A deep breath of tainted country air.

There we were last summer, another homo couple nesting outside the dangerous city. Actually, we'd gotten a one-year lease on a cute little cottage outside Woodstock 11 days before September 11, so we weren't technically part of the terror mania that had everyone fleeing Manhattan for the country.

The cottage was more my idea than David's. Having grown up in Brooklyn and Staten Island, I've always found the country exotic. And for the two years prior, I'd lived every other two months in New Zealand, where David had taken a teaching position. In that sheep-infested island nation, open space is as common as sewer sludge is in New York, and I'd gotten used to it.

So I got the idea to rent a house in the mountains. I would plant gladiolas and write columns while watching the blue jays dance about the apple trees. David warned against high expectations, but I was convinced. Soon we packed up a bunch of stuff and carted ourselves and the dogs-Gina and Simone-up and into the mountains upstate.

In the beginning, it was comforting. As smoke and soot enveloped the city and anthrax seeped in through the mail, I was watching it all on satellite tv from the safety of the woods. There I was on the edge of the Ashokan Reservoir convincing myself that I was hundreds of miles from terrorist targets-even though the reservoir itself was closed off for fear of cyanide poisoning, and the Indian Point nuclear plant was just miles away. But the air was clean, and those were details.

We spent the following spring in the city, but planned on making the entire summer of 2002 bucolic. We'd have an extended rest with none of that nasty city pavement in 95-degree heat. Maybe I'd finally plant those gladiolas.

The summer began well enough. The landlord had hired a painter who worked on our tiny cottage every day for months. He'd taken the name of Tarak when he fled New York for the mountains during the 60s, and had not watched television or read the papers in more than 30 years. When I told him all about the attacks, he was pretty amazed.

As summer settled in, things soon turned ugly. One day a woman from up the road came screeching into our driveway in a pick-up truck. She was an angry old bag whose family went back generations on that mountain, and she resented that us city folk had come to infest it. She let us know that she'd shoot dead any dog that wandered onto her acres of wooded property. The sheriff, it seems, had given her the green light.

By mid-summer, the sound of the crickets was so unbearable that it was impossible to sleep. Soon enough, no warm-blooded creature could stand in our yard without huge clouds of hideous, biting gnats driving them away. The insects attacked us and the dogs whenever we went out. I bought the "deep woods" variety of Off, but to no effect. I'd go out to mow the lawn and return to the house covered with bright red bug bites. What was the point of being in the country, I kept asking myself, if you couldn't go outside?

Then came the heat. We didn't have air conditioning, just a few ceiling fans. The landlord had told us that it "never" got very hot in summer, and that the reservoir had some sort of natural cooling effect.

Right. We sweated our asses off. And not grimy, sexy, summer-in-the-city sweating, either. This was itchy gnat-bites and stinging red-boil sweating. We were dripping wet all the time, with the sheets sticking to our bug-bitten skin all night in bed. We found ourselves going back to the city just for our apartment's air conditioning.

The deer, meanwhile, ate all my gladiolas.

One night, after cutting the lawn again and taking my thirtieth shower, I poured a glass of wine and went out onto the gnat-infested patio. The pit bull, Gina, followed. And then a deer went by. Gina was gone in an instant, off chasing the thing into the thick of the woods-right into heart of the property owned by the old witch up the road who'd threatened to shoot to kill. Sundown was coming. We spent the next 20 minutes running up and down the road and into the woods. After no luck, I raced up to the witch's old house and pounded on her door, my entire body dripping in sweat, gnats all over my neck. I imagined her inside, skinning my dog and preparing to boil it in a giant cauldron.

Then David came up the road. He'd found Gina on another neighbor's property, eating some sort of dead animal.

That night, we packed up and fled the terrorism of the country. This summer, we'll take our chances in town.

Michelangelo Signorile hosts a national radio show each weekday from noon to 3 p.m. EST on Sirius Satellite Radio, stream 149. He can be reached at [www.signorile.com](http://www.signorile.com).