A Castle in the Woods

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True, we spend a little on taxes, gasoline, kerosene, and insurance, but most of our meager income goes for food. However, the garden, the fruit trees, and our flock of chickens reduce our grocery needs a bit further each year, and—in time—we expect to produce almost everything we need to eat ... and more.

This morning, for example, I picked fresh raspberries to go along with our whole wheat pancakes (we grind our own flour from wheat that we buy for $7.00 per 100 pounds!), and honey from our beehives served as syrup. Then I weeded, pumped water, and went about my other chores. At 10:00 a.m., we had tea in the gazebo, and I designed a new chicken-house that I plan to start building soon. Tonight, I may practice my harp ... or perhaps I'll just sit in the courtyard and listen to the tree frogs and whippoorwills, while bats fly and the clouds drift across the full moon. The world that's around me now is fresh, quiet, and very beautiful!

TAKE A GIANT STEP

The fact is, I'm writing this story simply to give hope to other old rebels like me. It's not necessary, you see, to keep piling up the bucks and plodding away at the treadmill until the last crippling coronary takes away your freedom of choice. There's a time to make a change, and that time is before the rocking chair takes charge of you!

There is, of course, no single simple blueprint for everyone, since personal needs and responsibilities vary. But why be tricked into working the whole year in an uptight world, only to earn a couple of harried "vacation" weeks in an expensive summer cottage? Why enter the "golden years" filled with remorse for things undone?

My message is that we older people are really free—even more so than are young folks—and, because of our experiences, perhaps at least a little more wise. If we want a different, fuller, more exciting life than we're leading—one closer to this beautiful earth—we can have it. Our only chains are those in our minds!

Just promise me that you'll think about it seriously for a while ... after all, wouldn't you like to live in your own kind of "castle in the woods"?

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