Living Among the Trees

We moved to the woods while our house in town is being built. Surrounded by forested wetlands, it feels as though we are living in a treehouse in this feast for the senses.

Limbs and trunks blanketed by thick mosses capture your attention in a way few other things can. The ambient sounds of rain, sleet, and snow falling on the skylight replace the birdsong of Texas.

The first weeks in this soft, lush forest revealed few human interactions and even fewer animal ones. Tracks in the snow are the only sign that they are here. The charming vacation home is a reader’s house. Handmade shelves hold hundreds of books on nature and the environment, food and climate, and poetry and prose from writers of the Pacific Northwest.

A friend once asked me how we get our kids outside, and my answer was to go with them, but this week in our nine acres of forest, I can see the effects of all of those park visits and camping trips as they bundle up and head outside together for hours on end.

We didn’t remove technology from their lives. We added nature.