You know those people who sit on logs and drink beer deep in the woods? Dylan Nice's column is sorta like
what those guys talk about. An Insider columnist with excellent teeth and an eye for rural Western Pennsylvania, he shares his thoughts with readers in his weekly column, Drinking in the Woods.

Here are his collected columns, most recent first.

Losing something else: I stood under the University Court’s floodlights and told circles of people why they were wrong. Without making eye-contact, I told them exactly what I knew. I thought they were faithless thieves. I don’t know so much now. 04.21.08

The bravest of ways: The April wind blows uninterrupted outside, stupid and placid over the dirty ground and the hard trees. The broken Earth leans toward our burden, the cancerous sun. Out there, heat and ultra-violet light are nature’s flaws, the things we must avoid. 04.11.08

In spite of me: The kid apologized, and left, waving to his coach. The short man pushed his money across the counter and said goodnight. I paid, started my car, and drove away through the tunnel and green lights, feeling my own identity unsettled, looking for an absolution from whoever it is I spend my time thinking I might be. 03.28.08

So I can title it: My dorm is a stew of the things I’m trying to establish. Books are stacked on the floor and across my shelves. Papers line the floor and what I keep of the domestics are folding and hanging in my closest. I have books bookmarked with other books. 03.07.08

I heard rain and thunder: I was at a bar last Saturday. A basement bar with license-plate tables, a dirty floor, the walls covered in ads for specials they weren’t offering anymore, and a juke box. It was my turn to pay the dollar for four plays. I put the dollar in and punched in the album code for The Doors’ greatest hits and before I could get the song code in I heard rain, and then thunder. 02.29.08

Passing through it: I couldn’t write a news story with a headline that read “Smoke blows beautifully in the cold wind.” There are more important things to capture us. Ideas about what we are going to be or someday have. That’s what moves us away from our windows and into the street. 02.22.08

Melting in my heat: My belt offers me the kind of security I lived for years without—the confidence exuded by men with leather through their loops. My pants sagged in the days I let confused girls down easy over the phone. Now buckles clank like nouns. I was always more about modifiers and gerunds. 02.14.08

Put on blast: Bass-hating wouldn’t be a dissenting opinion among the white population if it wasn’t for Honda Civic drivers and death-metal. My fascination with the cadence of language extends to rap and hip-hop, but I maintain death metal is not music. Those albums sound like car accidents. 02.08.08

Ground teeth: He has been there. Russell never exactly explains where there is, but you know when he says it. You get the idea by the way he holds his head and the way his hands shake. Russell’s fingers never come completely clean and some of them are crooked, missing nails. 02.01.08

Spitting venom: Grits aren’t what’s for breakfast at my house. We wake up too angry to eat. We spend the mornings moving from room to room avoiding each other. When we do eat, it’s usually eggs fried brown on a cast iron skillet. I prefer the pancakes made from a recipe out an old grange cookbook kept in a zip lock bag because the pages were falling out. 01.25.08

A lick different: I can call that fear. The wild things that race our hearts because we are designed to remember a time in which we were eaten. But this isn’t about that. This is about my transmission. The money. That’s what I’m bothered about. 01.18.08

It wasn't raining: Needing rain is a weakness and weaknesses are a good thing to have. Don’t ever let anyone tell you anything different. Getting knocked on your ass is the best thing that can happen to you when on your ass is where you belong. 12.07.07

Pubic lice, honestly: Russell’s father looks like he could summon the wind by holding his hands out in front of him and furrowing his brow. His eyes are an intense blue and his stark white hair sticks up in curls and waves. He sits at a veneered table and talks low while cigarette smoke rolls up his face. 11.30.07

Shooting from the hip: “Good God, son, put that gun down,” the burly redheaded instructor said. The kid was made to stand by himself away from the group. He kicked in the mud with his plastic snow-boots until we went to the next demonstration: A middle aged man shooting heads of cabbage with a muzzleloader. 11.16.07

The cold breaking: “I hate winter, hate it,” he says, his voice rising on the word hate. Snow melting in his mustache, next thing he says is, “Oh, I loathe winter.” And then sometimes a noise, like a groan, but more disgusted with an elongated K sound. As a kid, he said once I had to drive, I would understand. The salt, it rots your car. 11.09.07

Smarter than you: I wanted to fart in front of these two, not say excuse me, and just stand there in it, staring blankly ahead. I had scored in the 6th percentile in mathematics on a practice exam. And I had used a Texas Instrument model 30XIIB calculator 11.02.07

The strange, part II: I remember thinking I didn’t want it to touch me when I got up to run. I closed my eyes and only reopened when I felt my hands on my mother’s arm. I shook her, repeating her name, but she slept heavily. Across the hall, my room was lighting up. I could see the tins and toys laid out across my dresser. 10.26.07

The strange, part I: Everyone sees things when they stare into the dark. As a kid, I used to watch clouds of red dots float around my bedroom before they came flying toward my face. The dots would rise and fall like a flock of birds. Sometimes large, dark blobs would flash dull colors, take the shape of something, and then be reabsorbed into the darkness. 10.19.07

