An acorn fell into me on the day Ben left, my third waking up on this mountain, as I meandered back to the cottage after walking him a ways. It felt like I’d been playfully attacked, only bothered a little bit, as a tease. I grinned big, looking up, and said aloud, “It’s about time.”

Everything is falling here, this autumn slice of the barest tail end of summer. It’s warm, some days impressively so; it feels more like spring on those days in particular. All the colors are amazing, vibrant and wild. The birds don’t seem to be headed anywhere; they are hearty little beasts, not so terrified as their kin who seek warmth in the cold months. The clear blue sky even seems to dance along the edge of this precipice of winter. I imagine the VonTrapp children singing their “auf wiedesehn, adieu” song. This mountain doesn’t weep for the loss of warmth, but welcomes a smooth transition.

Acorns are the most terrifying thing out there. They crash right into the overwhelming quiet of the night and rattle along the little rooftops of these cottages, or down gutters, across decks. The acorns are constantly falling, but during the day there is the bird racket for accompaniment. At night, an acorn falling could be something else: something with more intention than a seed attempting to bolster its genetic line. Something with hooves may be poking about, my neighbor told me solemnly. She is afraid to leave her fencing after sundown, and I can make no judgment. The night here is deep, almost passionate. The stars play along nicely, doing little to mitigate the thorough darkness. A falling acorn could be just that, but once in a while I feel the need to sit and patiently listen, first by surrendering the fact that I’ll never really know. There are fences everywhere anyway, and few hooves, overall.

I have to admit to being a bit startled when first climbing the mountain. I thought there were small animals everywhere! Coconuts I am accustomed to hearing. Acorns not so. I said as much to Ben who knew the feeling. We laughed at the absurd fortune of our lives as they’ve been, to know such things with familiarity. Soon I will be familiar with acorns. Every little while, many tree adornments fall at once. There’s usually a squirrel, then. Hot red like a bombshell with hilariously tufted ears and massive fluff of tail. They are positively adorable. I think they’ve been eating my spliff butts.

Today the wind is encouraging the nudity of trees. I imagine it will only get more productive as the days wane on. We have almost 11 hours of dark up here, this second week of October.

The hooves, if you are wondering, are either attached to deer or boars. More likely the former, who seek flowering bushes and low-leaved trees for sustenance. Boars prefer to root about in the dirt, and there’s little to find along the paths that make our human neighborhood. Boars are too short to fight the fences, so the only thing they would know is the path, and that it’s useless.

I should like to wander around any time I please, if I’m honest. I do not only because it’s a long way to assistance, were any harm come to me. I don’t much like the idea of fighting a boar, either. This is, and has always been, their mountain. I’m just staying on it, talking to the trees.