I have seen Vermont in October, when tour buses clog the country roads, filled with camera-toting tourists who have come to see and capture forever the beauty of autumn.

I have seen traffic — almost bumper to bumper — in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, as leaf-watchers crane their necks and murmur “ohh” and “ahh” as they admire forests clothed in red, yellow and gold.

Fall is my favorite time of year to go hiking, backpacking and camping, but this year I stayed close to home by spending a couple of nights in the “Primitive Tent Campground” at Forest Glen Preserve, seven miles southeast of Westville. It’s run by the Vermilion County Conservation District.

If you’ve never been to the 1,900-acre county preserve, it’s worth a visit. It offers miles of hiking trails, beautiful hardwood forests, picnic areas, playgrounds, shelters, group campgrounds, a pioneer homestead, a shower house, the same sorts of prairie plants that the Native Americans knew, and the Vermilion River.

After months of enduring non-stop coverage of Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, JD Vance and Tim Walz, plus the border, inflation, Gaza, Ukraine, Putin and that goofy man who runs North Korea, I needed a break. A little return to nature, with no Internet, no TV, no radio, and no news, seemed like a great idea.

That’s when I remembered a previous night spent at Forest Glen’s Primitive Tent Campground.

Unlike the regular campgrounds, with electric hookups, camp trailers and motor homes, the tent campground is for tents only. It consists of a beautiful, forested area with 14 tent sites. Each one has a picnic table and a fire ring. Nearby is an outhouse, a water spigot and two garbage cans. That’s it.

You can’t drive to your site. Instead, you park your car, carry your tent, gear and food to your selected site, then move your vehicle to a reserved parking spot. It costs $18 per night to camp.

That setup insures that you are camping in a beautiful forest, filled with maple, oak and hickory trees, some of them 30 or 40 feet high. At this time of the year, the woods is breathtakingly beautiful; on a bright, sunny day the leaves just shimmer, and the heavens seem to be painted in crimson, russet and gold.

As luck would have it, I was all alone in the campground both weekday nights. Not a single human voice, not a single radio, not a single TV set or computer. It was sublime and quiet. After enjoying my dinner, I unfolded the camp chair and read the second volume of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson ... a book that I had been wanting to read for years.

But the best part came when the sun set, darkness crept in, and I put the book away. There’s something magical about being in a forest, by yourself, among big, old trees, just sitting there enjoying a campfire. Someone once said that a campfire is the one thing that modern man has never managed to ruin. I think there’s truth in that.

Watching the twigs smoke and combust, then seeing the flames grow and dance as they slowly consume the larger pieces, is a drama that connects us to the ancients ... and to countless generations that lived and died before there were ancients.

I was blessed with perfect, clear weather. Each night, looking up through the black shadows cast by the many trees, I could see stars — not one or two, but hundreds — twinkling brightly, with no city lights to wash away their brilliance, mystery and majesty.

Off in the distance, now and then I could hear an owl hooting, and coyotes howling. By 9 p.m., I was in my old canvas tent, snug in my sleeping bag, atop an air mattress, drifting off to sleep.

Forest Glen’s Primitive Tent Campground is open year-round. Sites can’t be reserved. It’s all first-come, first-served. But even in October, perhaps the most beautiful time in the woods, you’ll probably get in.

If you want to get away from it all, without ever really leaving home, it’s the place to be.