Our first night at the cottage, after our six-hour drive to arrive there and driving another half-hour back and forth to stock up with food for the week at the excellent Hannaford supermarket in Plymouth, was less than restful. As she had done earlier during our June stay, Jillie was unhappy and spent a good part of the night whimpering, homesick. Thank heavens though it ruined the first night's sleep for us that performance was not repeated during the balance of our stay. But it did mean that we didn't get adequate rest.

We awoke to a sparkling crispy-cool day under a clear blue sky. We decided after breakfast to make off directly for our favourite hike, the Smartsbrook trail, a half-hour drive past Campton. We picked up a copy of the Boston Globe at the usual stop en route, and drove past stunning landscapes of deciduous trees in warm tones of gold, orange and browns, captivating to the eye of the beholder.

At Smartsbrook we weren't the only hikers, there were already several vehicles in the parking lot. Jackie and Jillie were beside themselves with excitement, and off we went. The trail, long familiar to us, was an absolute glory of colour; flaming red foliage in what was left of leaves on dogwood and sumac, and the deep yellows of birch, orange-brown of beech, with oak and maples in more muted reds; absolutely overwhelming. We climbed the trail alongside the brook, the water lower than it is in spring and nowhere near as melodious. There were bluejays calling from the forest canopy, and the sound of a nuthatch briefly nearby.

The acrid odour of desiccating foliage mixed with the fragrance of pine and hemlock. Hemlock and birch seem to predominate with an understory of dogwood. The area is continually moist from the spray sent up by the rushing mountain brook, so there is plenty of moss growing in abundance, soft green and plush, like a miniature forest itself. The constantly moist atmosphere also acts as a 'nursery' to tree seedlings which are scattered everywhere. Part of the brook is sided with a colourful granite wall of striated, red-toned granite that in and of itself is pretty impressive.

As we ascended, we reached the pine flats, an extended flattened area which, when we first encountered it decades earlier, shocked us, resulting from its having been newly harvested and looking barren and forlorn. Now, the prevailing pines, hemlocks, oaks and maples populate the flats with the appearance of a maturing forest. The trail on the flats descends into a more mature forest, long since having left the brook. The entire circuit used to take us no more than two or 2-1/2 hours.

By the time we entered that portion of the circuit we were flagging. At age 80 it's perhaps a little physically daunting to undertake such a lengthy hike, but the weather was perfect and the hike itself not difficult with just moderately easy ascents. Still, our energy was lacking and we couldn't decide whether to continue or to turn back and cut short our planned circuit. In the end we forged on, but at a decidedly slower pace, which worked to conserve whatever energy we did have.

Halfway through the circuit we reach a bridge forging the brook, and the trail turns around in the opposite direction once again following the brook. The trail leads onto a well-forested but broad cart track, and we continued our hike at that gradual pace until finally reaching the point where the trail turns a sharp right and descends, becoming much narrower, bringing the forest to closer proximity, closing out the blue sky and creating an almost Rip-van-Winkely atmosphere.

We could see that even Jackie and Jillie were wilting, becoming tired from the effort of the hike, unless we were just imagining, attributing to them what we were feeling ourselves. In any event, by the time we reached the parking lot, grateful to have completed the circuit, a full four-and-a-half hours had passed. It had taken us twice as long for that hike as it 'normally' in years back would have done. And likely considerably longer than we had managed when we'd done the circuit in June.