“The wilderness is being taken from us,” Christina said, and then laughed, for they were pushing their way now into dense undergrowth along a stand of pine by the brook, “but one can’t call this exactly tame.”

“It’s just a different kind of wilderness, I guess.”

But Christina had not heard—she was stooped over to look closely at a perfect round cushion of pale green moss with a brown mushroom beside it. “Dear things,” she said. “How long is it since we have made a wild garden to take home? Oh, I do wish I had brought a basket and a trowel. Cornelius would have liked to see these.”

A jay screamed overhead. They could hear the brook trickling along somewhere to the right over boulders and under fallen trees. Everything had a wild, damp, sweet smell of moss and pine and fallen leaves. And the two women stood there a moment, just sensing the intricate, rich atmosphere around them, the woodsiness of woods.

“I’m so glad we came,” Christina said. Then, gazing around her, she added, “I wish I could have seen it before all the great trees were lumbered off,” and led the way on, holding onto the sharp branches for Ellen, handing the end of one to her so it couldn’t snap back. “Yes, a raggedy, odds-and-ends kind of wilderness it is now.”

Pretty soon the silence all around silenced them, and they were inside the adventure, for it was something of an adventure as they got deeper and deeper in, feeling their way by instinct and keeping to the road by following the sound of the brook. There was no road anymore.

“Isn’t this fun?” Christina turned round to enfold her friend in a smile.

“It ought to be close to that big rock where we used to sit. There! See it? Just beyond that pine.”

Here they climbed up and sat down, for auld lang syne—Ellen with quick grace, Christina cursing a stiff knee as she slipped and nearly fell and tore a hole in her tweed skirt. Once settled, she leaned her head against the trunk of the pine and closed her eyes.

Ellen watched the water curling round a boulder, making small eddies, and thought she could watch moving water forever and not tire of it.

They were comfortable together. They didn’t need to talk, never had. It was the quality of silence between them that had made this friendship last and renew itself over all the years.

Christina lit a cigarette.

“You shouldn’t do it, Christy—after pneumonia and all.”

“Don’t badger me. I’m happy.” She inhaled deeply, and was seized by a spasm of coughing.

“See?”

“Oh dear …” Her face had become quite pink with the racking cough. “I do hate carrying this decaying carcass around.”

Ellen laughed. “I can hear you saying that twenty years ago … you’ve always said it.”