Bethel, Maine
1900.
Dec 3-31
  Excepting on the occasion of the snow storm I spent from
one to three or four hours of every day out of doors. During
the first two weeks my daily walks were usually taken in
the afternoon up a wood road which starts in from the
main road a hundred yards or so to the westward of our
avenue and extends to the southward for a distance (it is 
said) of three or four miles passing for the first half mile
or so through thickets of alders and densely-growing coppices of
gray birch covering level and rather low and swampy ground,
then ascending by a succession of moderately steep pitches
to the crest (or perhaps the shoulder) of a ridge clothed with an
evergreen forest of mixed balsams, hemlock, red spruce and
arbor vitae intermingled with a good many sapling white pines
and a few hardwood trees among which the canoe and yellow
birches perhaps predominate. For a distance of over two
hundred yards along this ridge the road runs nearly
straight through a growth of vigorous young balsams
thirty or forty feet in height whose branches in most places
meet & interlace over the roadway forming arched vistas of
singular beauty.
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