Welcome Back

I had indeed forgotten what it looked like. An uneven patchwork of green and brown, stitched together with lines of trees and quiet streams. Clusters of trees and little lakes add character to the landscape. The closer we fly to London, the more houses and little towns pop up until I look out the window to my right and see the city itself. But to my left--country as far as the eye can see with rolling hills at the horizon all beneath a cloudy sky.

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Taking a bus through the English countryside is something else entirely. It's everything you've seen in films, but more beautiful and magical than they let on. The stitches of trees though bare are still green. And it's the sort of green you never see, but only hear about: pure, bright, cheerful. The patches are populated by horses and cows and sheep, oblivious to the cars racing past them. In fact, it seems that most of the countryside is oblivious to the highway. It looks and seems as if it's frozen in time, carrying on much in the same way it has for the past hundred years and those of us driving past get a glimpse into a time that no longer is. It's this wonderful meeting of the old and the new where they somehow manage to coexist and even thrive alongside each other.

It's easy to see where J.R.R. Tolkien had gotten his inspiration for the Shire from. Soft, rolling countryside, dotted with little towns and farms. It harkens back to a simpler time. A time without the noise of technology or the great evils facing the world as they are. The English countryside is altogether beautiful and magnificent without even trying.

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I had forgotten how beautiful it is. My memory had hardly done it justice.

Welcome back to England.