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coast towns is surprisingly wild, and none of it wilder or lovelier than
certain tracts spread within easy reach of the few New Haveners who have
not wholly capitulated to business or college politics or golf or social
service or the movies, forgetting a deeper and saner lure. A later
Wordsworth or Thoreau might still live in midmost New Haven and never
feel shut from his heritage, for it neighbors him closely--swamp and
upland, hemlock cliff and hardwood forest, precipitous brook or
slow-winding meadow stream, where the red-winged blackbirds flute and
flash by; the whole year's wonder awaits him; he has but to go
forth--alone.

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her, though she so
ironically betrays most of us who merely pretend to love her, because we
feel, after due instruction, that we ought. For Nature is not easily
communicative, nor lightly wooed. She demands a higher devotion than an
occasional picnic, and will seldom have much to say to you if she feels
that you secretly prefer another society to hers. To her elect she
whispers, timelessly, and Susan, in her own way, was of the elect. It
was the way--the surest--of solitary communion; but it was very little,
very casually, the way of science. She observed much, but without
method; and catalogued not at all. She never counted her warblers and
seldom named them--but she loved them, as they slipped northward through
young leaves, shyly, with pure flashes of green or russet or gold.

Nature for Susan, in short, was all mood, ranging from cold horror to
supernal beauty; she did not sentimentalize the gradations. The cold
horror was there and chilled her, but the supernal beauty was there
too--and did not leave her cold. And through it all streamed an
indefinable awe, a trail one could not follow, a teasing mystery--an
unspoken word. It was back of--no rather it interpenetrated the horror
no less than the beauty; they were but phases, hints, of that other,
that suspected, eerie trail, leading one knew not where.

But surely there, in that magic circle, one might press closer, draw
oneself nearer, catch at the faintest hint toward a possible clue? The
aromatic space within the cedars became Susan's refuge, her nook from
the world, her Port-Royal, her Walden, her Lake Isle of Innisfree. Once
found that spring she never spoke of it; she hoarded her treasure,
slipping off to it stealthily, through slyest subterfuge or evasion,
whenever she could. For was i