FROM AN OLD PROLOGUE IN MY WASTEBASKET

...so I decided it would be best to live in a place that folks living cheek-to-jowl or shoulder-to-shoulder (or both) in the big city cram the trains and jam the highways to scramble to, when at last they get a vacation (L. vacare "be empty, free") from the cramped, air-conditioned, vistaless, greenless concretions they spend their everydays in.

And so I searched and found the place to build the house where I now live, seeking a more natural pace for my walk of life here amid the sylvan sights and sounds, where I can savor the tree-breathed, mountain-fed, lake-nourished air, admire the shapes, works and breadth of nature from the edge of a forest high above the distant hurrysounds of trains, buses and cars full of folks rushing back and forth between vacation and the aftermath. Their struggle is palpable-- so unlike, for example, the effortless songs of birds, the swelling buds of trees, the open gift of blossoms or the sound of waves washing to shore, the steady beat of the endless heart...