the mountain held the town as in a shadow i saw so much before i slept there once i noticed that i missed stars in the west where its black body cut into the sky near me it seemed i felt it like a wall behind which i was sheltered from a wind and yet between the town and it i found when i walked forth at dawn to see new things were fields a river and beyond more fields the river at the time was fallen away and made a widespread brawl on cobble stones but the signs showed what it had done in spring good grass land gullied out and in the grass ridges of sand and driftwood stripped of bark i crossed the river and swung round the mountain and there i met a man who moved so slow with white faced oxen in a heavy cart it seemed no hand to stop him altogether what town is this i asked this lunenburg then i was wrong the town of my sojourn beyond the bridge was not that of the mountain but only felt at night its shadowy presence where is your village very far from here there is no villageonly scattered farms we were but sixty voters last election we cant in nature grow to many more that thing takes all the room he moved his goad the mountain stood there to be pointed at pasture ran up the side a little way and then there was a wall of trees with trunks after that only tops of trees and cliffs imperfectly concealed among the leaves a dry ravine emerged from under boughs into the pasture that looks like a path is that the way to reach the top from here not for this morning but some other time i must be getting back to breakfast now i dont advise your trying from this side there is no proper path but those that have been up i understand have climbed from ladds thats five miles back you cant mistake the place they logged it there last winter some way up id take you but im bound the other way youve never climbed it ive been on the sides deer hunting and trout fishing theres a brook that starts up on it somewhereive heard say right on the top tip topa curious thing but what would interest you about the brook its always cold in summer warm in winter one of the great sights going is to see it steam in winter like an oxs breath until the bushes all along its banks are inch deep with the frosty spines and bristles you know the kind then let the sun shine on it there ought to be a view around the world from such a mountainif it isnt wooded clear to the top i saw through leafy screens great granite terraces in sun and shadow shelves one could rest a knee on getting up with depths behind him sheer a hundred feet or turn and sit on and look out and down with little ferns in crevices at his elbow as to that i cant say but theres the spring right on the summit almost like a fountain that ought to be worth seeing if its there you never saw it i guess theres no doubt about its being there i never saw it it may not be right on the very top it wouldnt have to be a long way down to have some head of water from above and a good distance down might not be noticed by anyone whod come a long way up one time i asked a fellow climbing it to look and tell me later how it was what did he say he said there was a lake somewhere in ireland on a mountain top but a lakes different what about the spring he never got up high enough to see thats why i dont advise your trying this side he tried this side ive always meant to go and look myself but you know how it is it doesnt seem so much to climb a mountain youve worked around the foot of all your life what would i do go in my overalls with a big stick the same as when the cows havent come down to the bars at milking time or with a shotgun for a stray black bear twouldnt seem real to climb for climbing it i shouldnt climb it if i didnt want to not for the sake of climbing whats its name we call it hor i dont know if thats right can one walk around it would it be too far you can drive round and keep in lunenburg but its as much as ever you can do the boundary lines keep in so close to it hor is the township and the townships hor and a few houses sprinkled round the foot like boulders broken off the upper cliff rolled out a little farther than the rest warm in december cold in june you say i dont suppose the waters changed at all you and i know enough to know its warm compared with cold and cold compared with warm but all the funs in how you say a thing youve lived here all your life ever since hor was no bigger than a what i did not hear he drew the oxen toward him with light touches of his slim goad on nose and offside flank gave them their marching orders and was moving 