hing worth preserving stood in the way here
came the loaded barrow and the barrowist, like a piece of artillery
sweeping into action, and a fill undistinguishable from nature soon
brought the path around the obstacle on what had been its lower side, to
meander on at its unvarying rate of rise or fall as though
nothing--except the trees and wild flowers--had happened since the vast
freshets of the post-glacial period built the landscape. I made the
drive first, of steeper grade than the paths; but every new length of
way built, whether walk or road, made the next easier to build, by
making easier going for the artillery, the construction train. Also each
new path has made it easier to bring up, for the lawn garden, sand,
clay, or leaf-mould, or for hearth consumption all the wood which the
grove's natural mortality each year requires to be disposed of. There is
a superior spiritual quality in the warmth of a fire of h-oak, h-ash,
and even h-ellum gathered from your own acre, especially if the acre is
very small and has contour paths. By a fire of my own acre's "dead and
down" I write these lines. I never buy cordwood.

Only half the grove has required these paths, the other half being down
on the flat margin of the river, traversed by a cart-road at least half
a century old, though used by wheels hardly twice a year; but in the
three acres where lie the contour paths there is now three-fifths of a
mile of them, not a rod of which is superfluous. And then I have two
examples of another kind of path: paths with steps; paths which for good
and lawful reasons cannot allow you time to go around on the "five per
cent" grade but must cut across, taking a single ravine lengthwise, to
visit its three fish-pools.

These steps, and two short retaining walls elsewhere in the grove, are
made of the field stones of the region, uncut. All are laid "dry" like
the ordinary stone fences of New England farms, and the walls are built
with a smart inward batter so that the winter frosts may heave them year
after year, heave and leave but not tumble them down. I got that idea
from a book. Everything worth while on my acre is from books except
what two or three professional friends have from time to time dropped
into my hungry ear. Both my ears have good appetites--for garden lore.

About half a mile from me, down Mill River, stands the factory of a
prized friend who more than any other man helps by personal daily care
to promote Northampton