What do you love about where you live?

my home: Pennsylvania.

The oldest artifact ever discovered is: “The site, found in Jefferson Township, has the oldest evidence of human civilization in the Americas. It’s a rock shelter built into a bluff overlooking the Ohio River. The artifacts represent an incredible array of time periods, indicating that it may have been continuously habituated for over 19,000 years.”

This state bears many native plants and animals. It has been scarred by the violence of wars, and the greed of man.

Yet many wonders exist here:

We were the final resting place for many early American citizens downed in a civil war, our inventors piloted the steel industry, we were an original colony, and home to several Native American tribes.

We. It’s a silly word. I’ve not experienced these things, and it’s not what makes this home to me. Home is the lush green forests surrounding our towering A-frame, the hiccups of streams winding through a glacial rock field, and the soft chirp of peepers in the night. My mind would lull into the music of midnight with the occasional “help-help” from the neighbor’s peacocks followed by an occasional, deep “gulp-gulp” of a disgruntled bullfrog.

Home is the smell of Mossy Oak and power-bait. It is the crunching of bears eating my cats…. Er…. Possums enjoying a buffet of cat food.

It is the clip-clopping of iron-shod buggy horses pulling their wooden box-wagons down bumpy country roads.

There’s also the old ford with its bed backed towards the highway, toppling with ears of corn, $5/ Walmart grocery bag. It was also watermelon and cantaloupe at times as well.

It’s the screaming cicadas calling forth the night and the distant roll of thunder storms bringing with a thick misty blanket – shrouding the deciduous tree cover.

It smells like home, tastes like home, it is home. That is why I love it.