WILDWOOD WAYS 



nothing but death will part them. There 

 are red cedars growing out of the gray 

 granite near the southern rim of Blue 

 Hill that I believe were there when Bar- 

 tholomew Gosnold stepped ashore, the 

 first Englishman to set foot on the soil 

 of Massachusetts. No such age belongs 

 to the hickories that have managed to 

 get head and shoulders above the rim of 

 the plateau, yet they too have lost their 

 slender straightness. The cold and the 

 summit winds have pressed them back 

 upon themselves till they are stubby, big- 

 headed dwarfs. 



Of how the other trees climb the hill 

 we shall learn more if we begin at the 

 bottom, and we could have no better day 

 in which to look them up than this, for 

 the south rain has swept the ground bare 

 of all snow and left us for a space this 

 temperature of the Carolinas rather than 

 92 



