Was straightening up the house this morning, just bustling about here and there, when my eyes for some reason landed on the view outside our window. Most of the time, I just see what is out there and am so used to it that I just take it for granted. Suddenly it hit me--how lucky am I! To be able to look out my window any time I want and see a forest down below and mountains all around. Granted, it's not a large forest by any standard, and the mountains are certainly not the Alps, but they sure are lovely. While I'm looking out, one of the pair of falcons that lives in our area flies by, probably hunting for breakfast. How often did this happen when I lived in my little house in Baltimore? Not once, you can bet.

Down below my house, I can see hyraxes (large guinea pig-like animals) jumping from rock to rock. There are some mothers with new babies. Sometimes they climb up into the trees and pick off the leaves. That is fun to watch. If you get too near them, they scamper away and hide between the boulders. They're very shy of people.

Every so often, we go for hikes down in the valley and find all kinds of things: turtles, porcupine quills, snake skins, gazelle tracks. There is an owl that lives here, and we spot him from time to time. We can watch the gazelles from our window when they feed down below, very early in the mornings. When it rains, the water flows down from all the hillsides into the valley at the bottom and forms a noisy little brook. When there is a lot of rain, a big brook is formed, and we can hear the roar of the water from our house!

Why did I start thinking about all of this suddenly? I guess I have been reading a lot of quilt blogs recently, and thinking about how my blog has nothing quilty in the title. I always feel a little funny about that. But when I take a look outside the window, I'm reminded of the joy my hills bring me, and I don't feel so bad. And I'm reminded of how important it is to appreciate what we have.