I’m up in Vermont for two nights, having been flown in as a guest speaker by Middlebury College’s film department. The school has kindly booked me into the Inn on the Green, a quaint bed and breakfast overlooking the town. Outside my window, a light snow is falling on a foliage tableau so picturesque as to be nearly painful.

Wrapped in a comforter, lying across the bed, tapping away at my laptop to finish the day’s work, I catch myself repeatedly looking up, marveling at the beauty of the autumnal scene outside my window, at the enveloping stillness of this little river town, at the stars, bright and clear above, that seem to have aligned over my apparently rather charmed life.