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We've arrived safe and sound, dodging snowflakes and sleet. Happy to be in a warmer part of the world, in a cozy home, and in the gracious company of good friends.

No matter where you’re setting out to, do it with grand expectations, a spring in your step, and flowers in your hair (or tucked behind your ear). It will not always be so, but there is sweetness in the struggle.

Each early summer resembled those before. Long sunny days filled with outdoor adventure and always the baseball. Every summer culminating with the bittersweet Hopkinton Fair when a horde of certainly gypsies brought their loud and colorful world to us; and when they left they left us with school, the promise of winter, a taste of death.

Little changed. Every day was pleasant. The only time it rained was that one evening when the sky suddenly darkened and a bolt of lightning struck so close that the momentary flash caught me crouching under swaying pines, my arms wrapped round my head. There was also the summer the neighbor’s barn burned. We kids were ushered to an upstairs window — like being invited to a public execution — where we silently solemnly witnessed the flames, and more than flames, billowing black clouds of smoke, and the overwhelmingly sweet smell of hay, which is with me still. And oh, the soccer ball punted in a high arc that bounced once at a great distance then landed on a flimsy stand that held my Grandmother Bohanan’s prized green china coffee cup; and how the coffee spilled — which was the least of my troubles; the cup shattered, as did my grandmother’s gaze — and it all contributed surely to her assessment that I was more Pleadwell than Bohanan. So there were hints of death even in the summer, but it was all part of the fabric of life. Calves were born, cows died; and Sumner Tilton came in his green truck to cart off those unfortunates born of the wrong gender or beyond their usefulness. If we didn’t become philosophers we did become philosophical, valuing every day under the browning sun and our timeless seasons spent together.

Nuff Said

There are advantages and disadvantages to blending in. It’s a personal choice. One big plus is that it greatly diminishes the possibility of being spied by a hawk and ripped from home, eyes bulging, bits of door frame dangling from your paltry claws. There is that. And there’s a certain comfort in surrounding yourself with like-colored objects, cinnamon tea from your favorite earthen mug.

On the other hand, risking the hawk is not all bad. What value might you place on a fleeting Google Earth view of home and distant mountains?

After a rousing evening of Speed Scrabble we set out in the scholarly pursuit of words starting with a "q" but not with "qu". The are several out there. You should be able to make qat, qindar, qoph, and qigong stand, but Scrabble played right is the ultimate game of style. If you can ever manage "qiviut" I urge you to call a halt to the proceedings, bow respectfully to your opponents and declare yourself winner.

qiviut: (From the Inuit) the wool of the undercoat of the musk ox.

There are certain things I do automatically as a human being. I always tip waitpeople, even those who are inept. When someone sneezes I say god bless you (I say it with a small “g” and nobody seems to mind). I hold the door for people.

As a photographer I rail against the obligatory. I’m horrible about taking familial group pictures. I do photograph arresting sunsets, but I’m never proud of it since they require no particular eye. And lobster buoys painstakingly arrayed around the entrance of Maine commercial enterprises set my teeth on edge. But I do include one here, and I do so for three reasons. First: because the photograph was taken in a wonderful place called Cape Porpoise — a name strong enough to pile all the lobster buoys in Maine against. Second: because I need to allay concerns of well wishers who, should they notice the omission, might fear that I have missed the full experience. And Third: to quash the mumbling of cynics who are beginning to hint that I have never really been in Maine at all.

My mother once said that the crash of thunder was just Henry Hudson and his band of merry men playing ten-pins. I had never considered that.

When I was older and could work my brain around, I realized that what she said was simply not true, but that it made a pretty good story. Nowadays when I hear Henry Hudson invoked I give it no credence at all, and I’ve come to think that it isn’t even such a great story; bowling actually sounds quite different from thunder (blindfold me and I’ll get it right 8 or 9 times out of 10). But the real question I am dealing with, and I think every one of us should be, is just exactly what are Henry Hudson and his merry men doing that they should want us to think they're bowling? That’s the question; and I certainly do not suggest you’d want to know the answer.

Things are winding down. Even as winter tightens its boa grip we've made plans to leave New England mid-February to stay with friends in South Carolina while the final touches to our home are made.

Who can say when we will pass this way again?

Historians now debunk the concept of the Dark Ages as a period when man’s imagination shriveled, a time that gave rise to nothing of great importance. Change may have come slowly but all was not war and pestilence. Education, even inspiration, happened.

I can imagine a 10th century European baker, his day behind him, standing on a point like this to momentarily appreciate the sound of waves and the late afternoon play of light on rocks. And since people of those times were more attuned to nature’s cycles, he might well have realized that two days hence sunrise and high tide would occur in close proximity; and that the sight from the point would then be entirely different. He might have thought to himself: if the plague doesn’t get me I will return, I’ll have a look.