The first thing I do when I get to the woods is hang my backpack on a tree branch. Then I walk. To make it work you have to walk until you can’t hear any cars at all, and that’s what I do. I walk and walk until all I can hear are the little cracks and snaps of branches and the swish of the brook. I follow the brook to a place where there’s a crumbling dry stone wall and a tall maple tree with a rusted-out sap bucket nailed just above head height. That’s my place. That’s where I stop. In the book A Wrinkle in Time, it says that time is like a big old rumpled blanket. What I’d like is to be
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