After a long while, for I take the whole day for this walk and move only when the time comes, I will go on. At the other side of the woods the land dips into a ravine, the great trees end and dense bushes clot the bank. But I will go down, pushing through, and at the bottom, where very little sunshine penetrates, is my stream, the one that runs through the property, from other people’s toward other people’s, but here it is just my stream, and it passes from here close to the cabin. The sounds of the frogs that live around it dot my sleep, and the sound of the creek itself is always in the background of my hearing. Here in the ravine it is wider, narrowing farther along, and I must step carefully on stones to get across without wetting my feet. The water will be very cold in late autumn, is in fact cold all year around; it is not the sort of stream in which one paddles for long, as I have learned.

The water will be very low, and the ravine so dense that it will seem there is very little life; it will be more silent even than the woods, except for the gentle trickling. The birds that have not yet flown south will seem far away, far above, and there is no place on my land that is more quiet. One can drink here not only the water from the stream, but the silence.

Up the other side of the ravine there is another fence, much like the first, but without the barbed wire. Because I do not want to be the person to break it down entirely, I will climb it gingerly, testing my weight on it, finding the strongest spot. One of these years, I know, it will just lean over and not come up again, but not, I hope, in my time.

Over the fence is a pasture, rocky and rough, flat and unlovely. The land here is generally not good for crop farming; one would want to be grazing cattle here, not trying to plow it.

I know it’s selfish to keep these acres to myself, not contributing by raising food. I know I could rent this land to a farmer who wants a little more for his cattle, but I don’t because I want to be able to walk here undisturbed.

There are big rocks to sit on to survey my world. I will move among them, pausing, watching the tiny life of the pasture, toads, birds, insects, worms, everything is there except that it is tiny and if you take a step you must be aware that something is dying underfoot. In places like the woods, where everything is larger and grander, one is not so conscious of that. But in the pasture, with just rocks and grass and weeds, one must look down and see the little forms.