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I just walked back alone from Diane’s open studio. The horse and all the cows were out, the air was cool, and the mountains and trees are the last of rural Virginia I’m going to see for a long while. Part of me would like to stay here and hide out from the world in safety and security.

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It’s funny, though: there’s such a difference between being with all men, as I was during the day, and being with women this evening. Men – most straight men, anyway – are such clods. Women, on the other hand, have spunk; they know how to laugh and relate.

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I feel I’m surrounded by supportive, loving friends here and that I’m returning to a hostile or indifferent world. . . Looking back, I know how much I’ve experienced here in Virginia and I see the last four weeks as a very special time in my life.

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I took a long walk down Highway 29, which goes north to Charlottesville and the Virginia suburbs of Washington. Back at my studio, I wrote five pages of a story called “If Abortions Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Abortions” in the voice of a 16-year-old boy.