In 1978 I was a young and promising child psychologist specializing in Applied Behavior Analysis procedures. Personal issues led me to giving up my dream job to return to my home town where I was unable to secure suitable employment in my field. I eventually accepted that I was not about to get hired, and watching my own kids get hungry convinced me I had to do something about it. Having house-painted throughout my college years, I was able to fall back on that. At first I only wanted to make a little money to tide me over, but soon I was captured by a more substantial impulse: to design a...

Our Adirondack camp is a retreat setting where solitude replaces society. In this place, the mind and spirit are freed from the usual, offering the possibility of experiencing the ordinary in an extraordinary way. The pre-Industrial-Age conditions run contrary to the requirements of our pampered civilized lifestyle, but here they are simple payment for the poetic appreciation of a more essential spiritual boundary. These writings do not represent my work on being a writer, but rather as a searching experiencer. It is my attempt to portray my experience while working to have a finer...