He placed the limb in the blanket pouch and grabbed the fireplace poker. A heap of phlegm expunged from his lungs as he wheezed on his knees.

The lion could run out at any moment and snap my neck, he thought. He’d feel the weight of it on his back, and then nothing. At least it would be a clean kill, far more merciful than the Being’s offspring.

Matt took one last look across the southern valley to the Hurons, then limped north down the leaning post hill. Soon he arrived at the second biggest tree in the orchard, an old aspen that shaded a remnant sandpit.

A long time ago the sand pit was populated by pigs and horses. They drank cool water in the trough, brought up from the Black via aqueducts spread across the property. The aspen tree was much smaller then, providing minimal shade. The animals found it did the job just fine. Over the years, the pit collected horseshoes. A log wall three feet high cornered into the hill, making sure the sandy soil did not erode into the aqueduct and trough. The forest was younger, recovering from massive clear cuts. A man could see a deer when looking out into the southern valley. The only surviving old growth trees hid back in Twenty Mile Bog and the Huron Mountains. Wind had blown soil from the clear-cuts, slowing new growth. After most of the woods were cut, fires raged, scorching the soil. The forest was never the same.

Before the pigs and horses, before the farmers scratched out a living, the orchard wasn’t an orchard. Instead, it was a grove of old growth white pine and hemlock, many trees rising two hundred feet. Lichen grew along the shaded forest floor and caribou fed on the lichen. Mountain lions hunted the caribou. The wolverine, long gone from these parts, weaved in and out of the thick trunks always searching for food, sometimes stealing mountain lion kills.

The view from the leaning post always existed, except a person had to look beyond thick trunks amidst a massive, mediaeval forest to see. The woods were cooler and the streams swarmed with six-pound brook trout known as Coasters. The coasters were poached off and the practice of using the rivers to run logs scarred the riverbeds, destroying precious spawning grounds forever.

The wilderness was endless.

And in the end, the wilderness was turned inside out to build Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee. Now it stood, scarred, beaten, and missing most of the great pines. The loggers, miners, and farmers left after realizing this wasn’t fertile ground. The loggers cut too fast, too hard and ran themselves out of business. Paper companies bought the land for mass production, which they still own. The paper companies did not seek the old growth pine, but rather the pulpy, fast-growing hardwoods which they harvested at increased rates.