CHAPTER VII 

 THE HARVEST OF THE WILD PLACES 



OVER the hill behind our house, and then a mile 

 through the swamp, we come out into a pasture clear- 

 ing set on a slope. The slope is to the south, with 

 many an undulation and outcropping ledge, with here 

 and there a group of young hemlocks, here and there 

 an old apple tree bristling with suckers, or a spiky seed- 

 ling from the parent pippin cropped into a dwarf cone 

 like an inverted top; and almost in the centre of the 

 pasture a hollow where a spring makes an emerald patch 

 in the grass, and an emerald ribbon follows the outlet 

 brook into the woods. On its southern edge the 

 clearing meets the forest, with little bays running 

 into the pines, or sallies of young birch coming out 

 to prospect in the sunlight. The pasture grass is 

 cropped by occasional sheep and a cow or two which 

 wander through the woods from a distant farm. They 

 like it especially in hot weather, for its spring and its 

 clumps of hemlock, under which they gather in the 

 dense shade and look out at you blandly. But, 

 despite the cattle, it is a wild spot an abandoned 

 clearing going back to forest; part of a farm where 



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