In our house in Maine, there was an ancient pine growing right next to the porch, such that, when adolescence began to grip my fevered mind, I could slip out my bedroom window and clamber down that tree to escape the parental domain and wander the island with my peers under the moonlight, staring down the surf on the south shore, or paddling around the cove at midnight in a borrowed skiff.

Those were really happy, careless times, before I owned anything, or sold myself to anyone.


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