When I stepped out onto the damp boards of the back deck before dawn, I could hear the spring frogs down in the holler, calling from the natural marsh of the stock pond. Dixee brushed past me out the door, pattering down the steps to relieve herself in the grass, and a cardinal in the pines warmed up, his chips and clicks crescendoing into a song of dark morning color. I saw the wisp of light in the eastern sky and longed to stay at the farm, longed to stay away from town, away from chattering voices and intrusive opinions and the moldy crumbs of civility that pass for conversation…