14 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



From this upland pasture you may watch " the golden 

 light of afternoon" withdraw from the valleys, like the 

 receding waters of a flood, and the amethyst shadows 

 creep up the eastern hills. You may watch the cloud- 

 ships come to anchor over the Catskills hi the west, and 

 transform themselves into Himalayas, snow-capped, 

 rose-crowned. And, as you descend at last through 

 the cow paths and logging roads to the valley, it will 

 be breathless twilight in the hemlocks, and a wood 

 thrush will sing of the evening mysteries. 



But the upland pasture that I love best of all is in 

 Franconia, high above the little Ham Branch intervale, 

 on the forest-clad slopes of Kinsman. A single road 

 runs up the intervale, into a region of abandoned clear- 

 ings. The great west wall of Kinsman, rearing to its 

 saddle-back twin summits more than four thousand 

 feet aloft, is uncompromising and discourages human 

 conceit. There is a rugged wildness here our Berkshire 

 land knows nothing of, and a tax on the breath in 

 climbing for which we have no adequate preparation. 

 No railroad whistle can here reach the ears. Creatures 

 wilder than deer may cross this clearing. And the air 

 of it is filled with the pungent fragrance of the northern 

 balsams. 



The way to this pasture lies through a lower pasture 

 behind the tiny farmhouse by the road. It is a steep 

 way, past a running brook and through a sugar grove 

 where the sugar house of rough boards stands sur- 



