The ditches along my lane, and along the road that I will follow on foot for a way, will be almost dry. Only a trickle. In the spring, when the snow is melting and the springs that are high up in the rock cliffs some miles away are carrying it down full speed, the ditches overflow as does the little creek that runs near my cabin. They move with a rush then, their sound loud in the night; but in the fall they are quiet, almost dormant.

I will walk along the road a short way, then cross the ditch and climb the little rise on the other side. There is a fence there that separates the land that is mine from the land that belongs to the township, and I have not kept it up and neither has the township. It doesn’t especially matter, since neither I nor they have livestock that may wander off, although I thought once of keeping goats. I decided against it, because I do not want to be responsible for the well-being of animals.

The fence, as I say, is not what it once was, when this land was truly a farm. It wobbles on its posts, the wire sags, and the only part of it that has kept its tension and purpose is the barbed wire across the top, which may be what holds up the fence posts. The barbs make the fence difficult to climb because it is an easy thing to be caught on one as the fence bends under my weight. Each time, I say I will come out one day and clip the barbed wire away from the top, but I never do. It belongs.

When I have edged over the fence, I will be standing in my own woods. Not a forest by any means, but a small woods where there are squirrels and chipmunks, probably snakes and skunks, rabbits and, now and then, passing through on some mysterious transient route, a deer or a family of deer. I will be very still; I will sit or crouch on a blanket of leaves, and the trees will be almost barren. If I wait motionlessly, carefully, the easiest of the wildlife, the squirrels and chipmunks, will go back to what they were doing before my disturbance, chasing each other, carrying off nuts, preparing for the next season as I have. Do they also recognize this last day, this moment of the break?

When I take this same walk in the spring, the first small flowers are just opening. In the fall different flowers, the last of the season, will be finally wilting. The trees will be almost skeletal then, and yet I do not ever have the sense of death.