the exigencies of his struggle for life--he regards them
as a nuisance to be burned down by setting wholesale
fires to them. Already there is a scarcity of fuel-wood
in these parts.

Where the fires as yet have not penetrated too badly,
the cutting, which leaves only what is worthless, determines
the impression the forest makes. At night this impression
is distinctly uncanny. Like gigantic brooms, with their
handles stuck into the ground, the dead wood stands up;
the underbrush crowds against it, so dense that it lies
like huge black cushions under the stars. The inner
recesses form an almost impenetrable mass of young boles
of shivering aspen and scented balm. This mass slopes
down to thickets of alder, red dogwood, haw, highbush
cranberry, and honeysuckle, with wide beds of goldenrod
or purple asters shading off into the spangled meadows
wherever the copses open up into grassy glades.

Through this bush, and skirting its meadows, I drove for
an hour. There was another fork in the trail, and again
I had to get out and walk on the side, to feel with my
foot for the rut where it branched to the north. And
then, after a while, the landscape opened up, the brush
receded. At last I became conscious of a succession of
posts to the right, and a few minutes later I emerged on
the second east-west grade. Another mile to the east
along this grade, and I should come to the last, homeward
stretch.