 |
| Calbraith Hunter, Acid Art, ex. 8 |
My next report, June 15th, 1977, from the Mount Wilcox Lean-to, near Tyringham, Massachusets, describes the first full day of hiking, an effort to make up lost time and get back to the game plan.
I felt so guilty about creeping up steep slopes, puttering up slight grades "like a ninety-two year old athlete making a comeback," and guzzling my water! I was very concerned about hitting my mileage targets, about maybe securing a roof over my head as opposed to stars or tent. (The lean-tos are very appealing. Fellow hikers congregate there, and humanity offers friendship and other benefits.)
Did I stop to look at what I was walking in or on? The New England forests are resplendent in their robes of green and amber, with shafts of white and brown. The smell of the forrest is of musts and freshets, with the occasional tang of dung. The woods are sonically alive also, with rustles representing wildlife, and the birds all around, not to mention the insect life zooming in to both sing in your ear and make you swat.
The rhythm of the hike varies with the terrain. Climbing makes the arms swing out for balance. Descending and they are again in opposition to keep all one's weight above one's center of gravity. On the flat stretches, on the ridges, when one's work is done for a while, the pace is a steady swing, varying in tempo depending on one's mood or psychology from saunter to lope. As I say, I was in the mood to lope. Still, even though one can only take in so much "beauty of nature," and after you've established that, yes, you're out in the woods on a hike and your mind turns to other things, the path I walked was a cathedral of glory which I prayed to in my boots.
The journal records a certain amount of confusion about the mileages and the milestones. The fact of the historical matter is that I reached my destination way early. I took a lot of stuff on this hike, all of it deemed essential to my purposes as a biological organism and as an artist, but I seem to have forgotten my watch. I sat down in the aforementioned "glory of nature" still wet from my triumphant exertion, and described my itinerary and progress to the journal. I was able to do this because, as I describe the scene, the sun is nowhere near "busting its chops" to set. Though that great yellow orb is on the second half of its daily arc, I judge it to be no later than two thirty in the afternoon. Maybe three, at the latest.
I launch into a description of the source of my anxiety about my location on the planet: I hiked into a town (Tryingham is very near the trail) to mail my post cards. "Greetings from effing nowhere!" I had a batch of ten, all addressed to the various members of the cast of characters, now all spread out all over the place doing their living large. A woman in her front yard in that town told me, guessing, that it was ten thirty in the morning. Then, I met a fellow hiking north who told me that I could expect to run into a fire tower two miles further on. I was expecting a hike of some seven miles to reach my destination, the lean-to. Well, the dude's distance judgment was way off on the under side, because I hiked and hiked, no fire tower to be seen. I couldn't figure out why that two miles was going so slowly! I picked up the pace, walking at a trot like a mouse on a wheel. Whumpity, whumpity. I met another fellow also hiking north, and he said,
"oh yeah. That fire tower is about two miles off!"
"Hey," I thought, "this thing doesn't go any faster."
I'm judging distance now by degree of shoulder cramp.
If I couldn't make my day's quota over and over, I'd be late for the party in New York.
That I was actually, um, walking to.
But BOOM. There was the fire tower. Which I had to climb.
Ah! The beauty of New England! I look out at the spread of green in the afternoon light for about five minutes. Then BOOM, down I go. Gotta book it!
Just on the other side of the fire tower mountain, there was the lean-to.
The evening and the morning were the second day. The next: Jug's End, 14.5 miles hence.
No one else was at the lean-to. I slept the sleep of the damned tired.
3.
On my third day out, I had the epiphany that I was seeking. I was shaping up fast. I'd been eating and drinking down my supplies and my load was lighter. I had slept late, and arrived late at the Jug's End spring. I had walked into a beautiful sunset, and was suddenly filled with peace and harmony. My life was exactly as I wanted it to be. I was free, and out on the trail. The questions that had been troubling me now resolved; it was a cadence in the key of optimism. I had my gifts, of that I was sure. I had the need to employ them with those that had nurtured (and tolerated) me all along. I'd walk on to New York and persevere with the ballet score. Perhaps Rod and Xenia would stage a premier down the road. Perhaps, on the other end of this hike, a career would be launched.
