Dispatches from Kansas

Ex-urbanite Tom Parker's award-winning weekly newspaper column, The Way Home, explores the natural world and rural Kansas and his place in it-an evolving process involving hit bugs, prescient store clerks, daredevil rodents, divine beetles, malevolent weather, failed quests, and the tribulations of living in a century-old house. Along the way he explains the true nature of women, the character of the months, and how sometimes not finding a sought-after bird can be better than finding it. Be...