Three days from now the winter solstice will arrive, with night triumphant over day, and then the slow march of longer days will begin. It will be what we and the heavens conspire to call the first day of winter, but in our bones we know that winter already is here.

The sun and the moon are low on the horizon, branches are creaking in the wind, and suddenly through the woods we see houses that have been cloaked from view since spring. The great bustle of the holiday season is well underway — almost past, in fact, except for the legion of procrastinators in whose ranks so many of us dwell. Once the ringing of the New Year bells fades from the air, a social winter will come to the Island as well, and there will be three or four months when visitors are few indeed. In those months will dreams of spring again begin to stir.