UPLAND PASTURES 11 



the trail. We come out into the mountain clearing, 

 dazzling under the sun, amid the hush of the winter 

 woods. The mountain wall goes up beyond us, bearing 

 its dark, snow-flecked pines prominently against the 

 gray and white of bare birch and chestnut trunks, 

 etched with a myriad vertical strokes upon the ground- 

 work of snow. There is only the soft, padded swish of 

 our snowshoes to be heard as we advance to the centre 

 of the meadow. Yet life has been here. A deer has 

 crossed two deer, three deer plunging almost knee 

 deep in the snow. Over the white carpet a pheasant 

 has walked, one foot mathematically behind the other, 

 and at this point something startled him, for the tracks 

 cease abruptly. Here are the marks on the snow where 

 his long tail feathers brushed as he took the air. Nearer 

 the edge of the meadow, where the glossy laurel fringe 

 is still green, a rabbit emerged, hopped out a way, and 

 turned back. And it will be strange if we do not find 

 the track of a fox, sneaking down in the night from his 

 hole up in the mountain rocks to the valley farms. 

 There is not even the sign of mown grass to speak of 

 man in the clearing now. It is lonely as a frozen moun- 

 tain lake, wrapped secure in the heart of its upland 

 wilderness. 



In these softer modern days, when we all desire the 

 valley warmth, the nervous companionship of our kind, 

 the handy motion-picture theatre, many an upland 

 pasture is going back to wildness, invaded by birch and 



