An acorn in the room

Fall is coming. The swamp maples and some of the blueberry bushes are already bright red There are yellows and oranges on other maples, oaks, and birches around the woods. The acorn that I found on the floor in the porch room shows that the little critters making ready for the coming cold. They're clever and persistent, making us don our Elmer Fudd hats as we look for the places where they've set up their stores.

We have had a summer of cool and rainy. The lake is quiet this holiday weekend. The cool air is producing fog as it drifts across the relatively warmer waters. No one would accused the water of being warm, however. On Saturday night's sauna, it took an extra jump of courage to dive into the water.

I slept in the loft when I was a kid, as we do now. Back then, you could hear the rain on the roof, a fine sound. About 30 years ago, my father insulated the ceiling to make the camp more comfortable in the cooler weather. The insulation works which well, but at the expense of the sound of the rain.

A rainy day is a good time to catch up on reading. In addition to the stack of magazines, we bought the two local papers -- the Gardner News and the Athol Daily News. Both do a pretty good job of providing news. Overall, I give the edge to the Athol paper. It provides more in-depth coverage of local news, diminished only by running five-year-old Dear Abby columns on the editorial page.