4 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



tall green wall. The pasture itself goes over the 

 shoulder on either side with a beautiful dome-like billow, 

 and meets the forest again climbing up from the valley. 

 You see no road leading thither. It is a lonely clearing 

 on the heights, and behind the sharp, doming line of its 

 wave-crest the sky drops down to infinite depths of 

 space. How far one could see if he climbed there and 

 looked over the crest! How fresh the wind must blow 

 out of those deep sky spaces, though here in the valley 

 the summer day is breathless and sultry! How tiny 

 the black-and-white specks of the Holsteins appear, 

 as they seem barely to move, like lazy flies on a green 

 tapestry! 



One Autumn not long ago the farmer ploughed High 

 Pasture, turning it from green to brown, and when the 

 first snow-spits of November came the furrows filled, 

 and suddenly it was a beautiful zebra-skin laid over the 

 shoulder of the hill. Then all Winter it was a dome of 

 glistening white amid the reddish-gray of the mountain 

 forest. But as Spring came up the land it grew emerald 

 with oats, and in lush midsummer we climbed through 

 the woods to reach it, up the bed of a forest brook, and 

 came out upon the lower edge as upon a beach. The 

 waves were breaking at our feet. Over the dome-line 

 above us, out of those deep sky spaces behind, came 

 the wind, and swept the billows down upon us with a 

 rustling murmur as of some magic, brittle sea. 



We skirted the pasture to the highest point, while a 



