Logging in July
Widow-Makers
The Poplar and the Box Turtle
But Not Bob’s Wife
The climb gets steeper and more punishing, but work awaits at the top of the hill. The air is already heavy and oppressive, like a steamy wool blanket, though the day has barely broken. Sunlight slips through scattered holes in the dense canopy, casting beams of luminous vapor to the forest floor in the hills of southern Indiana. The undisputed champions of the summer woods harass me incessantly. Gnats, mosquitoes, flies, ticks, hornets, wasps, and countless others feeding and breeding in a frenzy. The man or beast that dares to toil in this maniacal din pays a heavy toll. I have sworn many times never to return to logging, yet here I am — and in the worst month possible. Rejecting the constraints of conformity has a price. My price, my sentence, is logging in July. When I left an acting career in New York and returned home to Indiana, I was convinced the only remedy for my inner extremes was to live with the Amish. Surely that would extinguish the creative ambition forcing me to …
