Greensboro, North Carolina, is different from Seattle, Washington. And the Piedmont is not the Puget Sound. Some would compare the two and declare one better than the other, but to me that is not an issue. Each has its own character, personality and beauty.

To equal the grandeur of the Olympics and Cascades would be difficult. To have something as picturesque as a ferry gliding across the Sound towards the city of Seattle as the sun is setting to the west and lighting the skyline in front of you would be hard to duplicate. To compete with the panoramas from Hurricane Ridge or the homes of Innis Arden would be nearly futile. So for me where we live now does not try.

Instead, our back yard today has historic reminders of the American Revolution, the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. It has rolling hills with small towns and scarcely used rural roads. It has lots of sunshine in the summer and in the winter. It has lots of small lakes and ponds, and it has deciduous forests. The forests of the Northwest are primarily evergreen, which creates a certain feeling. But the forests here have a distinct look and a unique beauty. In the summer the different species of trees creates a diversity of size and shape and color that makes individual trees stand out as individuals, not just one of a mass. While I can not name most of what I see, at times I gaze in awe at a magnificent specimen of something—massive in size and old in years, standing tall with branches waving in the wind.

In the fall, of course, the colors are breathtaking. Reds and yellows and oranges explode everywhere. You do not have to drive to a particular place to see the display, it is all around you. Everywhere you go the heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. (Psalm 19:1)

And then fall mellows and the leaves lose their grip, falling to the ground. When they land in a yard or on a street the job of raking or blowing and sweeping and gathering is a job that everyone around here knows all too well. But no one gathers them in the woods, instead they create a brown carpet that covers the ground until spring. And this carpet, blanketing the earth beneath the tall and now bare trees, creates its own world. It is a world for walking.

Some years ago Nancy and I were in the King’s Forest of England. We stopped the car just to get out and walk in the woods. It was an experience that we had read about in books by various British authors and poets, but that we, as westerners, had not had. This experience is now one we can have daily—at least until the green of spring starts the cycle all over again. I just have to step out our back door and I am in the woods—woods that extend for miles and miles. And when I do it, I am translated into a different world. It is a world of stark beauty and solitude. It is usually quiet, except for the crunch of the leaves as each foot falls with each step, the rustle of the occasional squirrel as it scurries past or the unexpected flight of a bird. Even the owl whose head turned to carefully follow me as I walked by, did so in silence. Walks in the woods in the winter are designed for meditation, thought, and prayer. When the sun shines through the bare limbs of the towering trees, it creates an ethereal sense that is almost like the world of a gothic cathedral. It is a special place and a special time.

So, when people ask me which I like best, the west or the south, I can not say. Each is a part of the grand and multi-faceted world that God created, and that when done, he pronounced very good. Each has a uniqueness that I see and appreciate, a uniqueness that I thank the One who created all for giving me the privilege of knowing.