Tamaracks are the codas of autumn--a last beat of color before winter grays and whites and greens and browns assume preeminence. Just after the last deciduous leaves shrivel, the green tamarack bursts into brilliant gold, preening for a week or so before dropping its needles and becoming that strange being: a naked conifer that is not dead.

We arrived in West Tremont at about noon, unpacked, lit a fire in the stove, and I sat still, staring out into the cove, dipping into a book, while T made grilled cheese sandwiches. He'd driven the three hours up; he was making lunch; he was coddling me, and I liked it. Already I could feel the tension and illness leaching away. We lingered over our sandwiches, then wandered up through the long grass to see W at her house, and sat with her for an hour, talking idly, mourning Curtis but also laughing a little about this and that . . . being alive, as people are: helplessly alive.

And then T and I drove out to a small local trailhead, the Ship Harbor walk--not at all a demanding hike but through a gorgeous mixture of spruce forest, glassy cove, and open crashing sea, with cobble beaches of pink granite and broad cliffs dotted with tide pools, such as this one.

We watched loons and guillemots and what I think were mergansers bobbing along the line between the choppy surf and the sleek cove. I lay on my back on the rocks and stared into a sky that had no color at all.

And then we drove back to the cottage, and read beside the fire, and then I made chicken curry and W came down from her house, and we had a little red-wine wake for Curtis, and W told stories of her folksinger past, the days of hanging out with Jean Ritchie and Dave Van Ronk and running into a rude Bob Dylan at a record store in the days before he was Bob Dylan. . . .

And then bed, and the sound of the sea.