The City Mouse in the Country

A few days ago, Autumn struck Western Pennsylvania.  The red maples exploded into the blazes of color that they are known for, other trees started to slowly change and the first leaves started to fall. A few days ago, the woods were alive with the sounds of migrating birds, and I wish I had taken out my phone to record the sounds, I found myself thinking of Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds.   Although I never had that sense of foreboding or dread, I just wished that I could have seen them and recorded the moment. It was also a morning where I awoke to fog and the sound of small arms fire, which to be completely honest, I mistook as fireworks.  I'm not sure if they were hunting squirrel, which is in season now, or just shooting to practice, but it was a little odd for me.   Susan just chuckled and told me to wait for deer season in November. I am enjoying some parts of country life, other parts...not so much.  Yesterday morning Susan told me that I didn't seem happy living

     It's mid September and already you can feel winter in the air, it lurks like a proverbial horror movie villain just outside the windows.  It's presence is felt in the dropping temperatures and the winds that blow across my neighbors open fields.       I had escaped it's grip twice before in my life, moving to North Carolina when I was a younger man fresh from college, and when I moved to Florida shortly after the 2008 housing crash because I could not get arrested in the Pittsburgh job market.     Now I had returned, perhaps for the last time due to aging family and the wishes of my long time girlfriend I easily called "wife."  The first winter would be hard on me I knew.  I loved the warmth, the sun, the longer days of spring and summer.  I was not someone that enjoyed the concepts of being cooped up for three months hunkered down and waiting for the golden rays to return.     However I could survive it.       It's all in how you prepare for it.     For