I often write here about this season or that season—Siberian blue quill season or the beginning of the swimming season. It’s tamarack season now, great gold evergreen torches among bare branches. Yet, balmy, balmy. Busy, busy, at work, my desk between an open window and the door that leads into the hall where people come and go, all day long. Midday, I slip out wordlessly, walk to the lake where the quietness matches my mind. The summer people have all gone now.

In the evening, warm as spring with the darkening light true to November, a crazy mixed-upness, I restlessly walk around the village, my usual walking companions elsewhere, out of touch. The night falls quickly, and here’s another thing I’m grateful for: to generally not fear the dark. Lord knows, there’s plenty else we each fear.

On a bridge over the Lamoille River, I pause for the longest time, mesmerized by the gloaming light, the crickets still murmuring in a nearby field, by the swirl of people. For no particular reason at all but that low river flowing over stones, its hue shifting and flickering, I remember reading Norman Maclean so many years ago, as a young woman, the summer I lived in a tipi in a field of wild blueberries.

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.” ― Norman Maclean