We left her apartment a few hours ago, my mom and I, and headed straight for JFK for her 7 am flight to Trinidad. My mom will be back home for a few weeks. She always goes home this time of year. I threw her luggage into the trunk and hurried her along, the winds whipping about us in the pre-dawn October dark and both of us chilled in the early morning air. I took a deep breath and tugged at the zipper on my coat. It was cold. I had slept only a couple of hours, my mind tossing and turning all night and unable to rest, and I was trying my best to be cheerful and animated. My mom smiled and laughed along.

We made a right onto Maple and I turned the dial on the radio as we went through our list. Passport, ticket, ID, medicines. Good. Stove burners off, plants watered, doors locked. Check. My mom and I talked about this and that: about her trip back home, about Thanksgiving, about work, about relatives, a slew of random thoughts all haphazard and disjointed. We were filling the emptiness as it were with vacuous banter, and I felt it disturbingly apparent. Whitney Houston sang quietly in the background. As we headed down Main Street, my mom suddenly paused mid-sentence. "You know what today is," she said. "You remember. Today?"

"Yes I know," I said, immediately. Then, a little more gently: "Yes. Of course I know what today is."

We continued for a few minutes in sudden silence, both of us looking straight ahead at the darkened roads and nothing but Whitney and the gentle hum of the engine hanging in the air. The streetlamps cast soft shadows from high overhead as we drove on.

I gave her a big hug at the airport. "You're going to have a good trip," I said.

My mom looked at me and sighed deeply. "Yes," she replied. "Yes I am."

It's been twelve years now, twelve long years full of change and compromise. Twelve years of growth and healing, of coming to terms with the things that life gives you without explanation or apology. Twelve years now, and we both still miss him terribly: she, her husband; I, my father.

Love you, Daddy, wherever you are.

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Today the city is damp and gray. From the safety of the seventeenth floor I watch pedestrians make their way across Park Avenue, colours drained from wardrobes and footsteps a little heavier than yestermonth's. They walk about unhurried, some uptown, some downtown, every one silent and forlorn and searching for the shadows that secrete themselves away on days like today.

It's a bit unnerving how quiet it's been. This is the time of year that's usually chock full of activity on Wall Street, a time where everyone is running about helter-skelter, trying to prove themselves and putting on game faces in front of bosses. It's the time of year where meetings are held, calls scheduled, conference rooms booked. The time where important conversations and relevant chatter are hoped to be overheard at the right times by the right people. Serious faces and important catchphrases and jargon and corporate talk. It's the time of year where bonuses are decided.

A few quiet minutes pass and my gaze drifts north and upward to the top of the new Bloomberg building, just visible again today, its tiny scaffolding elevators no longer disappearing into the clouds of yesterday's rains. The steel-and-glass façade, blue and shimmering on sunny days sits steeped in ambiguous monotone, peering over a midtown that has grown comfortably familiar over the years. To my right I can make out the silhouette of the Citicorp building across the East River.

Why is it so quiet these days? My boss being on vacation probably has something to do with it, but something about the calm unnerves me. Complacency breeds complacency, so they say. On the one hand, I love being able to leave work before too late; on the other hand, I'm not accustomed to doing it so frequently, and it makes me nervous. Will I earn my keep come year-end? Will my boss look favourably upon me behind the many closed-door meetings they've begun having? He'll be back to the office next week, all fresh and rested and raring to go. Let's see if that changes anything around here. Let's see if that raises the pressure and increases the stress and returns to me what I've come to know around here as an odd sense of normalcy.

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Fall is so beautiful in Vermont. I've been sitting here in the bedroom all morning, warm and bundled in a favourite old sweater and watching out the window to the soft patches of colour on the distant hills. High above, the skies are riddled with the kinds of clouds that always have silver linings, the ones where the sun shines through in moody bursts and are whisked away soon enough that your eyes are drawn to other things in the shifting landscape: to other competing clouds, to the trace of faraway Stratton, to the ghostly contrail of an airplane now long gone. In the valley below, a determined line of evergreens borders one edge of the tiny red-roofed farm. I've never noticed it before but it stands out today, summer green amidst autumn's reds and golds.

