Lake Umbagog.
1907
August 9
(No 12)
down the slope I look out over the meadows, the pond
and the winding river to the lake beyond and to the
still more distant hills and mountains. The stubs have
quite disappeared and green maples and alders have taken their
places along some of the highers portions of the river banks. Everything else seems just as it was in the earlier days, as I
am especially reminded of them as I watch the vivid, light green meadow grass and the dark green bullrushes
glint and glisten in the sunlight as the breeze sweeps through
them; or the Red-wing perched on a half submerged bush and
the Great Blue Heron standing near him at the edge of the
marsh; or the Whistlers diving at short,
regular intervals in the pond with a Fish Hawk, high above them,
swinging around and around in graceful circles in the light blue sky.
  Nor are these and other things that I see more
familiar or more potent in reviving past associations than
are the sounds that came to my ears; such as the never
ceasing murmur of the little rapid; the
monotonous, rasping drone of the saw, eating its way through
the big logs (now of spruce or birch instead of pine); the
twittering of Swallows and or Swifts; the rattle of 
a Kingfisher; the hoarse cry of a Heron; and the clear,
deliberately measured notes of a Peabody Bird. The tinkle
of a cow bell comes faintly from a distant pasture. Hermit
Thrushes would be singing there at this house (for the sun
is now sinking in the west) were it not a little too late
in the season for them.
  But as I return to the house I miss the loud, deep
voices of the guides and the lighter sounds of talk and
laughter from the city-bred sportsmen and their wives. Now
that the shadows are lengthening and the light waning I am
chilled to the heart by the loneliness of the place and glad to
escape from it in my canoe.