MY NEIGHBORS FIELD 



have some sense of home in its familiar 

 aspect. 



As I have said, it is a low-lying field, 

 between the mesa and the town, with no 

 hillocks in it, but a gentle swale where 

 the waste water of the creek'^oesjx)wn_to 

 cejtain_Jarms, and the hackberry4reeSj_of^ 

 which the tallest miorht be three times the 

 height of a man, are the talleat-things in 

 it. A mile up from the water^ate_that 

 turns the creek into supply pipes for the 

 town, begins a row of long-leaved pines, 

 threading the watercourse to the foot of 

 Kearsarge. These are the pines that puz- 

 zle the local botanist, not easily determined, 

 and unrelated to other conifers of the Si- 

 erra slope ; the same pines of which the 

 Indians relate a legend mixed of brother- 

 liness and the retribution of God. Once 

 the pines possessed the field, as the worn 

 130 



