Oxxford Hunt has walking trails and gentle hills and people who get together for supper clubs, garage sales, and cul-de-sac parties. Moms chat with each other over coffee at any one of several school bus stops during the academic year. Dog walkers lead their four-legged charges at all hours. Come summer nights, frogs and cicadas seem to own the woods, and anybody with a jones for exercise can sooner or later be found playing or sweating in Bond Park proper, or the newly-resurfaced tennis courts that belong to the homeowners’ association.

On rare winter days when Cary gets more than a dusting of snow, the denizens of Oxxford Hunt spend joyful hours sledding down the Bond Lake levee or under utility lines, and both locations are prettier than they sound.

Now I actually live in an area that reminds me of that song. Cary’s “Oxxtord Hunt” subdivision doesn’t have stone signs to mark its entrances. Oxxford Hunt residents make due with a stylized yellow fox design on blue plastic. On the other hand, we have mature landscaping, a well-appointed clubhouse, a resurfaced tennis court, a pool with a generous deck, and an unusually responsive homeowners’ association. When I asked permission to cut down a tree that leaned ominously over my driveway, the board responded quickly, and did not force me to wait a month before approving the request.

I think what I like best about Oxxford Hunt are the animals who share the neighborhood with us. There are cats and dogs here, of course, but there is alxo a motley collection of wildlife drawn to the neighborhood because it plays host to Bond Park. Hgh school cross-country teams see bluebirds and cardinals wherever they run. A small herd of deer in the park sometimes glides through people’s backyards. Wild cottontail rabbits can thwart vegetable gardeners when garden plots aren’t fenced off. And if you walk attentively along the shores of Bond Lake, you can see not just geese and ducks, but also owls and a pelican or two. People who walk quietly along the streets and trails of Oxxford Hunt can sometimes even catch a glimipse of the swim team’s namesake, the Swamp Fox.

Well, I now know that those writers didn’t lie. They just didn’t tell the whole truth, either. Cary and Raleigh are more cosmopolitan than the little town on the eastern edge of San Diego where my family and I had lived before. The lilt of Southern accents can be heard around here, but if “honeydo” chores send you to a store like Home Depot on the weekends, you’ll also hear the accents of New York and New Jersey among the people who staff the lumber department.

There’s a guy down the street from us who flies the Confederate battle flag from a pole in his front yard, but it’s right next to a makeshift memorial to American soldiers who died in the Vietnam War, and his yard is probably the only place you’ll find the “stars and bars” close by.

Around here, coffee shops are more common than reminders of the “War Between the States,” and traffic signals tend to be hung from cables rather than from the stanchions I was used to seeing out West. As for billboards, we ain’t got any, because Cary takes its signs ordinance seriously. Don’t let that scare you, though, because it’s not a stick-in-the-mud kind of town. On the contrary, Cary is notorious for the genteel but relentless way that it expands into neighboring burgs like Apex by buying unincorporated parcels of land. Cary seems to like being a destination in its own right, not just a bedroom community for Raleigh. And if you’re in either town long enough, you run into characters, especially in those coffee shops I mentioned, Just this morning, I heard one young Asian man telling a friend that he only drinks coffee that comes from “countries with good waves.” Mediocre surfing in any country is enough to sour him on any coffee plantations there, or so he said — and I believed him. Not long afterward, I heard part of a conversation between a middle-aged man and a girl who might have been his granddaughter. “I graduated from high school at age 35,” he said. “I bet you didn’t know that.”

Trader Joe’s is known for its unusual foods and its nautical décor (store management usually consists of a “captain” and a “first mate”; store employees wear Hawaiian shirts). The grocery chain is headquartered in Monrovia, California, near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. – and that might explain why its nautical theme works even for landlocked locations like those around North Carolina’s “Triangle.” The popular Cary location has siblings in Raleigh and Chapel Hill.

A word to transplants from California, though: The Charles Shaw wines known colloquially as “Two-buck Chuck” in that state are “Three-buck Chuck” by the time they make it to Tar Heel country, where they can be used as a refined accompaniment to that famous Carolina barbeque.

While many people know that there is no lack of things to do in Bond Park or its centerpiece freshwater lake, the neighborhood on the southern edge of Bond Park has a lower profile among non-residents. I love Oxxford Hunt because it has people of all ages, and lots of cul-de-sacs. Mature trees around the neighborhood sway gently when spring winds blow, and the lack of sidewalks never seems to deter walkers, joggers, or the neighbors who stroll to each other’s homes for coffee. Early risers sometimes catch a glimpse of the small herd of deer that lives in Bond Park, or ducks practicing touch-and-go landings on Bond Lake. The neighborhood has a feeling of camaraderie that is always there, but comes to the fore every summer, when people gather at the pool to root for the “Swamp Foxxes” swim team in its competitive meets with other neighborhoods.