Life in a Northern Town

We all have our escapes, don't we? Our little slices of paradise. Those places to which we run off to get away from the world. Some people love the bright lights and small cafes of Paris. Some love the Bahamas: sand and sunshine and the water. Don't get me wrong, I'd take a vacation to either of those places any day. But when I really want to get away from the world, I go someplace a little bit closer to home, the home of my aunt and uncle, my home away from home, you could say. 

Nestled in the northwest of Wisconsin, right by the Minnesota border, is a small town of less than 2,000 people. It has one bar, one tiny library, one high school, one pickle festival every year, and endless miles of beautiful forest land. A ten minute drive outside of this "town" is a gorgeous three-story house with cathedral ceilings, a screened-in porch, a loft, a sprawling garden, a little pond, and fifty plus acres of open fields and cool forests. This house is surrounded by other houses. These houses have swimming pools and horses. They have chickens running through the yard and plants that reach up to the living room ceiling. They have big windows and arbors. They have fawns padding through the garden at dawn and vultures riding the thermals at sunset. 

In this town, in this house amongst other houses, I read books to the sound of warblers. I write stories sprawled out on the smooth wood of the wraparound porch. I make pastas and salads with vegetables from the garden outside. I take photographs and play Italian card games and sew and swim and ride horses and snowshoe in the winter and kayak in the summer and walk around barefoot and laugh. 

This isn't the Bahamas or Paris or any tourist destination you would find on the map. But it's a place where I slow down. Where I turn off my phone. Where I focus on myself, my work, my life. My life a little simpler, a little more relaxed. My life in a northern town.