For many years we lived in a rural suburb. It was a small close knit community that gave us access to one of the better school districts in the region. While it had its charms, I never quite fit.

We moved. Eventually.

We moved closer to the city. Still in a suburb, but one not so closely knit. My new neighbors didn’t grow up with each other, don’t have intertwined family trees, and they neither ask nor care which church I attend.

Unlike my former neighborhood built on former farmland, plowed from former prairie land, that stretches flatly endlessly and is only sparsely studded with carefully planted and neatly aligned trees, my new neighborhood is hunkered between a small lake and several carefully preserved groves of trees and wetlands.

My former neighbors waged war with the natural flora and fauna of the prairie. Plucking, mowing, and spraying the weeds that threatened their carefully groomed lawns. Putting up fences, setting traps, and laying poison to eradicate the various beasties that threatened their meticulously planned gardens. Sitting in the shade of their garages, they would wonder why anyone would want to live in the hustle and bustle of the city instead of the calm of this rural expanse.

Last week I had a large buck, a white tailed deer with a huge rack, just hanging out in my back yard. I think he was resting, maybe just enjoying the slight shelter of our yard before heading back to the woods and his normal haunts.

One afternoon I walked into the kitchen to find a turkey peering through the kitchen window. Turkeys are big, they are not pretty, but after our initial mutual moment of shock, we both decided to just move on with our day.

Every morning there are new tracks in the snow around our house. The distinctive swish of a hopping bunny tail, the quick scatter of scampering squirrels as they run from tree to tree, and the, well, I’m not sure what those tracks are. Coyote maybe?

Each evening, the owl outside my bedroom window hoots, reaffirming his claim on his territory before he hunts that night. There will likely be less tracks of something the next morning.

In my former neighborhood, I often fell asleep to the howl of a distant dog or the rocking clack of a passing train. The city was far away, but it seemed like everything else was too.

Here in my now neighborhood, the birds are loud, often too loud. They hustle and bustle from dawn to dusk, calling to each other, swooping over the humans walking their dogs, and fussing at the children playing in the street.

My new neighbors, both human and not human, are not at war with each other. We are not related. We don’t always speak the same language. But here, I fit.

Love, February.