ESCAPED FROM GARDENS 183 



frisked before us with cheeks pouched with nuts and corn, 

 exciting the blue jays that screamed their discontent in 

 reply to crow philosophy cawed in the grove across the 

 ravines. All nature was prophetic of winter, though 

 autumn would linger yet a little longer. 



Our home garden, protected from north and west 

 winds, still flaunts the latest blossoms of summer. But 

 here it is autumn, forest and plain reminiscent of the 

 changing year and the ebb and flow of life. Even the 

 friends of childhood still living in their old homes in this 

 out-of-the-way neighborhood repeat the thought that this 

 familiar planet on which we dwell maybe has reached its 

 November. 



An ancient road from a woodcutter's clearing twisted 

 and turned among stumps and outcropping rocks, the gray 

 bones of the hill ridge. To the fancy it played a game of 

 hide and seek with some forest-born "Brushwood Boy." 

 It descended into the valley to a glen that might have 

 been the abiding haunt of gnomes, and then, with a short 

 turn across a brook and over a rocky steep, it entered a 

 sylvan glade where cardinal flowers showed red under a 

 protection of hardy bracken, and near a shallow pool pros- 

 pered a colony of fringed gentian, blue as if cut from the 

 celestial curtains of the sky. 



Then the winding road turned its back on fairyland 

 and clambered between bowlders to an open plateau 

 and the mournful reminders of a deserted farm. The 



