I remembered the modest cabin of my girlhood. I remembered how at home I was there and in the hollow. I remembered how my best self lived in that cabin and in that hollow and that it was there I had received the priceless, immeasurable fortune for which financial opulence is a ridiculously poor substitute.

Like any wild area, it is an open haven, a clear shade from the woes of this world. Something I think we all need.

The old woman’s bones creak and crackle. Her voice is raspy and hoarse. She mutters, moans, howls, and shrieks. Her bitterly biting breath stings the flesh and can come in gusts forceful enough to jostle people, swerve moving vehicles, rattle houses, and fell trees.

It is a voice. The clearest, most calming, reassuring, encouraging, and honest voice there is. The voice of silence.

A hard frost has finally visited the Alleghenies. I am smitten by the way it makes each fallen leaf, fading blade of grass, drooping fern, and other languishing ground covers common here in November stand out and look as special as they are.

Rust is associated with disuse and deterioration. While fallen leaves symbolize death. Yet, I cannot think of anything more utilized, growing, and teeming with life than rusty fallen leaves. Just as admirable, they’re fun.

October is the eye-popping beauty of leaves departing in a blaze of glory. As I watch them drop, I can’t help but wonder if they are also dropping a hint that their way of leaving is a magnificent way to go.

Closer to the cabin, standing in between the back deck and the pond, is a shagbark hickory named Hickman. He is a lovely tree, but at this time of year, I consider him way too close for comfort. Because in the fall, Hickman typically releases the hundreds of hickory nuts he has been producing since spring. The nuts, encased in a hard husk about the size of a golf ball, hit the deck with a loud thud. Many a knock on the head I have had thanks to Hickman’s indiscriminate liberations. Many a sleepless night I have had thanks to his rackety emancipations.

I would beg to differ. Because I find the Alleghenies fascinating. With their current images like squat, stoop-shouldered, wrinkled old grandmas and their dense forests veiled in shadows, there is something mystical about the Allegheny Mountains. As if they are the all-knowing keepers of ancestral wisdom. Within the dark shelter of their woods, hiding secrets we humans are not yet ready to learn.