It would seem that as I get older “getting” in the Christmas spirit becomes more and more time consuming and requires more effort. When I was younger, the passing of Thanksgiving alone was enough to make me bust into boxes of Christmas ornaments and caroling.

Teresa and Tark, the newly appointed harbingers of the Christmas season, came to get their tree yesterday, wiser from last year's experience. (Think BIG prickly tree. Lesson 1: one of the types of trees that we have on the property, while lovely, have razor sharp needles. Lesson 2: when you've selected a tree, cut it, and put it on the car, it will be larger than when you cut it in the forest.)

Jenna and her roommate and her roommate's co-worker came as well to commune with nature and get away. As we bundled up to go out, Jenna's roommate, Allison (the self proclaimed “city girl”) says, “so, what exactly are we doing?” It hadn't occurred to me that they might not know. I answered the best I could and like the seven dwarves, we set out into the woods, single file, armed with clippers and saws and buckets to collect trees and sprigs for wreaths.

Upon returning to the house, we emptied all the greens onto the floor and sat around making wreaths. The house quickly filled with the smell of pine and our hands grew increasingly sticky and dirty. The warmth from the wood stove turned our faces red. And with a little Christmas music, I felt the holiday spirit coming back to me. Even Daisy caught the bug and planted herself squarely in the center of my incomplete wreath. At the end of an hour or two, we surveyed our products and now I am ready for Christmas!

After cleaning the pine needles from my floor, we ate and sat around talking and listening to music. I told stories about the Jesus Christ landing strip and some of the weirdness that happens in small towns. We talked about how remote the area is and urban sprawl on this small scale. After a while, Jenna's roommate's coworker pipes up with what seems to be the persistent question in people's minds.

“Doesn't the isolation get to you?”

Perhaps one of the more peculiar questions we get from city people when they come to visit, I've not yet found an accurate way to describe why it doesn't. But I found the questions particularly ironic this time, coming from the person whom I'd never met before her visit to our house. Indeed, people seem to seize upon the opportunity to come up to New Hampshire, described by Jenna as a playground for adults. So, we are never in short supply of friends and interesting people and I feel that I have an opportunity to get to know these people better in this very comforting and non-threatening environment.

This is my sanctuary, my church, my sanity. The world becomes too much for me at times. I suffer from busybodyitis and at times, I no longer wish to know anymore about my neighbors, my country, my world, or my universe and here in the middle of the woods, I have control over the inputs. Here, it's as simple as turning off the radio or the TV. In the city, surrounded by people, I had no control- turning off the TV and the radio, and drawing all the shades, and not answering the phone, and not browsing the web- makes you strange and reclusive.

It's not as though we don't go out and see people. Dan and I both have jobs. I have an active social life with a local friend who does all the same activities that I do- walking, hiking, sewing, cooking and gardening. I can be extroverted when I need to be. We regularly have visitors from the city coming to “commune with nature” or get “away” or “relax”. In fact, these days, it's difficult to predict when we're actually going to have time alone, between guests, work, neighbors, and family. But for us, this is an enjoyable affliction when solitude is all around us.