At three, the meadow and the perimeter of the lake, the falls and the trail below, were empty. He was the only human for miles, or so it seemed; might even be true, he thought. He crossed the bridge and lingered in the trees on the other side, with only the roar of the falls above and below and snatches of birdsong. He knew rocks of any description but little about birds. Red-winged blackbirds and robins and jays were obvious; he thought about buying a book in the general store to learn the others, but then, what use applying names? If his memories were soon to be scattered fine-ground over space, education was a waste.

What was important was finding his center, or pinning down some locus of being, establishing a moment of purity and concentrated awareness. He did not think that was possible with people all around; now was a chance to try.

Prayer perhaps. God had not been on his mind much recently, a telltale void; he did not wish to be inconsistent when all the world was a foxhole. But consistency was as useless now as nature studies, and not nearly so tempting.

The valley was still in sun, Liberty Cap half shadowed. The smoke had cleared some and the sky was bluer, green at the edges of the haze, more real than it had been.

"I am going to die," he said out loud, in a normal tone of voice, experimenting. "What I am will come to an end. My thoughts will end. I will experience nothing, not even the final end." Rising rocks and smoke and lava. No; probably not like that. Will it hurt? Will there be time for pain?

Mass death; God was probably busy also with mass prayer.

God.

Not a protector, unless there be miracles.

He shuffled his booted feet in the dry trail dirt. "What in hell am I looking for? Revelation?" He shook his head and forced a laugh. "Naive sonofabitch. You're out of training; your prayer muscles, your enlightenment biceps, they're all out of shape. Can't lift you any higher than your goddamned head." The bitterness in his voice shook him. Did he really want revelation, confirmation, assurance of existence or meaning beyond the end?

"God is what you love." He said this softly; it was embarrassing to realize how much he believed it. Yet he had never been particularly good at love, neither the love of people in all its forms nor the other kinds, except perhaps love of his work. "I love the Earth."

But that was rather vague and broad. The Earth offered only unthinking obstacles to love: storms, rock slides, volcanoes, quakes. Accidents. Earth could not help being incontinent. Easy to love the great mother.