Now Playing: Marjorie Burris on getting older and staying in the country
Topic: Rural Living
Another Lietta "find." She and I have had more than one discussion about whether or not it would be "safer" to move to an urban area after I retire so as to be closer to medical facilities.
As we talked, I realized that I was discussing removing the serenity, pleasure and quiet privacy of rural living and replacing it with an assurance that at some future single moment in time it might be good to live only a few blocks from the hospital.
Some thoughts on growing older in the backwoods
By Marjorie Burris
"Just how long are you going to be able to live in the backwoods like that?" my friend, Pat, asked. "You're not getting any younger, you know!"
I've known Pat for 30 years, and although she hasn't any tact to spare, she always makes me think. How long can we expect to live this special life-style which takes so much energy and endurance?
I remember when my grandparents, who lived on a farm, cut their own wood, grew their own food, and tended their own meat and milk cattle. When they became feeble in their eighties, they had to move to a little house in a small town. But they stayed on the farm as long as they were able, and to their dying day they never lost that independent but appreciative spirit honed by a life of living with the land and the elements.
Pat's question made me make an assessment of our life in the backwoods.
