WILDWOOD WAYS 



if I can, on what winter date their catkins 

 blossom into tassels. 



The gravelly ridges of the woodland I 

 tramped as I faced the golden sun again 

 are singularly like waves of the sea. 

 They roll here and rise to toppling pin- 

 nacles there and tumble about in a confu- 

 sion that seems at once inextricable and as 

 if it had in it some rude but unfathomed 

 order. Surely as at sea every seventh 

 wave is the highest ; or is it the ninth, or 

 the third? Just as at sea, the horizon is 

 by no means a level line. Wave-strewn 

 ridges shoulder up into it and now and 

 then a peak lifts that is a cumulation of 

 waves all rushing toward a common 

 center through some obscure prompting 

 of the surface pulsations. Sometimes at 

 sea your ship rises on one of these aggre- 

 gations of waves and you see yawning in 

 front of it a veritable gulf; or the ship 

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