Part of living in the country

The place we are renting out here in North Carolina is an amazingly beautiful and large home on 22 acres of land with woods and meadows and a pond (not to mention the in-ground pool that was swam in almost every day during the summer). It's spectacular and we are enjoying every minute of it. Just to give you an idea of where we live, this first picture is of the "rose garden lawn" over by the driveway, the second is taken from the front of the house, looking out at "the pond" and the third is of a deer over in the "lower meadow" on the right side of the house.

Well I just wanted to share with you all a part of living out here in the country.

The Sunday before last we had an incredibly windy afternoon and evening. In our big house we didn't think much of it as we are pretty secure here in our "Meadowsong". (Yes we named the "estate", it's that much like living in a manor house)

Right around 6:00 in the evening we get a phone call. I answer it and hear a recording saying something along the lines of "we are aware of the fires on so-and-so road in Louisburg . Please do not call the County Fire Dept to report these fires as the dept is responding at full capacity and we do not want the phone lines tied up, etc, etc."

I turn to Martin and say "Whoah, we just got a reverse 911 call about some fires in Louisburg." (our nearest town of any consequence, about 12 miles away) I open the door and sure enough I can smell smoke strongly. We turn the news on and I jump on the internet to see what we can find out. Turns out that there are fires reported in every county in North Carolina as well as up in Virgina and other surrounding areas and that the worst fires are in our county (Franklin). And in case you didn't know, North Carolina has 100 counties!

A few minutes later we hear fire trucks headed down the road headed towards Louisburg. In the back of my mind I wonder if we should be concerned about fire breaking out someplace closer to us but I can't think of anything that would spark a fire, especially since it wasn't a thunder and lightning storm. Ah well, we send the kids to bed and don't think much more about it.

Jump ahead to the next morning and Cooper complains that he doesn't feel well and wants to stay home from school. Martin gets up and leaves for work. Two minutes later I hear him come back in the house. He says "You'll never believe it, walk out on the driveway." Well first of all, you can't see the road from our house as the driveway is curvy and there are a lot of trees. Every day I have to walk out to the end to pick up Cooper from the bus because, again, you can't see the road from the house.

Well this is what I found. (Keep in mind it's winter now so all the leaves have fallen)

We were totally and completely stuck. Martin couldn't get to work until we could get a neighbor out with a chainsaw and a big pick up truck to haul the telephone pole sized tree out of our driveway. Insane! What's even funnier is we had been trapped by a fallen tree on our driveway earlier this past summer!!! Oh the thrills of living away from civilization.