The stretch of Route 12 from Cornish, going south, is one among my favorites within the state, with the type of huge, sweeping views foliage seekers sometimes journey north to search out. It was 6:30 p.m. once we reached Walpole — a city whose profile has been tremendously elevated by the presence of the filmmaker Ken Burns. Within the normal retailer, there’s an unusually tremendous array of cheeses and takeout — nice for filmmaking crews and fall foliage picnics. Simply down the street is an ideal place to devour this stuff: Alyson’s Orchard, the place you should buy a half dozen or extra types of apples, or choose your individual and eat them within the orchard (probably with that good cheese) searching to the purple and golden hills.
For Jordan and me, the hour was nearer to dinner than lunch, so we headed again into my onetime house of Keene (I wrote my novels “The place Love Goes” and “To Die For’’ there) — generally known as the city with America’s widest major road. A few years again, the town funded a mission to color murals on the edges of brick buildings that includes highlights of Keene’s historical past. My favourite is the portrait of Jonathan Daniels, who grew up just a few homes from the one the place my youngsters and I as soon as lived. Daniels was shot in Alabama in 1965 whereas collaborating in a Civil Rights motion.
I nonetheless keep in mind the city’s Pumpkin Pageant. Each Halloween the residents would be part of forces to create a Guinness-world-record variety of carved pumpkins that volunteers would arrange with flickering candles on scaffolding all through the sq.. However my favourite half got here later — someday round midnight on Pageant Night time — after I’d stroll again into city alone to soak up the sight of all these glowing jack-o’-lanterns with no person else round. No pumpkin pageant this 12 months, due to Covid, however organizers promise it’ll return.
It was previous 9 p.m. once we obtained again to the little cottage on a dust street the place I spend my summers now, a home I’d be locking up in every week or two, when the nights obtained too chilly. Jordan and I had coated nearly 400 miles since we headed out that morning, and I used to be feeling the burden of endings. Days getting shorter. My November birthday looming. One other 12 months winding down.
I regarded out on the lake on which my little New Hampshire summer season cottage sits, with its solitary loon. The crickets have been chirping, which made me take into consideration the chapter of “Charlotte’s Net” I had simply completed studying out loud within the automobile.
“Even on probably the most lovely days in the entire 12 months — the times when summer season is turning into autumn — the crickets unfold the rumor of unhappiness and alter,” wrote E.B. White. “‘Summer season is over and gone,’ repeated the crickets.”
White obtained it proper. Each autumn brings a small dying, marked by probably the most superb explosion of shade, like the ultimate spherical of a fireworks present earlier than the sky goes silent. The excellent news: the seasons preserve turning. Come spring, new leaves will sprout and we’ll start the cycle once more, if luck is with us.
Joyce Maynard’s most up-to-date novel is “Rely the Methods,” the story of 1 household’s 4 a long time on a New Hampshire farm.