UPLAND PASTURES 5 



woodchuck rushed off into the oats, stirring theft tops 

 like a fish swimming just under the surf ace of the water; 

 swallows skimmed the field like gulls, and even the 

 pines to our left spoke with the voice of the ocean. At 

 the crest of the ridge we set our backs to the forest 

 wall and looked out over the pasture below us. Ever 

 the wind went by across the oats, wave after wave of 

 emerald, and we saw, on the plain beneath, our tidy 

 village and the winding thread of the river, and beyond 

 that another hill going up with the green pastures of 

 Sky Farm perched on its fif teen-hundred-foot shoulder; 

 and farther still the mountain walls like smoky blue 

 billows on the horizon. Behind us, in the dim, cool 

 evergreens, a wood thrush sang. A chewink hopped 

 in a near-by tree, and a field sparrow was busy in the 

 oats. How fresh was the breeze, how peaceful this airy 

 spaciousness ! The world was being bathed in sunshine 

 and dried by the wind. We lay down at the pasture 

 edge, and the waving oats shut out everything but the 

 sky. We could look a long way into the green aisles 

 between the stalks, and once we saw a field mouse pass 

 across the end of a vista, a prowler in this pygmy forest. 

 He made no sound. There was no sound anywhere save 

 the brittle wave-swish of the grain, the deep murmur of 

 the evergreens behind us, and the music of the birds. 



To me there is less allurement in Sky Farm, because 

 it is inhabited. The true upland pasture is isolated, 

 alone. But yet Sky Farm has many attractions not 



