Today’s reading takes us into the mountains with Wilfred and the moose he is certain belongs to him. Wilfred calls him Marcel, gives him rules to follow, and expects him to behave like a proper pet. The moose, however, keeps wandering off, and one day Wilfred discovers that someone else knows this moose by a completely different name. If the moose answers to other people too, can he really be Wilfred’s?

I shaped this episode around a “Mine or Friend?” arc, following Wilfred from confident ownership to the harder question of what it means for someone to belong with you rather than to you. It is a story about letting go of a little control, and about how a friendship can survive when both sides give way a bit. One of my favorite small jokes is the price tag still dangling from the moose’s antler, as if he came from a shop, when of course he came from nowhere but the wild.

Before recording, I made a small index-card collage in autumn colors: torn shapes of crimson, orange, and yellow scribbles, crossed by dark wavy lines, set inside a dotted red border in my handmade red-and-black frame. I wanted it to echo the blazing fall trees in Jeffers’s landscapes, the kind of country a moose might wander through without asking anyone’s permission. A few fallen leaves on my table, a sassafras and a dogwood among them, kept me company while I worked.

Watch the full episode and find out whether Wilfred and his moose can find a way to share the mountain.