It had taken near two weeks to reach this place. In truth he was not sure of the day of the week. He had bought a paraffin-treated canvas pitchtent before leaving Randolph and from there had traveled west in New York State before turning south and so had driven down through the country inland from the seaboard and the cities there but had stayed out in the sparse broken-up land of small farms and woods along the eastern foothills of the eastern mountains, camping overnight and sometimes more than one night where he could find a place to, where the farmers did not care but to warn him of fire, or in the broad upsweeping reaches of woods where there were no farmers or anyone else to ask permission for the land. In the middle of Virginia he’d turned east, away from the mountains and fall and back into summer.