it's the life for me

It’s always an iffy decision to stay with relatives you don’t remember meeting but of whom your grandparents say, “They would be glad to have you stop by.” Luckily, the formidably rutted driveway and the dried buffalo heads on a pole were no indication of the hospitality I received from my second cousin and his family out in the middle of nowhere Wisconsin. After a home cooked meal of pork roast and mashed potatos washed down with the perfect home-brewed beer, we got a tour of the grounds: seven horses, ten birding dogs, six birding puppies, homing pigeons, a perfectly manicured vegetable gardnen, and freezers filled with what used to be two hogs and three steer. I slept deeply that night with nothing but the sounds of the crickets in my ears and a light breeze coming up from the spring keeping me cool.