The Pine Room

A king bed along the long wall, a quilt with moose and small green pines on it, and two lamps that throw more light than the ceiling does. The window beside the bed gives onto trees — close ones, the kind you can watch move.

A slow morning

Morning takes its time here. The pines filter the light down to something green and soft, and the oil heat keeps the room warm overnight, so there’s no real reason to leave the covers early. Breakfast is downstairs and ready early if you want it. Past that it’s the woods, and rural Vermont, which goes quiet after dark.

The bath is its own small thing. A corner shower walled in green tile, a heated towel rack that guests tend to remember longer than they expect to, and a window where, come winter, snow sits on the pine boughs a foot from the glass. There’s a table for two by the mini-fridge, for the coffee you don’t feel like carrying far, and a winter landscape on the wall that more or less matches the one outside.

The name is burned into a plaque on the door, a sprig of pine above it — the first thing you touch on the way in, and the last on the way out.