Tempus fugit, or How Time Doth Fly! It's hard to believe that only a month ago we were dawdling about in the forests and mountains and lakes of New Hampshire. It seems, actually, so much longer when we were there for our fall getaway. Although memory of various points in our week away there is sharp enough, the time-distance itself fades into the past. Was it really only last month?

We were discussing just that while strolling through the forest trails of the ravine, yesterday afternoon. Perhaps our conversation was occasioned by the extreme cold, the blustery wind, the peek-a-boo sun not making much inroads through the still-fairly-full forest canopy. In contrast, last year at the very same time, mid-October, we were there, in the Waterville Valley and the White Mountain National Forest.

The weather was nothing if not superb. On the other hand, while we were in New Hampshire for that week last year, the same wonderful Indian Summer happened to be visiting at home. Had we remained at home we would have enjoyed extraordinary warmth, the bliss of a brilliant sun glancing off the glorious fall foliage here too. But there's something special about being 'away'. Just being in a different space, with a different attitude to your surroundings makes it special, particularly when you're someplace special.

On the other hand, on return home you look around and wonder at how much you briefly left. Do we really appreciate enough what we have? Likely not; we're too accustomed to it, take it for granted, give gratitude short shrift. When we come back home though, that's when it hits us that we've much to be grateful for. And what we left home for to find elsewhere was literally waiting for us back home.

My husband suggested he was prepared to just drop everything and we could take four or five days and return to our favourite haunts briefly. The very thought of all the preparations coming and going is daunting, and so is the amount of work we've got left preparing our property, our gardens and all that entails, for the onset of winter. So we dropped that idea.

An intriguing one, one that we responded to with great anticipation and alacrity when we were younger and more given to adventurous spontaneity. It's good to be here, at home. It's where our hearts are, and where we are able to live with great contentment and the reliability of habit and appreciation. So we'll give another trip a pass, wait out the winter, make the most of it that we can, and anticipate a spring trip elsewhere. As we usually do. To achieve that apocryphal 'change of scenery'.