We are grateful we have been able to live a simpler life here in the backwoods. I've noticed how our sense of values has changed over the years. I no longer see a woman's big diamond ring, or a man's hand tailored suit, or the fancy car they drive. Frankly, those things don't interest me. But I do appreciate a bone-warming fire on a cold winter day, a drink of pure water from our spring, the juicy tomato just picked out of the garden.

We no longer even want to go to a movie or a play; it is more entertaining to sit on the front porch and watch the animals, both wild and tame, play. Animals play? Yes, they do. Even the birds play. We didn't know this until we lived in a place where we could watch them.

For us, it would be a waste of time to go to a gallery to see painted landscape scenes. Every morning we get up and look out our front window on one of the prettiest scenes imaginable. The almost vertical, rocky sides of a mesa rise up on three sides of us, enclosing us in a box canyon. Trees, pines, junipers, oaks, walnuts, box eider, with leaves of every hue of green, dot the cliffs, softening the steepness with their branches. When the first rays of the rising sun touch the trees and the rocks, they turn everything a rich, breathtaking gold. In the evening the setting sun filters through the trees, back lighting them, making them throw longer and longer shadows. In the winter, snow makes a Christmas card of it all.