Flaco the Free Bird

The threat of starvation was mentioned more than once, reasonably, since this bird had only ever had food handed to him. It was also notable though that the two other stories sharing Flaco’s page were a piece on the rats infesting the mayor’s row house rentals and the sad story of a pink NYC pigeon.

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Call of the Frontier

The river that lay out on the western horizon was still an unknown to me – a long, mysterious meandering flow. The slow, deep, turbid waters of this flow seemed meant to irrigate croplands here in Crawford County, not to accommodate extraordinarily large spawning trout. But I was here to expand my horizons, to do radical new things and probe mysterious waters, here to challenge another frontier.

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Just the Basics: Camping

And the first night, when I was fourteen, involved taking a pillow and blanket out behind mom and dad’s house in upstate New York to a sort of stick shelter I’d thrown up in the hedge separating us from some apartment buildings. I survived till morning and thought I’d like to try it again sometime.

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Weeding

We strive to achieve perfection, every shrub and flower in its assigned place, looking its best, and nothing else crowding things and making a mess, nothing interfering with appearances or first impressions.

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