8 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



through a barred gate, a wood-road strikes upward. 

 It ascends rapidly for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and 

 comes out into an unexpected clearing, a genuine little 

 meadow two or three acres in extent, pocketed on a 

 shelf of the precipitous mountain wall, which was not 

 visible from the valley. Doubtless you have seen a 

 tiny lake with a wooded mountainside leaping up from 

 it. The Upper Meadow is exactly like such a lake, 

 with lush green grass for water, grass so rich, indeed, 

 that you almost look for it to hold reflections. No 

 prospect is possible from the Upper Meadow save the 

 view of the mountain wall springing beside it. It is shut 

 into the woods. Yet the steep climb thither, the silence, 

 the washed air, all conspire to the sense of height. It 

 is a man-made clearing, but only in haying time does 

 man intrude. It has all the artlessness of a forest glade. 

 In Spring the charm of the Upper Meadow is vir- 

 ginal, not because of the trilliums and dog-tooth violets 

 along its borders, but because of the birches bursting 

 into leaf. It is surrounded by woods in which birches 

 predominate, and there are many birches all up the 

 mountain wall. In the early season, while yet the 

 other hardwoods are naked, the winter-washed trunks 

 of the birches stand out with startling distinctness, one 

 great forked patriarch in particular looking like a 

 lightning stab against the background of a pine. Then, 

 as the warmth steals into the soil, the birches begin to 

 put on their brilliant foliage, almost a Nile green, per- 



