Good morning from the cottage. This is my view, day breaking over Goose Cove, with Swan's Island resting on the horizon.

And this is the stove I just lit, its glimmers and crackles blending with the alluring sound of a coffee maker (not pictured) gurgling out its first potful of French roast.

We were last here in late April, when the world was new green and full of sap. Now the leaves are mostly gone and the sumac along the shore twists bare hands into a quiver of wind.

The tide ripples in, and as the dark lifts I see a single lobster boat moored, a single crow flying. Silhouetted firs crowd the stony shore along points that are like parentheses around this mild bay, a quiet smugglers' hole, it might have been, during the privateer days of the War of 1812, a nest for a schooner loaded with contraband British goods to slip into, slip out of.

Rise slowly. Drink coffee. Stare at the sea. Eventually we will decide what to do with our day. Maybe visit the very island I am now looking at on the horizon. Maybe stack firewood for our friends. Maybe hike into Acadia. We will be here through Monday; there is no rush. We are on easy time.

Last night, I drove east from Bangor, up and down the long hills, onto the busy Ellsworth strip, one little car in a long line of head-lit, brake-lit vehicles, mostly not tourists at this time of year, mostly workers trying to get home for dinner. And then, once we crept through Ellsworth, the traffic magically dispersed and we drove to the edge of land, and then onto the causeway, and then onto the island, veering away from Bar Harbor, tracing the edge of Somes Sound, twisting through Southwest Harbor, and now the storefronts vanish, and we push forward into an invisible trace, a route marked only by the width of my headlights. I mark progress by counting church steeples, one, two, then a left turn onto gravel, down an alley looming with raspberry bushes, and I cut the engine and now there is only the shush of the sea.