I recently read Verlyn Klinkenborg's The Rural Life, a book/journal chronicling the author's experiences on his small farm in New York, his reflections on country life, and his thoughts on life in general.

It was a treat to read. I loved the imagery and detail of his descriptions, the way he tied the human seasons to the natural ones, and the fact he divided the book into twelve convenient chapters -- one for each month of the year.

The book has a number of quotable passages, but I wanted to share my three favorites.

On property and self:

When you take on a property like the one my parents bought -- thirteen rolling acres divided by a narrow irrigation ditch, broken by veins of rock, and covered in poison oak and head-high Scotch broom -- you simply set out to clear the land and find a building site. But you leave traces of yourself with every decision you make, every fence you build, every tree you fell or plant, every quarter-acre you choose to irrigate or leave dry. In twenty years' time, a self-portrait emerges, and it exposes all the subtleties of your character, whether you like it or not. The land and the shape of the buildings show precisely how much disorder you can tolerate, how many corners you tend to cut, how much you think you can hide from yourself. Neatness may reflect nothing more than a passion for neatness, or it may be a sign of small ambitions. - p. 91, June

On travel:

All in all, this looks less like the quest for difference than the diffusion of sameness. Travel gets easier all the time, and it gets harder every year to distance yourself from the web of familiarity that's been thrown over the approaches to scenic America -- the web of ATMs, chain restaurants, chain motels, and chain experiences. Beneath the convenience of it all lurks a hidden fear of disappointment and strangeness, of feeling displaced, of coming to the limits of a known world. - p. 107, July

On Wyoming clouds:

Wyoming is a metropolis of clouds. Some are born in the state, some move here from other places, but they all prosper. Wyoming is also a theater of wind. For days at a time this summer, the clouds have passed in migratory flight, complicating the sunlight. In late afternoon especially, along the northeastern rim of the Bighorn Mountains, great rafts of orographic clouds -- shaped by the mountains, that is -- rise with the terrain and then lean out over the creek bottoms, darkening the face of the Bighorns and reabsorbing that darkness. - p. 127, August