Vernacular

The mist and the moon have been sent running by the rain. 
My Mu and I have climbed up and down Payre Blanc twice this weekend.  
This is our vernacular countryside.  She grew up in it and I absorbed it in an amoeba-like way that got deep into my blood.  
Up in the hills Mu chose the place in the woods were her log cabin will be.  I had a Lars Von Trier moment, imagining acorns falling on the corrugated iron roof, but stifled it quickly.
When I first came here 18 years ago and swung round the bend under the old oak, up to the windmill and the place we'd make home, what I saw was a sigh of hills and woods.
Mu goes one step further.  She has carefully chosen a plot for her log hut on the south facing ridge with it's back turned away from the village she grew up in.  She holds my hand as we walk and gives her interpretation of this complicated landscape.  In the summer these hills and woods fold in to protect their coolness.  Right now, in the autumn, they yawn and settle down.  In the winter they sleep and in the spring they scream. She's consoled by the oaks that hold their dark leaves until April, among the maples and cherries that blaze even in the rain.  She's happy with her lot; New England autumn woods scream too much colour and disrespect the great November yawn.