I put on my hat and walked up the trail to the summit of 

 a little ridge, where I could be alone. I wanted to go away 

 up there to see if some place in all that silent woods, I might 

 not hear some of the usual night noises and hear the night 

 birds and get the smell of trees and grasses and wild flowers 

 in my nostrils. I wanted to walk along the banks of that 

 little stream and see if somewhere in its water I might not 

 see a muskrat or find a beaver's home or hear a trout jump- 

 ing for prey. I wanted to feel life again. I wanted to peep 

 back into the living world we had left behind. The gnarled 

 poles casting their long shadows had depressed me. The flood 

 of moonlight fell unbefittingly on the wreck that lay about me. 



Beneath my feet, the dead and blackened bits of branches 

 broken off in the fire, cracked dismally as I picked my way 

 toward the ridge. There was no life, no sounds, no birds, 

 nothing, save the crackling of the sticks. No trout moved 

 in the waters. No muskrat swimming low, poking only the 

 tip of his nose above the surface looked at me and no beaver 

 greeted me. No night bird poised on the branches of any tree 

 then fluttered away. No chipmunk scurried across my path. 

 No porcupine with its half-human face glared at me from a 

 fallen log. Nothing was there but ashes and sometimes little 

 patches of green weeds that could live within them. I went 

 slowly to the top of the ridge and sat down to rest. Before 

 me for miles, stretched the same scene of solitude and deso- 

 lation, the same blackened trunks of trees, the same waste? 

 and barrenness. Away off in the distance, beyond the hill, 

 the faint howl of wolves came to my ears. Dismal as it was, 

 it told me that there was life over there. The sound brought 

 no chill. Rather, the slight breaking of the silence was wel- 

 come in all that solitude. 



The Longing to Run Away and Hide From the Picture. 



I listened for an hour to the wolves and turned to retrace 

 my steps. I wanted to hide the scene from my vision, and 

 sleep. I wanted to forget those blackened trees standing 

 there as silent sentinels over a land that was dead ana 

 shunned and despised and hated, as my guide had told me. 

 I wanted to go back to life and out to where things where green 



5 



