I close my eyes and hear the sough of the wind across the plains. The soughing of the wind lives here. A man could be born and live and die here, and every minute of his life hear the regular beat, the distant roar, the showowowoow of the wind.

There are not and will be no farms, cottages, huts, bridges.

The plain stretches to every side, bright gold, trees ignoring their shadows, taut menace behind every line of tall grass, tiny animals and large insects before our feet, somewhere over there the sea, there mountains (always mountains) with their blue, white, grey, mauve and purple shades suggesting valleys of firs and high, stark slopes with scree and caves and huge, warm, unfriendly, shaggy bears.

The early morning sky was a kind of yellow. And the sun, like a white hole in the yellow, pouring out light …

I remembered the Superlativity teaches that the sun is the glory of thousands of pure souls all shining together.

I knew that speed was necessary, and once we found the river all we’d have to do would be to follow it South and East—So I was glad when we came upon a sort of network of shallow streams running all together over a vast expanse of pebbles, each pebble glinting whether or not under water, the water blue and clean, white skull here and there, where some animal had breathed its last by the water—there were no other kinds of bones, they must all have been carted away by scavengers for their marrow.

We went all together towards the river—Urns and I, the little streams plinking busily, the many small, shrill, blue birds overhead. I halted Urns with my knees. By our path a lone blue rock rose higher than my head; a spring gushed from it in a great hurry to join the others. It was little, and I waited a long time till the thin trickle would cup fully to the brink of my hands. I drank, then waited another while for full hands, then bent forward over Urns’ head and got him to drink. He slurped sideways to avoid cutting me, but it was not enough and we got acrid milk from spurge plants later.

Urns objected to the little blue birds. They twittered and swooped in patterns low above our heads. I was enjoying this till he rose up, stretching his neck so I had to cling, and gave as long a hoarsebellow as he could sustain. They fled for a little way, then they were back again and beneath us the streams in the same joyous haste.