For four summers, my husband studied at Oxford University for a master’s and I went each time for a short visit. Here is a place I loved to visit: the common pasture beyond the city called Port Meadow, where anyone with livestock could let their animals graze. The Thames river ran by it (it is in the background behind the line of trees) and there were always cows and horses peacefully moving through the landscape, with the sounds of birds and the river around them.