[And that is how it happened.]
My thoughts turned also outward; a rarity. I thought of my place in the world, but also of the world's place in the cosmos. I thought of the cosmic scheme of things, of the dance of life and harmony within nature.
For the moment, I was safe in nature's arms. The Jug's End spring water tasted like it had flowed out of Eden and into my mouth. I filled my canteen to the brim. I spread my tent out on the naked earth and slept like a baby under the stars, lulled to sleep by the susurration of the rivulet.
The evening and morning were the third day.
I decided, the next morning, filled with the holy light, to walk only as far as the Massachusetts-Connecticut line. I would camp in Sage's Ravine.
Friday, June 17th, 1977.
I'm holed up in my tent, waiting out the rain. Even dinner was cancelled. I snacked that afternoon on trail mix. In my journal, to fill up the time, I plot the course of the rest of my week. The appointment book is back!
A fellow hiker, solo female, joined me in this clearing, and hastily pitched her tent. I poked my head out to see what the rustle of fabric was about as it blended in with the clatter of the rain on tent wall. She didn't look my way. She was a soggy monkey, close cropped hair. She disappeared inside her dome.
While I wrote, the rain stopped and the sun came out. Sunshine, girl, I'm going to pencil you in!
When I re-emerged to pack up, she was long gone. Those dome tents are easy up and down.
"All about me, in this thicket of flowering rhododendrons, laurel bushes, and the varieties of trees of all ages and therefore sizes, both conifer and deciduous, are the incredible patterns of nature. The patterns on leaves, the patterns of growth - above the timberline, as I saw that morning atop Mount Everett (no, NOT Everest!), scrub pines, and in the ravines, the tall pine stands, spruce groves, all exemplify and and parallel the repeating, yet endlessly varied patterns of nature. And yet! man - myself, a man - , is a part of of this pattern and within it. I can see the areas where men congregate and (I can see that) the types and varieties of men that congregate where they do as analogous to the ways in which every aspect of this forest is organized: within certain tolerances, random factors are the control element."
Thus writes our boy Cal, as he sits among the evergreens in the glade of inspiration. I let his ancient words stand. I could make it shorter, but I can't make it sweeter.
[Thanks for not editing. We agree. Continue on...
please.]
"This beauty of nature is a great solace to me. Its lushness, softness, capriciousness, and constancy; all paradoxes meet here. Discipline and impeccability make it possible to enjoy."
I got it that I had to have my shit together to do this. But I missed that the paradoxes can swamp the boat, kill the millions, and wipe out the civilization. Ah well, civilizations come and go. Do I think that I myself will live to see another day? I sometimes feel like someone is looking over my shoulder as I write. No, not just the Facebook feed, and the email thread, and the stats counter. It is the hot breath of what is to be. What becomes of us? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust? (Annie Lennox song.)
The evening and morning were the fourth day.
Saturday, June 18th, 1977. (His eventual wedding day, out in that distant island of time!)
Thundershower in the afternoon, again holed up in the tent. A spit away from his daily destination, where there is, it turns out, no lean-to, and no place to camp.
Sunday, June 19th, 1977.
Waking up to find the weather still overcast. "Everything, including myself, is wet. Onward."
"Contented river! In thy dreamy realm--
The cloudy willow and the plumy elm:"...
Not so far that I can't hear in mind's ear that dreamy score that rises from the mists into wedges of dense sound (and fury), the struggles of humanity to harness nature to its ways and means. In so doing, the connection between humankind and its benefactor and host has become lost to the mind of those who toil on heedlessly, endlessly, needlessly. In that disconnect lie the seeds of a downfall, a disappointment. Ahead, for mankind, lies disaster. For this nature, this river, this forest will only exist in placidity for so long. Every rustle just out of earshot marks another being waiting to pounce, waiting to either outlast the human throng or go extinct. And mankind, at the top of the food chain, thinking itself not atop, but astride and in control, is sawing away at the trunk furiously, soon to fall. And, just as in the Ives score, the river will reemerge, placidly flowing out from under that welter of dissonance. Nature, a part of which man also is, is designed to throw off the offending burdens and right itself. Into the discard pile we will go.
