There's been no sunshine here on the island. The sky has been a roil of cloud, constantly reinventing itself in new patterns and hues. On Beech Cliff, yesterday morning, we glimpsed slivers of Somes Sound, of Frenchman's Bay, of Echo Lake pressed between granite and air. The colors of the hills are brilliant, even lurid, though the hardwoods are mostly bare now. Lichens and mosses, scrub and conifers . . . a riot of golds, reds, greens, blacks, browns, whites, caught between the twisting moving sky, the twisting moving sea.

The park is quiet. Yesterday we met only one other hiker on our trail. Maybe tourist life is still in swing over on the Bar Harbor side of the island, what with the cruise ships and all, but the Southwest Harbor side is tucking itself in for winter. Along the shore, Arctic ducks are taking up their seasonal abode in the island's chilly shelter, and the cove outside the cottage periodically erupts with honking and splashing. This morning the water is a broad glassy ripple, tide running in, sky striped like a baby's blanket--pink and lemon and blue and white. A single lobster boat idles. Spruce trees crowd up against the cobbles.

Inside the cottage kindling crackles in the wood stove. The coffeemaker gurgles and mutters. I am sitting in a big chair, staring through the glass door into a thicket of sumac. Through the kitchen window I can glimpse the top of a church spire. There is a sensation of fairy tale, despite the prosaic coffeemaker and the boat motor in the cove.

I am still not entirely well, but I am significantly more well than I was. Certainly my energy is returning, even if I'm still coughing and hoarse. We climbed the cliffs yesterday, then worked outside in the afternoon--planting daffodil and tulip bulbs on Curtis's gravesite, harvesting celery and a giant pumpkin, planting garlic. Tom began trimming out a window in W's house. I made garlic bread; I made tomato soup with black bean salsa.

At night I dreamed what I cannot remember in daylight.