I do not know why the morning café is not included in the same Second Amendment that guarantees the right to bear arms, as by right ought include a long, durable list of other equally generous and sacred guarantees. To think we should guarantee education, books, open space, accessible silence, clean water, dogs and cats, dark nights.

Myself, I think every citizen needs a dose of dirt roads to maintain their personal equilibrium, as well as a good morning café.

When I travel, which isn’t that often because I was born with a home hobble as pretty much keeps me in my own woods. And I really don’t care to be too distant from my cellar, my workshop, my writing desk. My wife routinely accuses me of creating miscellaneous burrows throughout the farm.

The treehouse a quarter-mile back from the road that overlooks the farm’s back 40, equipped with a little stove, a fold-down bench, several trap doors including one that ascends to the roof where an old cast iron tractor seat is bolted to the roof. The excuse for that is sometimes a person needs perspective, and from that seat I can plink away with a lever action Henry, 40 feet above the peneplain of the Buena Vista. The targets are used disk blades hung from the branches that sound back in an orchestrated way, Key of G.

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