You can see by the leaves that the season is changing. This morning the temperature is 46 degrees, and inside we're wrapped in flannel and wool and remembering to call the chimney sweep to inspect the wood stove before firing it up for the first time. Alison will devote two hours today to stacking firewood. I'll work on the copy-edited manuscript of the 1826 Journal.

Reading the photos above from the bottom upward, we see that does nurse their fawns for quite a while--right up to hunting season, would be one way to look at it. In the next photo you see the doe and one fawn alerted to the approach of a rare melanistic deer. The fawn steps away and the darker cousin cautiously approaches the salt block, which the doe does not seem inclined to share. She is altogether lovely, but looks too much like our greyhound. In the past we have looked at the greyhound as a deer-colored dog; now we have a dog-colored deer. The striking white underneath reminds one of the coloration of a deer mouse.

Bow season opens at first light on Friday, October 1, and I am preparing for my first hunt ever. As you know, I had intended to build a tree stand or two, at least one large enough to call a party deck for multiple uses, but I worked all summer on Audubon. I could not be more pleased, however, with the ladder stand I purchased yesterday. It's twenty feet high with a love seat at the top, and with neighbor Arlan's help and guidance, it is the most strategically placed tree stand in the entire Pine River Bottom. I will be completely invisible up there in the tangled green of the white cedar tree.

Arlan was great. In five years of trying, I would not have figured out how the cryptic drawings in the instruction booklet became the nylon straps holding the stand to the trunk of the tree, or how in the world to work the top-heavy ladder into the woven, wavy arms of the tree. But we had it assembled and secured in under two hours, and there I'll make my stand four weeks from yesterday.

Now back to the copy-editing.