Fall is in the air. The evenings have that crisp quality now. I love the first cold night. When you get into bed and the sheets are cool and it takes a minute to warm everything up and it's darker earlier where I live. We are now on daylight savings time permanently. No more changing clocks, which I guess is good because I can never figure out how to change the time in the car.And the sunrise will be much later, which will be nice for sleeping in on the weekends. All in all, here in Snoozeville, we like autumn. It's better for sleep.So I have tried to create a very autumn themed sleep story. It's set in a cabin in the mountains where the leaves are changing color. There's a stone fireplace and a bed that you have to climb up into, piled high with soft blankets and two people who finally have a weekend to themselves with nothing they need to do with it.And that is the whole episode. Nobody's going anywhere. And no one is in any hurry at all.And if you've ever wondered how a sleep story works, it's not magic. There's a reason it does what it does. When you get into bed and your mind starts going, it's because it finally has a quiet minute.But now there's nothing to do. So it goes looking for something, usually tomorrow or a list or a conversation you had with someone weeks ago that you'd like to have another go at. That part of your mind isn't going to switch off just because you'd like it to, but it will follow a story.So you give it one, and not just any story. A sleep story is built differently. There's no tension. Nothing is about to go wrong. And there's no reason to stay awake to find out what happens next. And it's not just the words.It's the pace, the cadence, the tone of voice. They do a lot of the work. Telling a story to help with sleep is a very old thing. We've been settling each other with the sound of a voice for a long time. But before we start tonight's story, our usual disclaimer. This episode uses relaxation techniques and light hypnotherapy.It is designed to help you sleep. So please ensure that you are somewhere safe when listening. Preferably your comfortable bed, and not anywhere.You need to stay alert. And a quick word about the Snoozeville Sleep Club. A show like this doesn't need thousands or even hundreds of subscribers.It just needs enough of you that I can keep making it. So if you've been listening for a while and you've been meaning to, this is your reminder. The subscribers keep the show going.They keep it ad-free. And there are plenty of perks that go with the subscription. For more information, you can check the show notes.And now it's time to get you settled. We'll start tonight by slowing your breathing down. I'm going to assume that you are in your comfortable bed and you've found the best position.The lights are off, your pillow is soft, and your blankets are warm. So together, let's take in a long, full breath. Hold it for just a second or two, and then let it go.Unhurried. All the way to the end. Try that again.One more time on your own. You may notice something starting to change already. Your pulse easing off.Your muscles beginning to loosen their hold on the day. And your thoughts going quieter, one at a time. Together, let's take three more breaths like that.If you're ready, breathe in. Breathe in stillness. And when you breathe out, let go of everything left undone.Let's do it again. Breathe in. And when you breathe out, let go of any tension.Good work. One last time. Breathe in.And when you breathe out, let go of anything that you were planning to worry about tonight. And now the only thing left to do is just to follow the sound of my voice. Let anything else that you hear simply go by.If another sound catches your attention, that's okay. Just come back to my words and to the sound of my voice. My voice is your anchor. Trust that it's taking you where you need to go. Somewhere calm. Somewhere quiet.Somewhere where you can find sleep. Matt and Rachel have been married for 17 years. They have two kids, 12 and 15.And in between the two of them, they have not had a weekend to themselves since before either of those kids could walk. There's just always been a reason. The kids or their schedules, their jobs.But every fall, one of them will turn to the other and say, we really should go and see New England while the leaves are turning. And then the fall would go by so fast. And they wouldn't.But this year, Rachel's mother said firmly that she would take the kids. And so, here they are. In the mountains of western Maine.On the last good weekend, before everything closes for the season. They are walking up the hill from town in the last of the light. Dinner was six or seven minutes back down the road.A small place with a hand-lettered board out front and 11 tables inside. Every one of them full. A woman with a pencil behind her ear brought them hot cider before they asked for anything.Cinnamon settled at the bottom. After that came squash soup with brown