***

We scuttled over to New Hampshire yesterday, heading west on Route 101 towards Jaffrey and to our destination, Mount Monadnock. Monadnock's claim to fame is as the world's most climbed mountain, and as we've learned from our hikes there over the years, the fall is as beautiful a time to climb it as any. Greg and I tied on the hiking scarves that Ulrike brought for us last week and braced ourselves for the climb.

We took the direct two-mile White Dot Trail at a good clip, searching for the cairns and telltale white dots as we wended our way to the top, alternating between peeling away layers of clothing and adding them back on as the temperatures rose and fell. Some two hours later, we reached the bare-rock top, where a below-freezing wind chill hurried us along. We ate our sandwiches and sat for a bit, taking in the amazing views from high above and sneaking in a quick kiss before we decided to head back down on the White Cross Trail. The four-and-a-half mile Pumpelly Trail had looked promising on the guide, but with only 90 minutes before sundown there wasn't enough time to try it. ("Are you ready to boogie?" a ranger had warned us. We weren't.)

We slept soundly last night.

***

This morning I awoke to the light streaming into the bedroom from the expanse of sky overhead, and I peered out to the gentle undulations of the distant hills bathed in the somber hues of muted autumn. I'm still here now at the window sitting quietly, the steam from a second cup of coffee rising sluggish through the chilly air and warming me as I wrap my hands around the oversized mug. The sun has moved since I began this entry.

Indeed, it's beautiful here in Vermont this time of year. It's a beautiful time when autumn prepares the land for winter, when the trees are at their vibrant best, when the rains and winds haven't yet stripped the colours away and a thousand hues lend incredible depth to the hills for miles and miles around. In the valley below, a solitary car passes on the road and reminds me it's almost time to go home.

A few photos from our hike here.

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Last weekend they delivered our first lot of firewood, all split and cured and ready to be burned to our hearts' content. We got a cord of wood, an impossibly archaic-sounding measurement I've wondered about since spring when the neighbours warned us to get our order in early, and which turns out to be as imprecise a term as a pile measuring about 4 by 4 by 8 feet. It certainly looks enough to last us through the Vermont winter. We spent the better part of early Sunday afternoon putting the unruly heap into three triangular stacks, each stack smaller than the one preceding it, the entire lot damp and sweet-smelling from Saturday's rains.

Earlier in the day I sat in the living room, watching a brilliant but weakened October sun several degrees short of overhead and basking in whatever warmth it offered me. I watched a single silver thread of spider's silk several feet long float gently about, one end attached to the eaves on the outside of the house, the other loose and carefree as the passenger it once carried. Around me the voices of friends melded in the background.

I watched the gossamer string waft gently about in the crisp, cool morning air, the sun shining behind it in a cloudless blue sky. What do spiders do when the cold arrives? What do they have for supper when their supply of food dwindles into the cold and dark months of winter? Do their little bodies dwindle along with them? Hours later as we stacked firewood, Greg cried out to me.

"Hey hon, look," he called, pointing. "There's a beautiful one."

I peered into the tiny crevice where Greg was pointing and a tiny spider peered back, her belly red and spotted, round and shiny like a California plum. "She's beautiful," I said. The spider crouched in the tiny space, her legs pulled tight into her body, gently curved and as delicate as fine calligraphy. I watched her for a bit, and she regarded me with equal curiosity, unmoving and as still as the leaves lying lifeless on the ground.

"Where will you stay when the winter comes, little spider?" I asked.

"I will stay here in the woodpile house you're building, cosy and snug," she said.

"Will it be warm, and will there be enough to eat throughout the shorter days?"

"There may be, there may not be," she replied. "I'll make do."

We continued stacking the woodpile, and I soon forgot about our little spider. We had since removed our sweatshirts and had broken into a little sweat, the cool autumn air refreshing against our exposed necks and arms. Days later now as I type this, the days are becoming increasingly chilly and I wonder about our little spider. I wonder if she is still there, building her little web somewhere in the cord of firewood, hunting and gathering her store of food, wishing and wishing she were somewhere warm.

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