October In The Wilds

01 October 2026

2022

R. Linda:

October in New Hampshire doesn't nudge you gently; it hits you over the head with a blazing branch of orange-and-red maple and demands that you buy a flannel shirt.

The kiddos had pulled out photos of Halloweens at our old house when they were quite young, and suddenly we were back there.

As an Irishman who traded the rainy streets of Newry for a news desk in Boston—and eventually, a drafty 1790s farmhouse in the Merrimack Valley—I thought I understood autumn. Back home, Halloween was Samhain, a night of turnips, barmbrack, and telling kiddos the Puca would carry them off if they ate late-crop blackberries.

But New Hampshire? New Hampshire treats October like a competitive sport. It bursts with colour all round, and the wind — oh, the wind! Fierce and perfect for hanging homemade ghosties out to blow ominously. And the smell of cider doughnuts wafting through the crisp air? Just marvellous!

I remember when we lived in that antique cape some 10 years ago, by October 1st, me little house looked less like a home and more like a staging ground for a pagan harvest festival. This is entirely the fault of me housemates: me beautiful wife, our three kiddos (operating as a small, destructive nomadic tribe), and me own Mam and Da (visiting from the old sod for the month).

Mam in particular, possessing a terrifying amount of energy for a woman in her late sixties.

"Gabriel!" me Mam shouted from the back porch, her Irish accent cutting clean through the crisp morning air. "Get out 'ere an' help yer son. He's found a pumpkin the size of a small hatchback, an' he's trying to roll it inta the kitchen?"

I stepped outside, coffee mug in hand, inhaling the glorious scent of woodsmoke and damp pine needles. The yard was a battlefield of autumn magic. Me eldest was attempting to stack hay bales into a fortress. Me middle kiddo, Guido, was aggressively glueing plastic spiders to the dog. And me youngest was, indeed, wedged behind a massive, ninety-pound gourd. His face was pure red with determination.

"Leave it there," I called out. "If that comes inside, your mother will make me sleep in it."

"It's for the perimeter, Da!" he yelled back. "To keep the ghosts out!"

"The only ghost you need to worry about is your grandmother if you track that mud onto her clean floor," I muttered, taking a sip of coffee. Yes, me Mam was a cleaning fanatic, which gave me wife a month off from any housework and even the cooking!

Living out here in the granite wilds, you quickly realise that the veil between the real world and the magical world doesn't just thin in October—it completely tears open. An ancient, intoxicating energy lives in these woods. When the sun dips below the mountains, and the mist rolls off the stone walls, you can almost believe the old stories. You half expect to see a witch trading cider with a Bigfoot. 

Later that evening, once the chaos of dinner had settled and the kiddos were bribed into bed with promises of cider doughnuts, the house went quiet. I stepped out onto the porch with a glass of Jameson. The moon was a sharp silver hook.

Me Mam joined me, wrapping her wool shawl tight around her shoulders. We looked out at the dark silhouette of the woods, where the autumn wind was making the thinning branches dance. 

"'Tis a grand country, Gabriel," she said softly, watching the fog creep across the fields, swallowing the kiddos' half-built hay fortress.

"It be so," I agreed. "A bit mad. But grand."

"Do ye tink the Puca coomes out in New Hampshire?" she asked, a familiar, wicked glint in her eye.

I looked down at the massive pumpkin sitting on the edge of the field, glowing faintly in the moonlight. "If he does, Mam, he'll have to fight the kids for it."

Gabe

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