Where Town and Country Meet 



the last piles of cord-wood, cut and stacked 

 so long ago that they are crumbling to the 

 very center with decay. How much of 

 man's labor lost, how much of nature's beau- 

 tiful garment wasted, in these lonely moun- 

 tain wood-lots, where the Yankee farmer, 

 with his inexorable conscience for work, 

 toils through dull winter days, only to ac- 

 cumulate more of the fruits of labor than 

 the world accessible to him can use, and so 

 to leave good oak and birch and maple logs 

 for the rains to rot and the worms to bur- 

 row! Everywhere, on all roads to Joe's 

 Pond, or whose pond soever, deep in the 

 woods of these remote mountain farms, we 

 find the decaying woodpile, a monument to 

 man's wasteful use or misuse of the boun- 

 ties of nature. And meanwhile the brook 

 that waters the meadow and the pasture 

 dwindles in August to a sickly thread, and 

 in April pours its sudden thunderous flood 

 into the valley, devouring all in its path, a 

 roaring, revengeful, merciless fiend. Such 

 are nature's penalties for the improvident 

 mowing down of mountain forests. 



Beyond the last moldering woodpile we 

 must travel single file, for now we are fairly 

 148 



