Lake Hebron, evening, early May.

This is the view from the cabin where I'm staying in Monson. Usually they house me in one of the guest apartments up on the main road; this is the first time I've been posted down here, tucked into a curve of the lake.

Shortly I'll climb out of bed and hike into town, in search of coffee. But for now I am staring out at a row of trees, still mostly bare but with a fuzz of green and red catkins; at a slate sky; at the road, where log trucks bustle around the curve and disappear behind the hill.

I'm not sure what will be happening today in class, but I expect it will be fun. "Theater collages," my friend Gretchen calls her plan. "It will involve state fairs and memories of middle school."

Since I spent most of yesterday evening reading Jane Austen's Emma, which is about neither state fairs or middle school, I may be a bit imaginatively laggy with these prompts.