Just one more day of deer hunting season left, and then there's muzzle-loader season that extends into mid-December. We're not even going to talk about the ruffled grouse, pheasant, bobwhite quail, rabbit, fox, and bobcat, whose demise comes next.

But never mind that. Last week I took a nice long road trip to visit family for the Thanksgiving holiday. It's always good to get away and remind yourself how many people are out there just waiting to be met. Because believe me, there are many.

During my 18 hours on the road, I passed countless people on their way somewhere. Some were alone in their cars and trucks, others had company. I played peekaboo with a dog in the back of a Subaru along the Massachusetts Turnpike, and somewhere near Albany I admired a brave little black cat whose kingdom had been reduced to a pile of clothes in the back window of a Nissan. I sympathized with a hotel desk clerk whose pants were producing a most unflattering static cling, and I held the elevator door open for a distinguished-looking man who was towing his granddaughter's bright purple Power Puff Girls suitcase. I enjoyed peeking into back yards, glancing at porches and balconies, and repeatedly wondering to myself, "What would it be like if my entire life had been spent in that house?"

Behind the wheel, people seemed distracted and stressed, driving aggressively, using the bulk of their giant fenders to bully and intimidate one another. But once stripped of their vehicular shells, people softened back into human beings.

Thanksgiving itself was a gluttonous feast. Trays and platters and heaps of food, succulent turkeys and hams (yes, in the plural), dishes that have long been staples of the gathering. Culinary delights whose recipes inevitably feature a can of something, a can of another thing, a bag of frozen something else, loads of cream and at least one stick of butter. But once a year and for just a few brief bites, oh my goodness do they taste good.

There were babies and newlyweds and wise elders, there was a roaring fire, and there was an abundance of tiny dogs in sparkly dresses providing welcome entertainment when conversation lagged. "So how's life in Maine?" people would ask, or perhaps, "You still doing the knitting thing?" or, for the brave humorists, "So, did you knit that yourself?" pointing to my impossibly fine machine-knit sweater. (That one never gets old.) At the end of the day, we all swore we'd never eat again.

And yet here I am tonight with a chicken roasting in the oven, potatoes and Brussels sprouts on the stove, fire in the fireplace, snoring cat on the couch, and blaze-orange please-don't-shoot-me vest by the front door. Grateful for the recent journey and yet so happy to be home.

On avoiding getting shot

It's hunting season, which means the return of the sudden "blam" somewhere disconcertingly close to my house...followed by one or two more shots as I envision a panicked animal trying desperately to flee the inevitable. I understand why we hunt, and I appreciate those who have the courage to source their food while I whimper in line at the grocery store meat counter, buying anonymous flesh that's been tidied up by an equally anonymous stranger. I get it.

But still, every time I hear one of the shots, chills run down my spine.

November is also the return of what's called "blaze orange," a near-fluorescent incarnation of orange that could not possibly exist in nature. We clothe ourselves in this ghastly hue from head to toe in an attempt not to get shot. Where I live, we wear blaze orange when taking walks in the woods, when walking our dogs, when getting the mail, and even when walking out to the car in the morning.

It baffles me, but here people here are allowed to shoot at things on other people's land. What makes sense in theory becomes far more upsetting when you hear tales of women shot dead while hanging their laundry - and the hunter being dismissed with an understanding nod because, well, she sure did look like a deer to him. (In case you were wondering, there's always an abundance of empty beer cans in the woods after hunting season.)

Besides pinning blaze orange fabric all over your body, the only other way to avoid getting shot in your own yard is to post your land, which instead involves stapling signs every few feet around the entire perimeter of your property. An added benefit of posting your land is that you will also alienate yourself from pretty much everybody in town - the guys who plow the road, deliver your oil, and volunteer for the fire department. People with whom it's wise to stay on friendly terms.

