He drove his battle-hardened pickup down the dusty country road. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence, he did so almost every night. The evening buzzed with crickets, but that was the only sound when the cylinders came to rest at edge of the ridge that overlooked the vast expanse of land in front of him. One could see for miles up on the ridge. It was such a still evening, and a picture perfect sunset typical of the area was sure to be in store.
Just as he watched the sun began to slip away over the horizon, slight movement caught his eye. A pack of six wolves traveled the distant tree line, seeming in every way to be part of the land. He thought about the beauty of it all. The perfect sunset that would leave the very end of the day glowing. Nature at its best. In that moment he realized that he was part of the land, and the land was part of him. As darkness set in, he put the keys back in the ignition and hammered the throttle back down the old country road.
There would be no easy part of in leaving. Having been raised here, knowing that for generations his family had lived here and worked the land, through the good times and the bad, would making leaving even harder. But it was the only way. The family’s small scale farm could no longer keep up with the huge mass-producing corporate farms that now dominated the land. There was no longer a profit to be turned here, and the offer from the corporation was too good to turn down. The sun had set twice that day.