10 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



taiii silence for another twelvemonth. But meanwhile 

 the willing horses in their strength, the measured, 

 mathematical fall of the grass, the cicada click of the 

 mower, the occasional shout of the driver, are sights 

 and sounds not unpleasant, and you lie beneath the 

 shadows which creep out across the stubble, to look 

 and listen all the drowsy afternoon. 



To emerge from the woods in Autumn into the 

 Upper Meadow is like putting your head and shoulders 

 through a great, gorgeous tapestry, from the dark 

 underside. The bordering trees, above the glossy green 

 of the laurel bushes, are in bright array, and above you 

 all the mountainside is triumphant with colour. Even 

 the meadow floor has reclothed itself in green after the 

 reaping, as if to be dressed for this pageantry. 



But in Winter, perhaps, our meadow can be at its 

 best, when the world wears white and not a creature 

 that wanders unseen in the woods but leaves its track. 

 In Winter our Berkshire world becomes everywhere 

 more simplified. The myriad motors desert our high- 

 ways, and the horse comes into his own once more, with 

 a jingle of sleighbells. The deserted summer estates, 

 their rose bushes clad in straw, their garden beds buried 

 under pine boughs, no longer impose upon us an alien 

 and more sophisticated order. We may cut cross-lots 

 on our snowshoes without fear of trespass. And then 

 it is that the Upper Meadow becomes the hermit of the 

 pastures. No human tracks have preceded ours up 



