WILDWOOD WAYS 



plunging into soft drifts where in the 

 blinding white twilight you found your- 

 self inexplicably held back by steel-like 

 but invisible bonds, drifts where you felt 

 the shivery touch of the cold fingers of 

 winter magic changing you into a veri- 

 table snow man, and as such you emerged. 

 It was more than baptism, it was total 

 immersion, you were initiated into the 

 order of the white woods and not even 

 your heel was vulnerable. 



Thus panoplied in white magic, my 

 snowshoes making no sound on the 

 fluffy floor of woodland paths, I felt that 

 I might stalk invisible and unheeded in 

 the wilderness world. The fern-seed of 

 frost fronds had fallen upon my head in 

 fairy grottos built, by magic in a night. 

 These had not been there before, they 

 would not be there to-morrow. To- 

 morrow, too, the magic might be gone, 

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