There was still much of the inside of the cabin to be done, and I painted and scraped and fixed the window panes and put up hooks for the pots, and finally it was what I had seen that I wanted.

Outside, the garden was planted and small green things were appearing. I could not tell, then, which were plants and which were weeds, and so I left it all alone for a while, not wanting to destroy something I had put there. It was remarkable to me that food was emerging from the earth simply because I had planted it; I watched the plants carefully, wondering how they evolved from the seeds; I thought they were miraculous.

It was well into the summer before the basic beginnings of life in the cabin were in order; the inside done, the garden planted, my primitive logging operations underway. I was achieving a rhythm.

It was possible then to have moments that were not spent in work. It had taken a long time, for there had been so many things that I did not know, so many simpler ways there must have been to make curtains, refinish furniture, cut wood, but I didn’t know any of them, and so I learned alone, by trial. There were times when I was annoyed, impatient with my ignorance, but still there was pleasure in doing things slowly, even if I was clumsy, and knowing when they were finished, satisfied, that however they had turned out, they were mine.

And there were other ways in which my ignorance rather pleased me. I could watch the birds and animals and insects that lived here and know nothing of their habits or how they grew and lived. I was accepting, uninquisitive, like the dead friend who had not wanted to take flowers to pieces, not finding it necessary in order to see. In a way, I was surprised that I was not frightened, for there must have been larger animals about, perhaps a stag now and then, although I never saw one, and other things, like snakes, of which I might have had a horror, and yet I had no fear. There was a sense of impenetrability about me here; that I belonged, and nothing would hurt me as long as I belonged.

I went exploring, walking around and through my land, discovering what it held, although I could put names to very few of the things I saw. Everywhere were flowers, weeds I suppose, although I do not wholly understand what it is that makes some plants flowers that one cultivates and others weeds that one destroys. I have never tried to grow flowers; what was here was here, and I knew simple ones like daisies and Queen Anne’s lace, which is also wild carrot without the romance. Why would Queen Anne’s lace, gray and delicate and sturdy, be a weed? It made no sense.