Magic in the Pasture

by Sheri Kling

Before I “saw the light” and moved to Habersham County, I used to sit in my condominium in metro Atlanta and dream of one day living in a restored old farmhouse where the land held a combination of pasture and woods and maybe even an old barn.  Now, the place I call home holds exactly that set of pleasures.  In fact, when I saw the newspaper listing that advertised this house, it seemed as if it screamed out “Sheri, this is your home!”

The twenty months that I’ve lived in this place have offered a lot of new discoveries of many things of beauty, most of which can only be found in the kind of landscape by which I am now surrounded.  I guess it’s possible that tiny frogs the size of my thumbnail lived in Marietta somewhere, but I never saw them.  And I never before witnessed Eastern Phoebes and the way they sit on branches and wag their tails before they fly out to snag a bug in the backyard.  Nor had I ever watched multiple pairs of Indigo Buntings at a birdfeeder with their iridescent blue feathers sparkling in the sunshine.

As a child, I used to love the song “Moonshadow” by Cat Stevens, but I never knew that the moonlight could actually create the kinds of shadows that we experience all the time in the sunshine.  I think that’s because I never had a pasture before.

When you live where buildings are all crowded together and there’s a lot of light pollution from pulsating city life there’s just not enough space to