After last night's gale, the cove is a slow band of ripples. A breeze trembles the sodden hedgerows, and the spruce trees shiver in their granite beds. The sky is streaked with cloud and a few raindrops swirl.

It is our last morning here till April. Yesterday, before the storm, T chainsawed up some fallen cedar and we carted the logs to our friend's woodpile. Cedar doesn't put out much heat, but it is sweet-scented and crackly, lovely in an open fireplace. Then we drove out to Long Pond and did a five-mile hike over Western Mountain, nearly deserted on an autumn Monday. Now and again rain spat into the lake. The forest was mossy--dark spruce and fir glowering under the impending storm, the hardwoods bright glimpses of gold and red.

Now I sit in front of the big glowing wood stove, coffee pot hissing, wind wailing in the chimney. Maybe we'll go out for a last clamber over rocks. Maybe we'll stay snug. After lunch we'll head west, back to the mainland, skirting Bangor, following Route 15 into the homeland, our old familiar landscape of forest and shack, rough fields, weary towns, slow hills, long low sky.