It was early spring in southern Maine; rivulets of snow-melt were already swelling the brooks running by the side of the forest road. My wife and I were walking along the primaveral path, enraptured by sunshine warming the air with scents of pine and birdsong. We rounded the curve and walked up the hill, past a moldering storage shed, and then past the granite foundations of an ancient homestead farm, overgrown and abandoned in the eldritch shadows like some remnant of an H.P. Lovecraft yarn. We crested the ridge, from which Mt. Washington can be seen on a clear day towering above the White Mountains in the distance, then turned around and went back down the hill

I suddenly glimpsed something in the clear rivulet by the roadside: a flash of silver in limpid running water and sandy silt. Was it just the spring sun reflected on a wet rock? As I approached the object it was winking and flashing while my angle of approach changed toward the reflecting light. It seemed to be a semicircle of metallic plastic. We came closer and I walked over to examine it. It was a DVD half-buried in the stream bed.   I carefully pulled it out and read: Girls Gone Wild XXX: Spring Break Mexico Edition.

We took it home, washed it off and popped it in the player. Not a scratch. It played perfectly. My wife found it mildly interesting. I explored it, adored it, reviled it, fast-forwarded it, slowed it down, hid it from my children. There was one young lady in particular I found myself returning to time after time until I came to my senses. I finally had to cut the damn thing in half with scissors (the DVD that is).

Finding porn has happened at certain crucial points in my life. Interestingly, others have had the same experience regarding sylvan seduction. Someday I will tell the story of the red box my 10-year old friends and I found on the street. An old man was throwing out the contents of his house and we stumbled upon the scarlet stash while walking home from school in the early 70’s. But that is a true-life story for another day of de-pornification.