Tim Barrus, New York Times

I am a communist. I am building a tree house using the strength of six oak trees. Timber at construction sites. Leftover wood. I find lots of stuff in junkyards and abandoned barns. I am always lugging around something. I have two military camouflage parachutes (donated) that when doubled and draped and tied around the tree house, renders disappearance. A third parachute is a hammock. Kick up some good nails. The oak trees provide breezes that ruffle the parachutes particularly at night, and the sounds are like the sails from a sail boat on a clear cold day at noon. No glass windows. I feel the lush forest that surrounds me. I see white-tailed deer, black bears, beaver, chipmunks, rabbits, squirrels, foxes, raccoons, opossums, skunks, groundhogs, porcupines, bats, weasels, shrews, and minks. The opossums had babies this last spring. The bats pour from their hidden cave at night and a wild feasting on mosquitoes. I do not know how I could even breathe inside a heartless mausoleum – single room occupancy and twenty locks and chains and bolts on the door. A barn owl lives up in the branches. Not for everyone. I can see for fifty miles of blue and deep green. I can catch gorgeous brook, brown, or rainbow trout wild in pristine, silvery creeks or rivers, tucked deep in the mountains, protected. The New York Times can’t even include any writers who are poor themselves in this metaphor-rich winter of discontent, so we opt for graphs and academics to tell us what is out there. A lot.