error with retrieving directories

Hi,

I use mutt with xterm.

I have been having a strange error of late (for the past week or so).

Basically, mutt opens up with the following:

shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory

I do not what I (accidentally) did to get this, but how do I fix this? I only get this from mutt. (And I have not updated my .muttrc in a while.) 

Any suggestions?

Many thanks and best wishes,
Ranjan