...Ah! There's a sensitive ripple, and the swift
Red leaves--September's firstlings--faster adrift;..
[He's speaking the truth here, plainly and without error. Isn't that what you seek, Third person? An awareness in the artist that something is amiss? Eve, do you not love this man now all the more for what he knew while walking, before all of that writing? Has there not been some progress made here? A pilgrim's progress? Is this not the prodigal son heading home? Or is it just some twenty year old on the way to a party?]
Eve of Brattleboro butts in as editrix:
He camps tonight in a pleasant grove of pines... No, my husband says, let the man have his say! He is not a finished writer yet, not the voice he will become, but here he arrives at the crux of his stroll, strolling in a time before our present time of endless strolling. Let us relish this snapshot of the years before the Collapse! We have so few, so very few, to go on!
"Tonight's camp is beside the river in a pleasant grove of pines. Played my flute and am smoking a bowl of tobacco. I've decided not to hike down to Bear Mountain. All hikers who've been through the New York and New Jersey sections say that it's mostly paved interstates and backwoods logging roads, mixed with an occasional tract of woodland. That means, then, that wherever that lean-to might be (Mountain Brook), from there it's only 25.7 miles to Pawling, where I now plan to take the train into New York City."
This meant abandoning for the most part the regimen of the day's hike and lazing around for a few days, enjoying the last few mountainous areas before the suburban sprawl to the south. I smoked my pipe. I played my flute, I took in the beauty all around me. I contemplated rather than exerted. I dropped my pace to a saunter. It was a fitting way to finish this trek. I confess I missed my friends in New York and longed to be there with them. They were my past; but also, they were my future. To the outstretched arm of my destiny I now began to stroll. I was looking back over my shoulder to the life in Boston that had formed me (or at least informed me), and to that life I would briefly return for its coda. But the journey I was on had a destination and I was taking it step by step, not in much of a hurry to be out of the woods. I always loved the woods. I still do.
The evening and the morning were the seventh day, on which he rested.
[Presumably, Cal dawdled the rest of the week, taking that time to camp out and walk the 25.7 miles to Pawling. It would not do to be in New York too soon, as the party there had a date certain. There is an apocryphal story that Hunter used to like to tell of being stuck on a stretch of suburban road for hours by a snarling cur that was guarding its turf. It came running up and sat before him, down on haunches, fangs bared, growling its warning. Cal was forced to put down his pack and wait. Each time he picked up the pack to move forward, the dog commenced again to snarl. This standoff lasted the better part of an afternoon. Eventually, the owner of the dog returned and put the animal inside. The owner was a comely Up State New Yorker, her summer dress wrapping the willows of her form and her tresses flowing down her back, neck and covering her breast. She smiled beautifully and broadly at the now bearded and sweat-stained man who smelled of wood smoke and male musk. She was guarded solely by her dog. She invited him in, promising to draw him a bath. She quaintly bowed and curtseyed. Keeping her eyes on him all the while. In fact she could not help but keep an eye; she could not look away. It was as if she were seeing a ghost. Cal himself felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. If this were Eve, he'd never know it. If this were Guinnevere, it was David Crosby's woman, and he'd best be getting on. She had her dogs and cats, and this was not his yard. There was death up ahead, just around the corner. Not just for her, but for all who sauntered here. This was where Hunter saw the future and it chilled him to the bone. Although he told often of the dog, he never spoke of the woman.]
My thoughts turned also outward; a rarity. I thought of my place in the world, but also of the world's place in the cosmos. I thought of the cosmic scheme of things, of the dance of life and harmony within nature.
For the moment, I was safe in nature's arms. The Jug's End spring water tasted like it had flowed out of Eden and into my mouth. I filled my canteen to the brim. I spread my tent out on the naked earth and slept like a baby under the stars, lulled to sleep by the susurration of the rivulet.
