Hideout

When we have virtually no privacy, when our every twitch is monitored by over-staffed state functionaries and social-media busybodies on round-the-clock lookout for "inappropriate" comments, there may be a place to flee to... not too far from the nearest city, nor too deep into the unknown. To get there, you'll leave your vehicle beside a pothole-pockmarked highway to ford a stream not too wide or narrow. Then, you'll have to clamber up a trail through dense, evergreen forest en route to an elk-friendly plateau... where sits a cabin camouflaged like a solitary, tawny-beige cougar or over-stressed chameleon. Amazon will never deliver there, nor FedEx, UPS or the U.S. Postal Service. No tax collector will ever find this home, nor any summons-bearing agency. Wild animals will offer companion care and dawn birdsong elevator music. The picture-window view will be of woods, mountains and grasslands. The perfume will be fir cologne. The log shelter will have a side entrance and a tunnel for lightning-quick exits. It will withstand almost anything from nuclear attack to cancel culture, and be perfect for COVID-19 quarantining or drafting sweetly reasonable poetry. But no political snoops will be allowed, nor snotty scolds prone to virtue-signaling. This will be a nosey-parker-free zone.