OUT IN THE COUNTRY!

One of my all-time favorite songs is "Out In The Country" by singer/songwriter Paul Williams. Released around 1970, it was soon covered by Three Dog Night, who had a huge hit with it.

But I'm an ardent purist and have always preferred Paul's version, just as I do Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer singing their own brilliant musical creations.

So, "out in the country" has always represented, for me, peace, quiet, and nature in all her majestic beauty.

I was born and raised in New York City and it has been a lifelong goal to get the hell out of here before I leave this planet for good. Oscar Brown, Jr. may have liked "city noises" but I most certainly do not. Screaming sirens, motorcycles from hell, obnoxious car-discos-on-wheels, the traffic, the congestion...certainly not my cup of tea. "Oh," I would say, "if I can only hear crickets at night, I'd be the happiest person in the world!"

So, as long as I'm stuck here, I grab every piece of nature I can find. And one of them has been playing with the many birds we have in the area. Fortunately, I'm close to an enormous park and Nature Preserve, providing the area with lots of our feathered friends, and I sometimes hear them at night, before they tuck themselves away into their nests, chirping their little hearts out. I try to mimic their pretty songs by whistling back, and they do answer in turn...back and forth we go until they fly away.

Well, it looks like I've made some friends because this morning, at the crack of dawn, I was awakened by SO many birds tweeting their heads off, I thought they were all gathered on my terrace and every single tree surrounding it below. And I think they were disappointed that I wasn't answering them, because they were absolutely insistent and refused to leave until they got an answer. (At that hour, I could only muster closing the windows...)

I remember my mother briefly living in rural New Hampshire and complaining about the screeching crickets and croaking frogs all night long, but I dismissed it as no big deal. Add early-morning tweeting birds to that nocturnal serenade, and that's not exactly the 'peace and quiet' I've always imagined the country to be.

But, as Paul Williams wisely observed,

"Whenever I need to leave it all behind, or feel the need to get away, I find a quiet place, far from the human race, out in the country..."

I can take the crickets, frogs and birds ~ it's being far from the human race that makes being "out in the country" so appealing.

For your listening pleasure, here is Paul Williams' version of this most beautiful song...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMaXa8OisNE