The warmth of yesterday's baking and last night's wood fire still lingers in the downstairs rooms. Outside, a little rain, and the cat, puffy-tailed and belligerent, swaggers back inside after spending five minutes in the damp.

My to-do list is starting to trickle through my thoughts. Ahead of me: a morning filled with get-stuff-done--batches of emails, batches of editing, laundry, packing, printing for class--before I hit the road for the north. This afternoon and tonight I'll be with homeland friends and then tomorrow, very early, I'll drive along the gravel roads to Kingsbury Pond, turn right onto an empty logging route, glowing with wet autumn color, then left onto the Moosehead road to climb the long, long slope to Monson.

The homeland is always so vivid in my mind . . . especially in autumn, in these late elegiac days.

Yesterday T and I had joyous and unexpected news: our boys have decided that they and their partners want to come to Maine for Thanksgiving. In recent years both have headed elsewhere for the holiday--to friends' or partners' houses--and mostly T and I have gone alone to one or the other set of parents. But magically, this year the kids have decided to descend onto the the little northern city by the sea, so I'll have the excitement and the pleasure of cooking a giant meal for them, of basking in their sweet and hilarious company. And I didn't even coax! They planned this all themselves.

I've got lots and lots of travel ahead this fall, but Thanksgiving, thank goodness, will be at home with a houseful.