The evening and morning were the third day.
I decided, the next morning, filled with the holy light, to walk only as far as the Massachusetts-Connecticut line. I would camp in Sage's Ravine.
Friday, June 17th, 1977.
I'm holed up in my tent, waiting out the rain. Even dinner was cancelled. I snacked that afternoon on trail mix. In my journal, to fill up the time, I plot the course of the rest of my week. The appointment book is back!
A fellow hiker, solo female, joined me in this clearing, and hastily pitched her tent. I poked my head out to see what the rustle of fabric was about as it blended in with the clatter of the rain on tent wall. She didn't look my way. She was a soggy monkey, close cropped hair. She disappeared inside her dome.
While I wrote, the rain stopped and the sun came out. Sunshine, girl, I'm going to pencil you in!
When I re-emerged to pack up, she was long gone. Those dome tents are easy up and down.
"All about me, in this thicket of flowering rhododendrons, laurel bushes, and the varieties of trees of all ages and therefore sizes, both conifer and deciduous, are the incredible patterns of nature. The patterns on leaves, the patterns of growth - above the timberline, as I saw that morning atop Mount Everett (no, NOT Everest!), scrub pines, and in the ravines, the tall pine stands, spruce groves, all exemplify and and parallel the repeating, yet endlessly varied patterns of nature. And yet! man - myself, a man - , is a part of of this pattern and within it. I can see the areas where men congregate and (I can see that) the types and varieties of men that congregate where they do as analogous to the ways in which every aspect of this forest is organized: within certain tolerances, random factors are the control element."
Thus writes our boy Cal, as he sits among the evergreens in the glade of inspiration. I let his ancient words stand. I could make it shorter, but I can't make it sweeter.
[Thanks for not editing. We agree. Continue on...
please.]
"This beauty of nature is a great solace to me. Its lushness, softness, capriciousness, and constancy; all paradoxes meet here. Discipline and impeccability make it possible to enjoy."
I got it that I had to have my shit together to do this. But I missed that the paradoxes can swamp the boat, kill the millions, and wipe out the civilization. Ah well, civilizations come and go. Do I think that I myself will live to see another day? I sometimes feel like someone is looking over my shoulder as I write. No, not just the Facebook feed, and the email thread, and the stats counter. It is the hot breath of what is to be. What becomes of us? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust? (Annie Lennox song.)
The evening and morning were the fourth day.
Saturday, June 18th, 1977. (His eventual wedding day, out in that distant island of time!)
Thundershower in the afternoon, again holed up in the tent. A spit away from his daily destination, where there is, it turns out, no lean-to, and no place to camp.
Sunday, June 19th, 1977.
Waking up to find the weather still overcast. "Everything, including myself, is wet. Onward."
4.
At Red Mountain LT in Connecticut.
"There was a lot more to Saturday than just the afternoon and evening thunderstorm, although that was the main feature at the time I made my entries for that day."
I woke up in a very soggy tent that Saturday morning, having endured a night of heavy rain and the drama of thunder on the mountain. I packed up the sopping gear and climbed to the highest point in Connecticut. "Four hundred feet," proclaimed the geological survey marker atop the trapezoidal cement tower. The tower itself was 50-60 feet high, and that, of course, had to be climbed. Which I did, as soon as I put down my pack and took off my eyeglasses.
Three people had spent the night on this peak: a fellow, his friend, and the friend's girl friend. The fellow allowed as how he'd been up the tower many times, and that the hard part was getting down. I found it not that hard, unless muscle tension threw off the balance. The friend and his girl climbed the tower after me, bringing me my flute and my eyeglasses. The fellow on the ground called up that you could see New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts from up there. The view I saw was apolitical, lacking the markings of the map, and partly shrouded in a mist.
The next part of my trek was joyous. I forgot I had my pack on and I caught up with the boy scout troop I'd been hearing about for the past two days. They were sprawled all over the road where the AT comes out off Lion's Head and onto the farmhouses and residential area going down into Salisbury.
