In the fall of 1999, I had the great good fortune of moving to a secluded spot in the woods of southern Maine. There, I was to learn truths I might not have had I continued to live just inches from the asphalt in a small city. I would also amass a fount of impressions that would stay with me the rest of my life and that would color all my future days. I spent five years putting pen to all this in a weekly column that appeared in the local newspaper--the Journal Tribune. My aim was not so much to tell readers what I'd seen, heard and felt, but more to draw them in and to try to take them on...