butter. And then bread in a napkin-lined basket. Still too hot to hold properly. They stayed a long time. They ordered one apple crisp between them with a scoop of vanilla melting down the side.And two spoons. And they ate all of it. At one point, Matt told her about the man in the hardware store that afternoon. And the argument he'd been having with someone on the phone about a wheelbarrow. And he did the voice. And Rachel laughed so hard.She had to put her spoon down and press her napkin to her eyes. And then he started laughing and her laughing. Which made it worse.The woman with the pencil behind her ear was leaning against the counter watching them. Smiling a little. Thinking about how nice it is to see two people enjoy being with each other so much. But now the cold is coming down off the ridge. The gravel shifts and grinds under their boots. And that sound is most of what there is to hear.There's wood smoke on the air. Thin and sweet. Drifting up from the main house below.Above them, the birches hold the last of the daylight longer than anything else does. Their trunks stay pale after the ground has gone dark. The leaves still on them are that thin gold that lets light through.So the whole slope seems lit from behind. Higher up, the maples have gone a deep red. And one enormous maple near the top that had been so orange at four o'clock that it almost seemed to glow.They were up there this afternoon. Up through the birches and along the ridge where the trail runs level for a mile. The leaves were ankle deep and dry as paper.And they made that lovely rushing sound with every step. Rachel picked up a maple leaf the size of two hands. Red at the edges and gold in the middle. And she carried it half a mile before setting it down on a stone. Before that, when the light was just starting to turn, they'd spent an hour in an antique barn out on a country road. Three floors of it, warm from a stove in the corner.Dust turning slowly over in the light from the high windows. Rooms and rooms of furniture with no system to any of it. Rachel found a wall of framed photographs of people neither of them would ever know.Matt opened and closed the drawers of a little writing desk one after another just to hear how well they moved. They bought a wooden bowl for eleven dollars. The cabin comes up out of the dark ahead of them.It has a deep porch running the whole width of it. And two Adirondack chairs turned to face the hill. Firewood stack shoulder high under the eaves.And in the distance through the birches, they could see the main house with its windows lit. Rachel reaches the steps first. Above the roof line, the sky has deepened to a clear hard blue.And there's a one star out already. Inside, Matt turns on a lamp. The whole cabin is one long room open to the rafters with a fireplace at the far end built out of round gray stone stacked up to the ceiling.Someone has laid a fire in it already. Birch logs and kindling and a twist of newspaper underneath waiting. In front of it angled toward the warmth is the kind of couch that you sink into rather than sit on.Deep, worn, color of oatmeal with a wool throw folded over the arm in blue and green. Sheepskins on the floorboards and a wide chair by the window with a pile of paperbacks left by someone on the table. And at the other end under the window that looks down the hill, the bed. It's enormous. White linens, feather duvet spread across the mattress like a cloud and pillows stacked four deep against the headboard. Two more quilts folded across the foot of it, just in case. And the mattress sits high off the floor, the way beds do in old houses. So you have to get up into it. Matt crouches at the hearth and puts a match to the newspaper. The paper goes up in a soft rush.Then the kindling starts to lick and snap. And within a minute, there's a real flame. He stays down there for a moment, adjusting one log a half inch with the tongs, the way people do when they want to feel useful.Then he sits back. The light of it swings up the stone chimney and out across the floorboards. Rachel hangs her coat on a peg by the door and pulls off her boots.She says something out loud and Matt laughs without turning around. There's a kitchen along the sidewall, just a small stove, a kettle, open shelves with mismatched mugs and a tin of tea and a jar of honey. Rachel fills the kettle and while it heats, she leans back against the counter and watches the fire take hold.The warmth begins to move out into the space and the cold that had been sitting in her cheeks starts to let go. They end up on the which is even deeper than it looks. Rachel with her feet under her and the throw over her knees. Matt on the other end with his head back. Two mugs on the low table in front of them. Steam coming off both.The fire settles into itself. And that is the sound of the next hour. The knock of a log shifting down into the coals.A pop and a spray of sparks of the flu. Every so often Matt leans