“Beautiful is hardly the word to describe it! It’s so huge and open. There are no Alps, but there are mountains we call the Rockies. And huge open plains where deer and elk and even buffalo roam free.”

“And forests?”

“Forests like none you’ve ever seen! Forests of pine and fir and spruce—each with smells and undergrowth and wildlife all their own.”

“How big is the state you call Montana?”

“It is as big as your whole Germany!”

“One little state, as big as Germany!”

“Can you imagine the forests now?”

“Perhaps a little.”

“Imagine a forest stretching from here to Berlin and down to Poznan, without a break in it, without a town, without even a village, and then a little clearing for two or three towns, and then another forest equally large on the other side. That is how big the forests are in Montana.”

They fell silent for a moment.

“Do you hate my little pinewood, then?” asked Sabina.

“No,” laughed Matthew. “It’s the closest to Montana I’ve been in four years. There is something different about it too, that I can’t quite put my finger on, something I find appealing, but I don’t know quite what it is.”

“Different?”

“I think it’s how the trees are more spread out. It isn’t as dense. You can see right through. It’s a more friendly-feeling kind of woods, perhaps that’s it.”

“You should see the Black Forest down near Bavaria. That’s not a friendly forest!”

“Maybe what I notice here is peculiar to the north, then. I like it. It seems that this is a wood you could walk and walk in, and even get lost in, without feeling that you were really lost—do you know what I mean?”

“Perhaps not, but let me show you one of my favorite spots among the pines.”

Sabina galloped off ahead and Matthew did his best to follow, but she was nearly out of sight ahead of him when suddenly she pulled up and dismounted.

Matthew caught up, stopped, and joined her on the ground. They tied the reins of their mounts to branches, then she led off through the trees.

They walked over the springy, grassy, needle-strewn floor amongst pines whose trunks were no more than nine inches or a foot in diameter. Now that their horses were not with them, the only sounds came from their own feet breaking dead bits of debris and pine twigs as they went.