I ventured to town the day after Thanksgiving, something I generally try to avoid every year. Like the morning after the first major snowstorm, the world had been transformed overnight. Except the agents of transformation are bows and santas instead of snowflakes. After all, the most important harvest of the modern economy is holiday spending.

Despite the proliferation of winter festival imagery, the landscape is still dressed for late fall. Sun pierces the clouds and throws naked trees into relief against a dark background. These knobby giants hulk over still green fields. Snow streaks nearly invisible through the air, not a hint of white on the ground.

A different harvest is in progress as the second weekend of the regular deer season comes to an end. Men with guns ride around in pickup trucks or stalk along treelines. Shot booms randomly in the surrounding landscape. We pass homesteads with deer dangling from trees in the yard. Elsewhere a deer lies slumped in a gravel parking lot – a reminder of the year-round sacrifice to that American idol the automobile.