The descent, abrupt where we had mounted, stretched away gently toward
the north and west. And on that slope, protected as it was from the
severer storms that sweep up the open valleys in winter, stood the most
magnificent primeval forest it has ever been my fortune to behold. The
huge maple, beech, and birch trees lifted column-like straight up to a
lucent green canopy, always twinkling and shifting in the wind and the
sunlight. Below grew a thin screen of underbrush, through which we had
no difficulty at all in pushing, but which threw about us face-high a
tender green partition. The effect was that of a pew in an
old-fashioned church, so that, though we shared the upper stillnesses,
a certain delightful privacy of our own seemed assured us. This privacy
we knew to be assured also to many creatures besides ourselves. On the
other side of the screen of broad leaves we sensed the presence of
life. It did not intrude on us, nor were we permitted to intrude on it.
But it was there. We heard it rustling, pattering, scrambling,
whispering, scurrying with a rush of wings. More subtly we felt it, as
one knows of a presence in a darkened room. By the exercise of
imagination and experience we identified it in its manifestations--the
squirrel, the partridge, the weasel, the spruce hens, once or twice the
deer. We knew it saw us perfectly, although we could not see it, and
that gave us an impression of companionship; so the forest was not
lonely.
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