In Salisbury, I bought the groceries I needed and had a milkshake at the local ice cream parlor.
The afternoon's hike was "not as breezy"as the morning's. (I'd added weight in town.) I mused often (to myself) how true it was that Connecticut was 'scenic.' But the woods were dark, this afternoon, and underfoot a mix of rich black earth alternated with a mix of pebbles, boulders and pine needles. This characterized the ground over which I hastened.
The storm broke right after I encountered a man out on a day hike - a scientist from Yale working on particle physics research - and I hiked in the rain with him down to his car, where we took shelter. We sat in his car munching cherries and chocolates, exchanging occasional comments, but the conversation was stiff and never took wing. He drove me to where the trail took off into the mountains again. I spent the late afternoon scrambling up a slippery, rocky mountainside.
Sunday was exquisite. The woods dried out. I walked to Red Mountain and crashed with two fellows that kept me chuckling - one a thru-hiker GAME (Georgia to Maine) named Jim, and the other an ex-army working man bad-assed-nice-guy fellow who called me Ken, and whose own name I forgot.
The evening and the morning were the next couple of days.
Monday, June 20th, 1977.
Picnic table just past Mohawk 1 LT, Connecticut.
"Approaching Cornwall. I'll mail the next back of the post cards, "greetings from the mastery man," in that town. A gorgeous day. No clouds, birds singing, hot sun, pleasant breeze. Dig it! Gotta move on now."
I was entering into the heart of the heart. We'd been poring over the scores of Charles Edward Ives, and had been to 'symphony' to hear the concert. But I was fast approaching the river, the Housatonic. Ives' great orchestral set, the "Housatonic at Stockbridge" lingered in my young ears and mind. In the "Essays Before a Sonata," Ives wrote his heart out about getting the art out. The magic, the excitement of a home run (insert team and ballpark here) can't be expressed 'by a nice fugue in C major.' Yes, but the 'grandeur and simplicity of the New England Church' could. What was I walking through, if not the grand, simple New England church of woodland wonders? How did Ives express the Housatonic? How far away was Stockbridge? The Ives piece, the final section of the third orchestral set "Three Places in New England," sets a poem by Robert Underwood Johnson.
At Red Mountain LT in Connecticut.
"There was a lot more to Saturday than just the afternoon and evening thunderstorm, although that was the main feature at the time I made my entries for that day."
I woke up in a very soggy tent that Saturday morning, having endured a night of heavy rain and the drama of thunder on the mountain. I packed up the sopping gear and climbed to the highest point in Connecticut. "Four hundred feet," proclaimed the geological survey marker atop the trapezoidal cement tower. The tower itself was 50-60 feet high, and that, of course, had to be climbed. Which I did, as soon as I put down my pack and took off my eyeglasses.
Three people had spent the night on this peak: a fellow, his friend, and the friend's girl friend. The fellow allowed as how he'd been up the tower many times, and that the hard part was getting down. I found it not that hard, unless muscle tension threw off the balance. The friend and his girl climbed the tower after me, bringing me my flute and my eyeglasses. The fellow on the ground called up that you could see New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts from up there. The view I saw was apolitical, lacking the markings of the map, and partly shrouded in a mist.
The next part of my trek was joyous. I forgot I had my pack on and I caught up with the boy scout troop I'd been hearing about for the past two days. They were sprawled all over the road where the AT comes out off Lion's Head and onto the farmhouses and residential area going down into Salisbury.
In Salisbury, I bought the groceries I needed and had a milkshake at the local ice cream parlor.
The afternoon's hike was "not as breezy"as the morning's. (I'd added weight in town.) I mused often (to myself) how true it was that Connecticut was 'scenic.' But the woods were dark, this afternoon, and underfoot a mix of rich black earth alternated with a mix of pebbles, boulders and pine needles. This characterized the ground over which I hastened.
