Happy Thanksgiving, Burke County!

For seven months of the year, from early April through late October, the Poteat house is enclosed by thick woods on three sides. Poplars, maples, dogwoods, and oaks spread their canopies to the north, west, and south.

Throw in a majestic line of towering, 70-year-old cedar trees to the east, and we see green in every direction, giving the visual impression that we live deep in the country rather than a 4-minute walk from the Drexel Town Hall.

Then comes the late autumn. The leaves brighten, turn red and yellow and orange before they release their grip on the trees and swirl to the ground. Except for the oak leaves, of course, which turn nothing but brown.

As the leaves thin out, new vistas open up. First, the neighborhood of houses to the west becomes visible. Then as the trees grow increasingly bare, the Blue Ridge Mountains magically appear, topped by the mighty Grandfather in the northwest.

I am at my most content when I arise a half hour or so before dawn on these late autumn weekend mornings and set about my very favorite chore — cooking breakfast.

My bride and I love to sleep in a cold bedroom with the windows wide open, all the better for snuggling through the night, and we pride ourselves in not using the heat pump until the temperatures get really, really cold.

My first order of business when I rise from the rack and step out into our chilly kitchen is to start preheating the oven and to turn on the Buck Stove set of gas logs in our living room.

Those flames are indeed pretty to look at, but they are far more than decorative. With our bedrooms closed off, they can take our kitchen, dining room, and living room from 62 to 72 faster than a 1966 Chevy Chevelle SS on a dirt track.

Step Two is to turn on the coffee pot, prepared the night before to produce four mugs of hot and steaming Folgers Black Silk. The best part of waking up, I was once told by a voice on the TV, is Folgers in your cup.

With the coffee perking and the oven heating, it’s time to make like Abraham Lincoln and get dressed in front of the dancing flames, taking the time to hold each item of clothing before the fire until it is toasty warm.

There are few pleasures to compare with pulling on a cozy flannel shirt that has been thoroughly heated to a temperature of 100 degrees or so on a frosty November morning.

By the time I’m dressed, the coffee is brewed, and the first streaks of daylight are beginning to brighten the east, as the slugabed sun inches its way toward the horizon.

Bo the Wonder Dog has risen from the bed at the same time as me and he is anxious to heed the call of nature. Grabbing a mug of coffee, I step out with him onto the front porch, and he bounds down the steps and out into the yard.

His business finished, I think he is about to come back in the house with me until he spots something in the woods — squirrel, deer, Sasquatch — and is off like a cannon shot. No worries, he’ll be back before the biscuits are baked.

Returning to the kitchen and its now warm oven, I carefully layer aluminum foil over a large baking pan, then lovingly place eight slices of butcher’s cut, double-thick Smithfield apple-cured bacon on top of the foil, close but not touching.

I gave up attempting to fry bacon a decade or so ago when daughter Prairie demonstrated just how easy it is to cook bacon in the oven — and it turns out absolutely perfect every time.

When the bacon is ready to place in the oven, I cover a second baking pan with parchment paper and then carefully place a half dozen Pillsbury Grands frozen buttermilk biscuits on the paper, making sure they’re scooted up close against each other.

(Yes, I know frozen biscuits should be anathema to a good Southern boy like myself. But my mother never taught me to make biscuits from scratch, as she did, and those Pillsbury biscuits are mighty good.)

With both pans placed in the oven, I have 30 minutes or so to do as I please before starting to cook the eggs, and what I’m usually pleased to do is stand at the kitchen window, savoring my coffee and looking out at the brightening world.

As the sun rises, its lengthening rays first strike the trees at the top of a hill to our west, constructing a line of gold across their upper limbs while the valley below remains gray and unlit.

In the huge poplar tree right next to our house, a pair of squirrels have begun their morning game of tag, chasing each other up and down, from limb to limb, until one risks his life by leaping from the poplar to the adjacent maple.

By this time Bo has returned from his neighborhood rounds and, if it’s my lucky day, I am treated to the sight of three or four deer ambling along the edge of the yard, munching on acorns, planning their day.

A half mile to the west, the cows in the Swink pasture are waking up, their bellows trumpeting the arrival of another sunny day, while my own kitchen is filled with the smells of coffee and bacon and biscuits.

Those smells work better than any alarm clock and, on cue, just before I start to fry eggs on the griddle, my bride emerges sleepily from the bedroom, wrapping her cozy robe around her as she makes her first cup of tea.

She appears just in time for that wonderful rush of heat and aroma when the oven door is opened and the meat and bread are pulled forth and the oven door is left open to let the warmth suffuse the entire room.

Soon, we are feasting on bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits, and even Bo will get a plain biscuit, no butter.

I recount this story today as a reminder that, as Thanksgiving nears, we should all appreciate the small joys of life more, for the small joys really are not so small at all.

The taste of a hot cup of coffee, the smell of bacon and biscuits cooking on a frosty morning, the light of sunrise on a distant ridge full with the promise of another day, the warm embrace of the world’s most beautiful woman as that day begins.

For all of this and for so much more, I am thankful.

And I hope that your life is filled with reasons for thanks as well.

Happy Thanksgiving, Burke County.