If A Person Sings Quietly To Himself

Our Loneliness Makes Us Avid Column Readers These Days.

Summer Is When We Believe, All Of A Sudden, That If We Just Walked Out The Back Door And Kept On Going Long Enough And Far Enough We Would Reach The Rocky Mountains.

Men Greet Each Other With A Sock On The Arm, Women With A Hug, And The Hug Wears Better In The Long Run.

The Zest For Life Of Those Unusual Men And Women Who Make A Great Zealous Success Of Living Is Due More Often In Good Part To The Craftiness And Pertinacity With Which They Manage To Overlook The Misery Of Others. You Can Watch Them Watch Life Beat The Stuffing Out Of The Faces Of Their Friends And Acquaintances, Although They Themselves Seem To Outwit The Dense Delays Of Social Custom, The Tedious Tick-tock Of Bureaucratic Obfuscation, Accepting Loss And Age And Change And Disappointment Without Suffering Punctures In Their Stomach Lining.

Black Bears, Though, Are Not Fearsome. I Encountered One On The Road To My House In Vermont, Alone At Night. I Picked Up Two Stones Just In Case, But I Wasn't Afraid Of Him. I Felt A Hunter's Exhilaration And A Brotherly Feeling.