It was a beautiful day, with high thin clouds in the north, the rest of the sky unmarred, breathtakingly clear. Each hill, each mountain in the distance, was sharply outlined; no haze had formed yet, the breeze was gentle and warm. The silence was so complete that the woman and boy were both reluctant to break it with speech, and they walked quietly. When they paused to rest, she smiled at him and he grinned back and then lay with his hands under his head and stared at the sky.

"What's in your big pack?" he asked as they climbed later. She had made a small pack for him to carry, and she still carried the laundry bag, now strapped to her back.

"You'll see," she said. "A surprise."

And later he said, "It's farther than it looked, isn't it? Will we get there before dark?"

"Long before dark," she said. "But it is far. Do you want to rest again?"

He nodded and they sat under a spruce tree. The spruces were coming down the mountains, she thought, recalling in detail old forestry maps of the region.

"Do you still read much?" she asked.

Mark shifted uneasily and looked at the sky, then at the trees, and finally grunted noncommittally.

"So did I," she said. "The old house is full of books, isn't it? They're so brittle, though, you have to be careful with them. After you went to sleep every night I sat up and read everything in the house."

"Did you read the one about Indians?" he asked, and rolled over on his stomach and propped his head up in his cupped hands. "They knew how to do everything, make fires, make canoes, tents, everything."

"And there's one about how boys, a club or something, used to go camping and relearn all the Indian methods. It can still be done," she said dreamily.

"And what you can eat in the woods, and stuff like that? I read that one."

They walked, rested, talked about the books in the old house, talked about the things Mark planned to make, climbed some more, and late in the afternoon they came to the summit of the mountain and looked down over the entire valley, all the way to the Shenandoah River in the distance.

Molly found a spot that was level and sheltered, and Mark finally got to see the surprise she had prepared for him: blankets, some preserved food, fruits, meat, six pieces of cornbread, and corn to pop over the open fire. After they ate, they pushed spruce needles into mounds and Mark rolled up in his blanket and yawned.

"What's that noise?" he asked after a moment.

"The trees," Molly said softly. "The wind moves up there even when we can't feel it down here, and the trees and wind tell each other secrets."