forward and puts another log on and the fire flares up bright for a minute and then eases back down again outside the windows. There's nothing at all now.Only the black shapes of the birch trunks near the porch. They talk on and off in the loose way people talk when neither one of them has anywhere else to be. Not about anything important.At one point Rachel picks up one of the paperbacks and reads four pages of it and puts it down against her chest. Matt is looking at the fire. The wooden bowl they bought is sitting on the mantel where he put it, catching the light along its rim.The tea goes down to lukewarm in the bottom of the mugs and the heat has filled the cabin now, right up to the rafters. The room smells like wood smoke. Matt gets up eventually and banks the fire.He rakes the coals into a low bed and lays one thick log across them and sets the screen in place. The flames drop away and the room goes down to a red-orange glow. Rachel is already in the bathroom running the water and it comes out hot straight away and steams up the little mirror over the sink and she stands there longer than she needs to with her hands under it.The bed sits high off the floor and Rachel has to get up into it and she does the thing everyone does with a bed like that. She sits on the edge first and then swings her legs up and under. The duvet comes up over her and she pulls it up under her chin and lies still while the warmth starts to build underneath. The pillows are stacked four deep and she pushes two of them off onto the floor and keeps the other two. The mattress takes her weight and gives until she is properly settled into it and Matt turns off the lamp. The room doesn't go dark.The coals under that one thick log are working away in the ash, throwing out a low red light that reaches about as far as the couch. It is not enough to see anything by. It is exactly enough to know that the room is warm. Through the window the birches are just visible. Pale trunks standing out against everything behind them and beyond them the hail drops away and past that is a lake and there's mist lying on it now. Thick and low and unmoving.The temperature is falling. Sometime after two it will find the last of the flowers in the beds down by the main house but that is hours away yet. Matt is asleep before she is.She can hear it in his breathing and outside the woods have gone quiet. The ridge they walked this afternoon is a black line against a sky full of stars. The birches are letting go of a few more leaves in the dark.They're falling one at a time. They simply come loose when they're ready and turn over once or twice on the way down and land on top of all the others. Further up on the far side of the ridge there are deer bedded down in a stand of hemlock.There are chipmunks under the roots of things with their cheeks full and their tails over their faces. They're the last of the crickets slowed right down by the cold going quiet one by one. Every bird on this hillside has its head tucked under a wing. The nights are longer now than the days and getting longer and every living thing on this hill knows that light is what tells a body when to sleep. As the dark stretches out everything responds, slows down, turns inward, sleeps more and you feel it too. What looks like an ending out there isn't one.The maple standing bare on the ridge in November has already made next spring. The buds are formed and folded and waiting, made in the dark. Months before anything shows, nothing is being lost out there tonight. It's being put away. Sleep works the same way. It looks like nothing is happening but nothing could be further from the truth. Everything you did today is being sorted through and stored. The tiredness in your arms and legs is being repaired. Whatever you learned is being filed somewhere you can reach it. You don't have to do any of it. You only have to stop. So let the day go now.It's finished. Whatever is left of it can be put away the same way the hillside is putting everything away. Notice how warm you are.Notice the weight of the covers holding you down and how good that pressure feels. Your body is heavier than it was 10 minutes ago. Heavier and softer and further down into the bed.Your breathing has slowed all on its own. Outside the birches are letting go of a few more leaves. Each one simply reaches the moment when it's ready and lets go.And it turns over once or twice on the way down and settles into all the others. It happens all night long out there, quietly. You can let go the same way.There's nothing to push against and nothing to arrange. Sleep isn't something you have to reach for. It comes toward you the way the cold comes down off the ridge after the sun goes, filling in the low places first and then everything above them. Let it come as far as it wants. Let your breathing find its own slow pace. You're warm. It's quiet. Morning is still a long way off. There's nothing left for you to do but rest.