The heat in October: During this hot spell, it crossed my mind that I might be wrong about the global warming issue. I don’t believe in it out of spite. Many of the environmentally “aware” people I’ve gotten to know have been high consumers of goods and energy. They believe in an idea but don’t see that idea mounted and running in their window. When you worry about the planet, you should worry about your life. Think about the way you live. 10.12.07

Like a complete unknown: The next day he watched me eat in the dining hall and then he showered in the locker room. I was nervous about him. The idea of him was unsettling. He was a stranger, but not a stranger in the sense of someone I don’t know. He was a different kind of person all together. Cody was alone. 10.05.07

The places we leave: “He just wanted to be left alone except for customers coming in and out,” Paul said. “He started his own little town.” Warner left dogs out at night. The dogs weren’t domestic. I thought of my own sense of distance, how it leads me to the quiet, away from others. I might want to go to a small campus, or maybe live out in the woods somewhere. But I wouldn’t use dogs. I don’t think I’ll become Warner. That’s something different. 09.28.07

South Greensburg with Dwayne and this other guy: “Do you think the people around here would get upset about college kids coming over from UPG?” I asked Dwayne and the other guy. “Oh, no,” they answered. “I don’t think they would.” Dwayne said and hit his cigarette. Lisa gave me silverware and put down a placemat with pictures of the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Coliseum. I had been given two options for the fries: cheese or gravy. I took the cheese. 09.21.07

UPG's secret bars: Behind the baseball dugouts, where the road corners toward the giant pile of dirt, there’s a dirt path cut through the woods. I walked up this path last Saturday in a cool drizzle. After a hundred or so yards down the trail, the woods opened up into a lightly wooded clearing. The trees broke the outlines of swing sets and pavilions. I thought it was strange to find a playground in the woods on the edge of campus. There was no one there, but it looked well-maintained. And as I climbed the slope to the tennis courts, I saw a paved road with streetlights. A bar, I thought; this road could lead to a bar. 09.14.07

Better off naked: UPG’s new marketing tag line invites students to “Discover yourself . . . Discover your world.” I had been afraid to discover a loser. Until I decided that being a loser can also be noble. While cool kids spray themselves down to hit on bleached-blondes and drink till they pee in the hallway, many losers get to keep their dignity. 09.07.07

A future under bridges: We ask for it. We walk around campus with our academic swagger and plunging necklines. I enroll in courses knowing full well that it’s going to end badly — with me holding my knees in shower, weeping. 04.19.07

An inconvenient column: Our house is heated with a coal furnace. The mornings were cold because the fire would burn out overnight. I would dress while still lying in bed. During this developmental period in my life, I learned something. Winters are to be cold. 04.12.07

Don't Stand So Close To Me: “There’s too many people on this planet,” I said to my friend, Mike. “They’re all making me uncomfortable.” A girl in front of us turned around. Her face was expressionless. “Yes,” she said. “Plague is the answer.” Then she smiled. 04.05.07

Condom, pad are April foolish: The students who carried this out had been creative and thought the plan through. It was easy to execute and difficult to remedy. It was a good prank. Other things aren’t really pranks, just bad behavior. Replacing a roommate’s computer wallpaper with gay porn, for instance. 03.29.07

Sgt. Pepper and the black parade: The song was about a boy in love. It moved along slowly and melodically as I watched the orange maples pass my window. I didn’t notice the song building, that it was all leading somewhere. I didn’t notice until The Beatles had already changed rock ‘n’ roll with two words: Hey Jude. 03.22.07

The Celt, the saint and the Swede: After supper, I hitched a ride over to Altoona with Darin Zazworksy and his girlfriend. Shannon’s parents had told us to be careful before we left. No underage drinking, Mr. Bacher said. There had been drug busts in Gerald’s building. It had made people nervous 03.15.07

It was in the attic: She said she dreamed of a man coming down out of the attic and standing over her in the mornings. She said she couldn’t move. Russell had the church elders come and bless all the doorways. 03.01.07

This will hurt, I promise: Ronnie and I stole steak knives so we could sharpen sticks. But somehow we were never made victims of the pointed objects that surrounded us. Against all odds, Ronnie and I are still here. And if something had killed us, then good; great even. 02.22.07

Loser in the open field: “We’re going to stop at Mike’s place,” Holencik said, “to pick up two cases of Rolling Rock.” Mike is a respectable 20-something who comes from a respectable family. He has a respectable career and he would buy us beer. He has a real nice starter house a few feet from a Sheetz alongside Route 220. 02.15.07

All I have to say about that: I was surrounded by little kids in Mo Valley sweatshirts and old men wearing flannel and mesh ballcaps. I was with my people, in my home, doing something familiar. This is the substance of our identity. This is what we deem fit to die for. 02.08.07

The evolution of the angry young man: This absolutely has to be growing up. The practicality is killing me inside. I’ve quit smoking because it is bad for me. I only want to drink in small groups. Tattoos on the small of girl’s back turn me off. 02.01.07

No true sentence: My mother called the campus cute. My first thought was that UPG looked like an upper-end mental institute or rehab center. I expected to see Robert Downing Jr. walking around, making calls to the White House on an unplugged rotary phone. This wasn’t the plan. This wasn’t where I was supposed to be. 01.25.07