I’m a country boy, plain and simple. Except for occasional forays into the city, I’ve spent virtually all of my life surrounded by green grass and woods and water, and, for the most part, I’ve stayed within two stories of Mother Earth.

But I did live in the city once – Portland, Maine; my wife, Susan, and I did, for seven months. It was rather rustic for city living though. We had trouble finding a place to rent and so ended up on the top floor of an old townhouse, which could only be reached by a winding ascent up a rickety old stairway with wiggly banisters. (…)

We’ve been having a little trouble out on the badminton court lately; the games have been getting a bit rowdy, and today’s equipment just doesn’t seem to stand up to our brand of badminton. The rackets are bending, the strings are snapping, and the shuttlecocks, or birdies, are either getting stuck in the racket strings or their little red rubber tips are falling off and getting walloped into the woods. It kind of breaks up the pace of the game when you have to keep stopping to fix stuff, and that’s no good when we have a ripsnorter going after supper on a mosquitoey evening. (…)

There has been a preponderance of flattened out rodents on the roads of late. Some are brown, some are gray, and some have quills, but they are all quite flat. It’s too bad. My suspicion is that, in their buck-toothed way, they are all victims of a spring wanderlust that is quite possibly connected to another kind of lust. (…)