But it was not just Marie’s leaving that set my world upside down. My downward spiral began with my dad dying a long slow death earlier in the year. It was surely time for his departure as the quality of his life in his 90’s had declined to the point that he would have said what he was doing was not really living. Dad was an avid outdoorsman, fly fisherman, hunter and lover of the forests and...

It was one of those charmed Indian summer mornings on the mid coast of Maine. The early fall chill of night had lightly frosted the colorfully changing leaves of the village; the smoke of the first wood stove fires of the season was rising from the dozens of chimneys visible from my window. As the sun rose, its warm golden rays turned roof frost on the house tops in the village to change from frosty white...