50 East and West 
ground, he may stay in the woods for months 
and find that wild animals contribute but 
little to his impressions. 
The four-footed animals of the woods are 
crepuscular: creatures of the dawn and the 
dusk and not of the daylight, as the wilder- 
ness itself is a region of twilight, rather than 
of sunshine. If the skunk and porcupine do 
not observe the strict etiquette of the woods 
it is because they are emboldened by their 
peculiar means of self-protection. Deer are 
almost as plentiful in some parts of the woods 
as woodpeckers, and like fairies they come 
and go while we sleep. In the morning their 
clean-cut tracks are visible around the pond’s 
edge but the deer have become invisible. 
Perhaps in that mythical heart of the woods 
it is perpetual dawn, and there the deer have 
their true abode, and could we ever find 
it, would be seen frisking at all times, stray- 
ing into our world only when it is dawn and 
dusk with us. 
In spite of our inability to reach this heart 
of the wilderness, which, like the inner life 
of an alien people, will always remain inac- 
cessible to us, the wilderness—superficially 
as we are permitted to know it—is a world 
apart, a region of twilight and of silence in 
