The nights are dipping down near freezing and the trees around us are turning deep orange, yellow and red. It’s now peak leaf season in central Vermont, where Anne and I have been living for the past few months. We’ll drive back to Wisconsin in two weeks, so we’re savoring our last taste of these hills.

For several weeks, I’ve also been immersed in Daniel Mason’s fictional New England. His 2023 novel “North Woods” is a lyrical, often piercing work of historical fiction, tracing a series of people — from colonial times to the present — who settle on a single plot of land deep in the forest. His new novel, “Country People,” has a lighter touch. It’s the humorous story of a California family who move to southern Vermont for an academic year. The book revels in this landscape, dotted with old stone walls and cellar holes, as well as the area’s quirky folklore. There’s a cast of eccentric characters, including a man who claims to be the reincarnation of Snowflake Bentley, the 19th century Vermonter who was the first person to take detailed photographs of snowflakes (and because of him, we say no two snowflakes are alike). He’s also part of a secret society whose members believe the Earth is hollow, with a fantastical kingdom hidden somewhere inside it.

“They have this sense that the world is not just as we see it, that there is some kind of magic in it,” Mason told me earlier this week. “You can argue against enchantment all you want, but then just go into a cave in the middle of the forest and try to argue against enchantment. It’s very hard.”

Mason, who’s also a professor of psychiatry at Stanford, is fascinated by the thin line between imagination and delusion. As a psychiatrist, he treats people whose delusions are causing misery. But as a novelist, he delights in imagined worlds and moments of enchantment. His books are filled with closely observed details about the natural world — the texture of the landscape, the transition of a forest from pine to oak and birch, even the world as it might be perceived by the animals who live there. In “North Woods,” one chapter goes into rhapsodic detail about the mating behavior of two bark beetles. 

Near the end of our conversation, I asked Mason if he had any advice for how travelers can get to know a new place they're visiting. “I think leaving electronics behind is important,” he said. “There’s a stage of just noticing and walking, if one’s able to walk. Allowing time to move slowly, to wash over you. Using all the five senses to be in the moment and notice what you’re smelling, what the ground feels like.” But he’s not an anti-technology purist. He often takes his phone on nature walks so he can use his favorite nature apps, iNaturalist and Merlin, to identify plants, animals and birds. 

Anne and I are still getting to know this place we’ve come to love during our summers here. We’ve walked through our woods with several foresters, who’ve advised us against clearing out the dead branches so that we leave enough ground cover for animals. In the forest above our house, we’ve discovered remnants of an old stone foundation. Was it a tiny house — or an enclosure for farm animals? One day we combed through our fields with a neighbor who’s an experienced metal detector — and found a colonial shoe buckle!

You’ll hear more about all of this — and how a gifted writer conjures up enchanted landscapes — in our conversation with Daniel Mason. The episode comes out October 10th.

 — Steve