Leon Hale: There’s no place like the old farmhouse.

WINEDALE— Talking to you, at last, from the front porch of the old farmhouse inWashington County. Glad to be back after the big trip to New York and New England.

Well, it’s more than feeling glad to be back. Did you ever leave a place and when you returned, you could tell the place was grateful to see you? Because it you?

This old house looked so forlorn, with all the doors and windows shut and the front porch, not swept for amonth, littered with leaves and twigs.

Are the lights still working? Yes, so the fridge is cold. Check the freezer. Nothing has thawed. ( Or if it did, it’s refrozen now.)

How about the pump on the well? Turn a faucet handle. Celebrate when the water comes. Blessed water.

Look at the rain gauge. It’s showing more than 2 inches ofmuddy water. Guessing at evaporation, probably 3 inches fell while we were gone. Maybemore. That’s why the grass and weeds are so tall. Hoo boy, gonna be a lot of mowing.

Half the front yard is almost covered in acorns. Walking on them makes a popping racket that sounds like— well, like walking on acorns.

The bird feeders are empty. The dicky birds that were feeding the season’s final crop of babies? They’re long gone, to wherever they go in October.

And the garden? It’s a jungle. Vines from outside the fence have invaded it, snaked their stems around blackened tomato plants. Three or four chile peppers have survived. Bright red. Look like Christmas tree ornaments among the vines.

Then there’smy dust- shrouded pickup, hunkered down under its shade tree, frowning at me for going off and leaving it so long. I cranked it and got it out on the road and let it run a while, until it got limbered up.

Right. This does seem like coming home.

Our legal residence is a sixth- floor apartment in Houston. But when we’re on a trip, we don’t worry about that apartment. Instead, we worry about this old country place, which is supposed to be nothing but a hobby.

Another definition of home? The place you worry about when you’re traveling.

Our first night back, we were welcomed by a little pack of coyotes who yipped and yelped a nice chorus down on the creek behind the house.

Some landowners in the neighborhood who raise poultry and other small animals don’t enjoy this nightmusic. They’ll vote a straight anti- coyote ticket, because coyotes are bad about eating poultry, and sometimes even cats and small dogs.

But here on our 10 acres of woods— where we have books about wildlife that tell us a coyote will eat almost anything— nothing we produce has ever interested a hungry coyote.

We’re pro- coyote simply because we like their howling. Along with the hoot of the owls, it helps us imagine we’re way out in the wilderness, away from cities and traffic jams and pollution.

Which we’re not. In fact, a 10- minute drive to Festival Hill in Round Top will take us to a symphony concert. Or within fiveminutes, we can be watching University of Texas students performing Shakespeare at the Winedale Historical Center.

We haven’t tried it, but I suppose we could get a pizza delivered here to the front porch. UPS and FedEx trucks roll through our front gate, sometimes to deliver packages I could carry in a shirt pocket. And of course we have mail delivery by the rural carrier who comes from the post office in Burton, 10 miles distant.

But we’re in lovewith amyth — thatwe’reway out here among coyotes and hoot owls. I can stand in the front yard, turn slowly 360 degrees, and I can’t see another sign of human activity. No other house. No other person. All I see is trees.

October nights here can be sweet. We open the windows and let the outdoors creep in the house. We can smell the woods and hear the crickets and if the coyotes don’t sing, nevermind, there are always other sounds.

A rustling in the fallen leaves just beneath a window. That would be an armadillo.

A calf bawls across the creek in the neighbor’s pasture.

Something knocks over an empty bucket on the front porch. A possum?

Falling acorns, rapping on the metal roof.

And all that cool night airmoving gently through the windows.

Did I mention it was good to be back?