The mist slowly filled the valley as we walked home by the light of a three-quarter moon last night. Sweet-n-sour fresh apple taste stuck to our tongues from the apples lining these old farm roads, and the cold air nipped at our noses. We talked of everyday things, acted silly, and spoke of the magic of mists... could I really walk through them and end up in another time and place?

Here, in this moonlit night, it would seem the buildings call us to a time 100 years ago or more in Northern Vermont.

As the crisp smells of autumn stick to us all, we prepare for the coming of winter, and the coming of little Milo. The hens have hatched a small batch of chicks who will be needing a heat lamp soon, and what little grew in our kitchen garden is readying for harvest.

Friends come to play most days for the next month until the baby is closer to arrival, when Nadia and I will take time to just be at home, readying ourselves and our space. In the meantime, toddlers, preschoolers, and after schoolers prance around the house, singing, building, painting, using clay, and playing trains especially. Right now 3 of them, Nadia included, are building a fort under the old farmhouse table in the living room with my grandpa's wool military blanket (better known to us as the beach blanket), and we are waiting for the cool air to warm in the September sun.

I have gotten tired of longing for the days when I used to be involved in the Center for Northern Studies, and have instead invited people to come here and speak, eat a potluck dinner, and hang out. And today I begin my coursework in education at a small state college, hoping to somehow roll my interdisciplinary interest in how we learn, and how we raise children, into a license and degree. Maybe a little independent study in the sciences and understandings of the North will be in play.

And now... to go searching on an adventure for chicks, and apples in the yard. Maybe we will even collect some leaves to imprint in the clay.