I used to have to write compositions called that in school and I never knew what to say. But I know what you're going to say, you're going to say what Sam said. "Vacation? Vacation from what? You haven't worked in almost a year." Well, the answer is kind of hard to explain, and I know it don't make much sense, but a vacation from me, a vacation from Wilbur, and, I guess, too, a vacation from goddam civilization.

I went camping. At least, that's where I've been most of the time. I got some nice letters from people seemed to be worried about me, which I wasn't expecting, and a couple actually said "Don't quit", and that was nice, too. I suppose I should have said something but it all happened so fast I kind of forgot about this for awhile. Where should I start?

So Amos come over that night all duded up in his Sunday suit, which was a sight let me tell you. Amos Pepperell in a blue suit and a black tie looks like he's getting ready to crawl into his own casket. He didn't seem surprised to see me and didn't pay much attention to me neither, and the two of them went at it for awhile and Sam got all het up, steam coming out of her ears practically. They can't do that and what about all the road salt will get washed into the river in the spring and that slope is a watershed and we can't let them get away with this and it was pretty damn obvious what was going to be happening between her and me the next few months and that was not much of anything. I seen her go through this before and I know what it means is meetings and hours of work on her computer and then more meetings and going to everybody's house to tell them what's going on and then more meetings and phone calls and meetings and rallies and meetings. Now I know what she was doing all that time I guess I'm proud of her, but that's a different thing from being happy I don't ever see her while it's going on.

So when Steve come over that Sunday and said he had a fight with his old lady and he was heading out to his cabin on Eagle Lake for a couple weeks and did I want to come along, I said, "Damn straight" and I packed, just like that. Eagle Lake is up in the Allagash country, above Caribou, up by Edmundston, and it's so far out in the middle of nowheres it makes Wilbur look like Portland. Me and Steve used to go up there all the time but since he got hooked up and so did I, I guess, we didn't. It must be five, maybe six years since we were up there, and as soon as he asked me I knew that's what I wanted to do.

This is the part that's hard to explain. I mean, Wilbur's only got, what, maybe 6, 700 people in it? Not many. The sticks you'd probably call it. So what did I need to run away from? That's what Sam wanted to know when I told her I was going. I guess she thought it was her because she was getting all caught up in this thing with Amos but it wasn't that, least I don't think it was. It was something I've been feeling for awhile, ever since that business on the 4th of July. I've been restless kind of, itchy, like I should be going somewhere only I didn't know where. Some days I felt like i couldn't breathe, I was so sick of everybody and how they all knew my business--better than I did some of them, like Pete knew about what Sam had been doing--and I knew theirs, come to that, a lot of it shit I didn't really want to know and wished I didn't. When you've lived in the same small place all your life, there's one side of it that it's comfortable, like some old chair that knows your body better than you do and gives in all the right places, but then there's another side that it's boring as hell. You do the same things every day, see the same people, say the same damn stupid things--"Warm this week, ain't it?" "Yuh, warm enough. Hope it don't get too humid, that's worse than the heat." "See old Pie Miller's scarecrow he's got this year?" "Yuh, dressed him up like a banker, he's even got a briefcase." "Damn fool. Funny, though." "Yuh."--wear the same clothes, go to the same places. Sometimes you just need a change.

And there was something else, too. I grew up in these woods and I can remember when there was moose all over the place and the bears came by all the time. I used to know where every little spring come out of the ground that made every crick in town and where every squirrel nest was and every beaver dam and badger den and the valley you went to if you wanted to see eagles and which streams had otter and which orchards the deer liked to eat the apples out of. I used to go out in the woods and feel like I was the only living human on the face of the earth for a thousand miles in any direction, and even though I knew it wasn't true, it felt like that, you know? I used to park my little pup tent on some bare patch under a pine tree and not care if it got all sticky because it smelled good that way. At night I'd lay on my sleeping bag and look up at the stars and there were so many you couldn't count them. I don't remember ever hearing a truck trying to climb a hill or a plane or the sound of a highway or anything at all that was man-made, just birds and crickets and frogs and probably a raccoon nosing around in the scrub brush to see if maybe you threw something away that was good to eat.

Wilbur may not be so big to you but it's twice as big as it was when I was growing up and there's new houses stuck every which way so no matter where you go around here now there's one no further than a couple hundred yards away. Camp out nights now and you hear trucks and the highway, planes and somebody's tv playing real loud. Now, I got nothing against any of those things--they're good for what they are and they make life some bearable where it might not be--as long as you can get away from them, as long as you can get to a place once in a while that ain't all poisoned by noise and electric lights and chatter and junk and you can remind yourself how people are supposed to live.

Anyhow, that's what I felt like. I needed to get out and I went. That's all there was to it. Sorry if I worried you but sometimes you just got to get the hell out of town when the chance comes.