WAYLAYING THE DAWN 



down the slope to it you pass through 

 a tangle of scrub oak that leads you to 

 a lower region of alders snarled with 

 greenbrier " horse brier " we call it 

 familiarly. 



Here the ground begins to be soft, 

 with occasional clumps of sphagnum 

 moss, which is like a gray-brown carpet 

 of velvet, not yet made up, but tacked 

 together with yellow bastings of the 

 goldthread. Among the scrub oaks a 

 stately pine here and there shoulders 

 up, sending you a reassuring sniff of 

 pitchy aroma. The scrub oaks know 

 their allotted ground and cease wander- 

 ing when their toes touch swamp water, 

 but the pines are more venturesome, 

 and often lift with their roots little 

 mounds of firm brown carpeted ground 

 in the midst of the quaky sphagnum. 

 Slender cedars crowd in from the swamp 



