waiting for a prospect of a sufficiently long period of indolence, a long journey preferably. It was also recommended by someone whose judgement I've enjoyed in the past. It's called Shantaram, for what it's worth. I came across it long after it was recommended. Rural America is so much more interesting to someone from the British Isles because it's that much wilder and recently occupied (the original Pony Express trail is still there). When I lived in a log cabin in Ohio we had raccoons in the tree outside the bedroom window, skunks in the garden, an opossum family, turkeys, snakes, turtles, frogs, tree frogs, toads, woodchucks, ground squirrels, chipmunks, foxes, white tailed deer, horned owls, turkeys, hummingbirds... etc. etc. just SO MUCH MORE of every kind of vertebrate and invertebrate. The scenery and the wildlife of much of rural America is stupendous. And the stars look a lot closer too. Alas the American badger is a Cheneyesque sort of character, but you can't have everything. I have a honking big novel sitting on the shelf unread. Wait… is it “true” and therefore not a novel? — I can’t remember. It’s waiting for a prospect of a sufficiently long period of indolence, a long journey preferably. It was also recommended by someone whose judgement I’ve enjoyed in the past. It’s called Shantaram, for what it’s worth. I came across it long after it was recommended.

Rural America is so much more interesting to someone from the British Isles because it’s that much wilder and recently occupied (the original Pony Express trail is still there). When I lived in a log cabin in Ohio we had raccoons in the tree outside the bedroom window, skunks in the garden, an opossum family, turkeys, snakes, turtles, frogs, tree frogs, toads, woodchucks, ground squirrels, chipmunks, foxes, white tailed deer, horned owls, turkeys, hummingbirds… etc. etc. just SO MUCH MORE of every kind of vertebrate and invertebrate. The scenery and the wildlife of much of rural America is stupendous. And the stars look a lot closer too. Alas the American badger is a Cheneyesque sort of character, but you can’t have everything.

]]>