So, since the woods are stocked with semi-intoxicated men with loaded guns who are really quite eager to fire at something, I tend to spend my November nesting inside. I find the orange of these maple pumpkin Claramels with ginger cinnamon pecans far more attractive than blaze orange. And if I eat enough of them, I'll be too full to leave the house at all - thus keeping me safe from hunters for another year.

It's an idea, right?

On distraction

In a recent post on his blog, Alain de Botton wrote about the incessant distractions of contemporary life. I was thinking about it last weekend when I was in Rhinebeck, New York, for the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival. I was there as an observer, author, collector of wooly things, and reporter for Knitter's Review.

Having written up the event several years already, I was at a loss for how to bring a fresh eye to a familiar event. Video, I decided, would be the medium this year. I got a Flip video camera and started playing with it. I wasn't entirely sure I could pull it together, so I also brought my regular digital camera for backup. And because I wanted to share updates throughout the weekend, I also brought my cell phone. Mac users, don't get started—yes, I realize an iPhone would've served all those purposes, but I needed far better resolution.

Anyway, that is how I found myself at the festival last weekend, navigating tens of thousands of people, juggling from camera to video camera, back to camera, then to phone, then to video camera, then back to camera, for nearly two solid days. I'm proud of the results, but the process was so deeply fractured and distracting that I kept gravitating back to the sheep. They, it seemed, had the answer. They knew no better than to live in the present. Whereas even during dinner with four friends one night, I noticed that all but one had their cell phone at the table.

Which brings me back to Alain de Botton. He writes, "The obsession with current events is relentless. We are made to feel that at any point, somewhere on the globe, something may occur to sweep away old certainties—-something that, if we failed to learn about it instantaneously, could leave us wholly unable to comprehend ourselves or our fellows. We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—-and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds."

I do sometimes wonder just how much simultaneous experience our minds can hold before we start to shut down. And I also see how, in our insatiable quest to feed on more and more, we are not giving each experience its own deep and meaningful consideration. Like jam, the less we have the thinner we spread it.

I have no grand declarations to make, no promise to live my life differently from this day forward, but this is where my thoughts are today. I'm watching the natural world around me go dormant for the winter and thinking I'd be well advised to follow Alain de Botton's suggestion: "Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting."

On Optimism

The radiator by the front door was warm this morning. The leaves are turning quickly now, accompanied by cruel winds that are doing their best to knock all the leaves down.

There's no lingering this year, winter is nipping at our heels. The Old Farmer's Almanac says it's going to be a brutal one, and most Mainers agree. People around here have an interesting relationship with weather. When someone dares complain about the rain or the cold or whatever might be bothersome at the time, the complaint is almost always met with "at least it's not X." Don't like the rain? "At least it's not snow." Don't like the snow? "At least it's not ice." Don't like the ice? "At least it's not snow and ice like we had in '76."

Don't like the snow and ice? Tough, because you probably can't get out of your house to complain to anybody.

Conversely, the nicer it is, the more nervous people become. They believe in their heart of hearts that we shall be punished for it later - and after 12 winters here, this attitude has definitely rubbed off on me. We had an extraordinary summer, so you can only imagine the doomsday preparations that are being made now for winter.

For my part, the wood is stacked, the onions are cured, the chiles roasted, the furnace cleaned, screens put away, and slowly the garden is being put to bed. Except in one bed, where a few dozen cloves of garlic are going to be planted as soon as I finish writing this. Garlic, like most bulbs, is an exercise in the ultimate optimism. You tuck them deep in the soil and then you let go, hoping that you'll still be around when it comes time to harvest your beautiful and flavorful little time capsules.

It reminds me of a beautiful E.B. White essay about watching his wife look through the bulb catalogs when her age and health issues gave her a 50/50 chance of never seeing them bloom. And yet she plowed on with hope and optimism, which seems to be at the core of what life is about. Or what it should be about. Letting go, plowing ahead, hoping for the best, and leaving a little beauty behind for the next person.