This project began thirty years ago as a collection of stories about my childhood summers on a farm in southwest Michigan, how those rural experiences shaped my values, my love of animals and plants, my need for outdoor solitude, and my concern for the environment. As I later composed additional stories of my teen years, the project evolved into full-fledged autobiography. But who am I to write an autobiography? There were no tragedies, no holocausts to survive, no molestations. Instead, what you have is an intimate look at the life of a man of those times, his growing up and coming of age,...