I was chatting to my brother the other day, on Skype. It's a great program and a great way to keep in touch. I don't recall just where the conversation was coming from or going to but the fact that I use to live in a cabin in the woods came up. My brother remarked that at least I wasn't a hermit. Thinking about it, I suppose he was right. Up there in the woods I could choose not to be around people and I was pretty much guaranteed that no one would arrive on my doorstep uninvited. The going was far too treacherous for a casual drop in, especially in the winter.

I never had to worry about door to door salesmen/women. I could, however, invite folks over and true friends would make the effort. Most of them liked my place, once they'd navigated the back roads and my bumpy, rock strewn drive. There is something about the filtered green coolness of the woods that acts as a balm for the harried modern soul.

That's why I find it a bit strange, now, to be living on the Eton High Street. My front door opens onto a sidewalk that is always cluttered with pedestrians of some sort or other. The photo below was taken on an early morning walk in February before most people were out and about.

My windows overlook a street that, although in essence a dead end, is almost as busy as the Indianapolis Speedway on Memorial Day. Being a few miles away from Heathrow airport there is a steady stream of jet planes overhead. We live a few hundred feet from Eton College Chapel, the first College building that people, walking down from Windsor, see. To avoid a collision when I go out my front door I literally have to stick my head out first to check for gawping tourists who are mesmerized by the sight of that beautiful old edifice.

Eton is a lovely little town, there is no doubt about that, but sometimes it is just too busy for the likes of me. I miss looking out the window and seeing deer. Double decker red tourist buses just don't cut the mustard. Even the sight of Windsor Castle rising above the rooftops can't reduce the longing for one of Mother Nature's architectural wonders... the woodlands.

Something I thought I would never miss I find myself missing keenly, the constant, strident buzzing of cicadas on a hot summer day; a noise that can be deafening in an otherwise peaceful woods. Things I knew I would miss and do; Spring Peepers, those tiny little tree frogs, singing their hearts out as evening falls. In the depths of a summer night the familiar sound of crickets and katydids. Something I thought no one could ever miss, but, I would take the smell of a skunk any day over the reek of diesel and jet engine fuel.

There are compensations to living here, however. Ancient sites like Stonehenge, Wayland's Smithy or the Rollright Stone Circle. Places with so much history you can almost taste it in the air that surrounds them. For a small island country, England is packed with beautiful places, both wild and manmade, that can make your heart soar and fill you with wonder.

I once told Steve that I could be happy living in a cardboard box as long as we were together. Well, Eton is far from being a cardboard box and I am happy and content to live here with someone whom I love dearly.

Ah well... another one where I was going to chat about living in the woods and it ran off in another direction with no definite end in site. You see why i could never be a writer. Oh well.