This is something new for all of us. I grew up in the country, but I was surrounded by cornfields not mountains. My children have lived in the city all their lives. My husband has mostly lived in the city, with an exception of two years when he lived on a farm in Plattsburgh, Missouri. I remember how much fun it was to explore when I was a kid and felt like I was somehow harming my own children by not allowing them the same benefits I received from the great outdoors. My children are all boys and I was a bookworm, so I felt doubly sure that this was the perfect setting for their own childhood. They live in a time where imagination is something akin to mental illness, not something you use to entertain yourself. I don’t want them to think that entertainment can only come on a disc that you insert into a machine to display on a television set. I have spent two weeks at this cabin with my family so far, and I have only heard “I’m bored” once. We have seen herds of bighorn sheep and mule deer. We have found a red fox relaxing a few feet from our back deck and signs of some kind of burrowing animal. We have followed the tracks of a rabbit and some kind of small dog (maybe the fox?). We have made discoveries together as a family, and that is worth all the inconvenience of living miles from town. We are weeks away from spring, so I can only imagine the discoveries will increase as the days go by.