LETTERS FROM AN OREGON RANCH
opening. Our impatient four-footed friends, who long before had leaped that barrier, plunging into the forest’s fringing undergrowth, were doubtless already engaged in a still hunt, as no sound came from them. As we struggle through the dripping bushes, rejoicing in both their baptism and their benediction, and enter the dusky atmosphere of the real woods, where the stately trees stand in crowded columns, and catch that first cool wave of scented silence, we are apt to talk compassionately of city dwellers, all heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a little carpentry or masonry between them. I think of all such pityingly, as I stand in the solitude of the pointed firs, crushing their green aromatic needles in my hands, burying my face in them to catch their fullest and sweetest perfume; and then I thank the kindly star that guided us across plain and desert and mountain into these glorious hills of Oregon.
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