This afternoon, after working and getting a haircut, I'll head up north for tomorrow's opening day at Monson Arts. I'm excited, also a little nerved up. A new class is always an unknown. But it will be good to be back in the room.

The leaves are barely starting to turn in Portland, but I expect they're further along up north. Tomorrow morning, on my way to class, I'll drive down the gravel road, past Kingsbury Pond, under its shimmer of morning mist, and I'll feel my heart clutch, as it always does, at the beauty, at the loss I'll never get over . . . oh, the days when this place used to be my place.

But at least I have a seat at my friends' table, a bed under the eaves. At least I can come back.

And now, once again, I have a classroom without restrictions. I teach what I want to teach, and how I want to teach. It is hard to explain what a gift this is at the high school level. High school is not only controlled by curriculum but also driven by test expectations, and this is true in both public and private settings. A private school might have more scope for college-like seminars, but it is also under extreme success pressure, that external goal-oriented hammer that is anathema to art. The kids I'll be working with won't be dealing with such professional-class demands but with the endemic political and cultural issues of rural isolation. School is a hard road. And meanwhile, all students, wherever they find themselves, are a pressure cooker of feelings.