MYSTICAL PASTURES 229 



caress their rugged gray trunks and fall asleep to 

 the mystical murmur of their voices, but I can 

 never be intimate with them. 



There is nothing of this aloofness about the 

 other pasture people. The younger pines do not 

 whisper solemn riddles, but are gently friendly 

 without mystery, and so are many of the myriad 

 creatures that crowd the spaces boldly or dwell 

 quietly in unsuspected seclusion. Of all the out- 

 door world the pasture is the most friendly place, 

 yet it is not obtrusively so and you must dwell in it 

 long before you know many of even your elbow 

 neighbors by sight. If you know them very well 

 you will be able to detect their nearness by sound, 

 oftentimes, long before sight of them is vouch- 

 safed you. When they do appear it is usually a 

 sort of embodiment. They materialize as if out 

 of thin air and disintegrate by the same route. 

 This is not because they fear you. It is simply 

 because it has been the habit of pasture people 

 for untold generations. 



Thus it is that a lovely white moth flits often 

 in the veriest gray of dawn just to the eastward 

 of where I lie. It always seems as if he were a 

 condensation out of the white mists that are born 

 in that darkest hour when the night winds cease 



