IAWAKEN TO A RESTLESS, MOVING darkness. A high wind is soughing through big conifer trees all around me. The roar is like that of ocean combers heard from a distance or the rumble of a slow-moving freight train. It is a wind from the southeast rummaging through the tree canopy. Slender culms of black bamboo rattle fretfully against the screening of the little summerhouse where my partner and I are lying. We sleep out here for as much of the year as weather allows, exposed to the movements and sounds of the night. Earlier I was awakened by the extravagant hooting of barred owls calling to one another through the woods. Raucous, haunting, antiphonal cries, back and forth, they’re as cryptic by night as the calls of ravens are by day. The oracular chorus completed, the soundscape is reclaimed by the rising wind and I drift back into uneasy sleep.

      Later in the night there comes a sudden banging on the wooden steps leading up to our little sleeping chamber. Startled awake, I have an instant sense of attack, of danger. But then I make out, not ten feet away, the form of a deer, a small doe, frozen in fear. She must have struggled up the steps and now stands on the deck, unsure of her next move. The deer and I stare at one another in the pale moonlight, and when I hiss disapproval at her, she disappears in a single graceful bound from the deck to the lawn below. The moon is almost full, riding high above the treetops, fast-moving clouds streaming across it like a dancer’s veils. Mercury moonlight spills down through our little clearing, illuminating the house and gardens below. The scene is hopelessly romantic, evoking memories of moonlight shining on the landscapes of poems I loved as a boy. Then I sink again into the dream world.

      In the pearl gray light of predawn, I pull back the down comforter and rise reluctantly from the warm bed, leaving Sandy to sleep a while longer. I dress quickly in shiveringly cold clothes and grope my way down broad wooden steps into the garden. The overnight deer has nibbled at the late blooms of Madame Isaac Pereire, a sumptuous