He believed that he was a man of routine, and sometimes he thought that he’d had but three real adventures in his adult life: Once, while kayaking with some friends along the rocky Maine coast, he’d been separated from his companions by a strong current and sudden fog and found himself floating for hours in a gray soup of quiet; the only noise surrounding him had been the lapping of the wavelets against the plastic kayak sides, and the occasional sucking sound of a seal or porpoise surfacing close by. The cold and damp had enveloped him, creeping closer, dimming his vision. He had understood that he was in danger, and that the extent of his trouble might be far greater than he could imagine, but he’d kept calm and waited until a coast guard boat had emerged from the vaporous mist that had enclosed him. The captain had pointed out that he’d only been yards away from a powerful offshore current that in all likelihood would have swept him seaward, and so he became significantly more frightened after his rescue than he’d been when he’d actually been at risk.

That had been one adventure. The other two were of greater duration. When Scott was eighteen and a freshman in college in 1968, he had refused to obtain a student deferment from the draft, because he felt it morally unacceptable to allow others to be exposed to dangers that he was unwilling to share. This heady romanticism had sounded high-minded at the time, but had been eviscerated by the arrival of a letter from the draft board. In short order he’d found himself drafted, trained, and on his way to a combat support unit in Vietnam. For eleven months he’d served in an artillery unit. His job had been to relay coordinates received over the radio to the fire mission commander, who would adjust the height and distance on the battery of guns, then order the rounds released with a great whooshing sound that always seemed much deeper and more profound than any thunderclap. Later, he had nightmares about being a part of killing beyond his sight, beyond his reach, almost out of his hearing, wondering, when he’d awakened in the deep of night, if he had killed dozens, maybe hundreds, or perhaps no one. He’d rotated home after a year, never once having actually fired a weapon at anyone he could see.