Where do you get those ideas, my unseen reader asks.
Well, I... From life, I guess, I answer.
What kind of a experiences can you get stuck in front of a computer in a little
house on the banks of a river in the hollyhocks of Maine, she asks.
The reader means boondocks. I do not correct her.
Hollyhocks are my favorite flower. And what with seeing Al Gore's An
Inconvenient Truth at the high school gym, I can foresee a very exhilarating
future for my 170-year-old cottage: four rooms and a privy-cum-woodshed. I have
spent the past twenty years snugly enscorcelled (Not a word—look it up; find it,
I challenge you. Hard 1st C as in sconce.) two feet above full-moon high tide on
the Pennamaquan River, a tidal estuary—what Norwegians call a fjord, in
Pembroke, Maine.
My unseen reader could call me (correctly) a rear guard of the wooly socks and
granola big city exodus of the 1980s. We burn five cords of wood November
through March, and heat with oil, propane and whatever is the cheapest that
month. Deer depredate my kitchen garden and bears have raided my neighbor's
dumpster.
Maine is God's country, says the reader, going glassy-eyed.
Yeah, but he's got a condo in Lauderdale, I reply.