A psychologist wrote a half-century ago that Americans, fleeing farms and rural areas all over the country, were becoming disconnected from the lives of animals, their partners on the earth, and  also from the natural world. These two elements are essential to humans struggling with a complex and increasingly dehumanized world.

I was one of those people, I lived in cities for most of my life, and and I came to feel I was broken because of my disconnection from the natural world. Instinctively, I fled to the country and began to heal. I credit the animals I have been living with and the beauty of the world around me with helping me to pick up the broken pieces and put me back together.

When I came to the fence – I only had my I phone X – the lambs rushed over me, curious and full of play. The sun hit the barn square on, and I wonder if it  wasn’t built with that in mind, it was so beautiful.

I could no longer live without seeing this scene above and others like it every day of my life. Lambs running in a beautiful pasture on a nearby road at sunset, I stopped the car and  got out and just breathed in the life and beauty of this barn and  pasture, the setting sun catching the old red barn in just the right way.

Until  recently humans have always lived close to animals and the natural world, animals were always our partners in life and the natural world is full of glory and mystery and  beauty. It is not a matter of liking the country, for me it is matter of life and death, living in the country has helped me to  find myself and live my life.

It makes me feel whole.