Actually, the Prices went up north.

We travelled in our recently repaired Family Assault Vehicle (a/k/a the Venture), and went to 26 Pines. Heather and I invariably feel the stress rolling off of us in waves after we get there.

Favorite moment: Madeleine and I went for a walk early Sunday evening and I stopped and whispered: "Listen--hear that?"

"What?"

"How quiet it is."

We strained to listen to the glorious absence of noise, punctuated, only distantly and briefly, by the echoing of a dog's bark and the hoot of an owl. There's none of the constant white-noise hum of the expressways and the other clatter of urban living.

It's difficult to leave.