The storm broke right after I encountered a man out on a day hike - a scientist from Yale working on particle physics research - and I hiked in the rain with him down to his car, where we took shelter. We sat in his car munching cherries and chocolates, exchanging occasional comments, but the conversation was stiff and never took wing. He drove me to where the trail took off into the mountains again. I spent the late afternoon scrambling up a slippery, rocky mountainside.
Sunday was exquisite. The woods dried out. I walked to Red Mountain and crashed with two fellows that kept me chuckling - one a thru-hiker GAME (Georgia to Maine) named Jim, and the other an ex-army working man bad-assed-nice-guy fellow who called me Ken, and whose own name I forgot.
The evening and the morning were the next couple of days.
Monday, June 20th, 1977.
Picnic table just past Mohawk 1 LT, Connecticut.
"Approaching Cornwall. I'll mail the next back of the post cards, "greetings from the mastery man," in that town. A gorgeous day. No clouds, birds singing, hot sun, pleasant breeze. Dig it! Gotta move on now."
I was entering into the heart of the heart. We'd been poring over the scores of Charles Edward Ives, and had been to 'symphony' to hear the concert. But I was fast approaching the river, the Housatonic. Ives' great orchestral set, the "Housatonic at Stockbridge" lingered in my young ears and mind. In the "Essays Before a Sonata," Ives wrote his heart out about getting the art out. The magic, the excitement of a home run (insert team and ballpark here) can't be expressed 'by a nice fugue in C major.' Yes, but the 'grandeur and simplicity of the New England Church' could. What was I walking through, if not the grand, simple New England church of woodland wonders? How did Ives express the Housatonic? How far away was Stockbridge? The Ives piece, the final section of the third orchestral set "Three Places in New England," sets a poem by Robert Underwood Johnson.
"Contented river! In thy dreamy realm--
The cloudy willow and the plumy elm:"...
Not so far that I can't hear in mind's ear that dreamy score that rises from the mists into wedges of dense sound (and fury), the struggles of humanity to harness nature to its ways and means. In so doing, the connection between humankind and its benefactor and host has become lost to the mind of those who toil on heedlessly, endlessly, needlessly. In that disconnect lie the seeds of a downfall, a disappointment. Ahead, for mankind, lies disaster. For this nature, this river, this forest will only exist in placidity for so long. Every rustle just out of earshot marks another being waiting to pounce, waiting to either outlast the human throng or go extinct. And mankind, at the top of the food chain, thinking itself not atop, but astride and in control, is sawing away at the trunk furiously, soon to fall. And, just as in the Ives score, the river will reemerge, placidly flowing out from under that welter of dissonance. Nature, a part of which man also is, is designed to throw off the offending burdens and right itself. Into the discard pile we will go.
...Ah! There's a sensitive ripple, and the swift
Red leaves--September's firstlings--faster adrift;..
[He's speaking the truth here, plainly and without error. Isn't that what you seek, Third person? An awareness in the artist that something is amiss? Eve, do you not love this man now all the more for what he knew while walking, before all of that writing? Has there not been some progress made here? A pilgrim's progress? Is this not the prodigal son heading home? Or is it just some twenty year old on the way to a party?]
Eve of Brattleboro butts in as editrix:
He camps tonight in a pleasant grove of pines... No, my husband says, let the man have his say! He is not a finished writer yet, not the voice he will become, but here he arrives at the crux of his stroll, strolling in a time before our present time of endless strolling. Let us relish this snapshot of the years before the Collapse! We have so few, so very few, to go on!
"Tonight's camp is beside the river in a pleasant grove of pines. Played my flute and am smoking a bowl of tobacco. I've decided not to hike down to Bear Mountain. All hikers who've been through the New York and New Jersey sections say that it's mostly paved interstates and backwoods logging roads, mixed with an occasional tract of woodland. That means, then, that wherever that lean-to might be (Mountain Brook), from there it's only 25.7 miles to Pawling, where I now plan to take the train into New York City."
This meant abandoning for the most part the regimen of the day's hike and lazing around for a few days, enjoying the last few mountainous areas before the suburban sprawl to the south. I smoked my pipe. I played my flute, I took in the beauty all around me. I contemplated rather than exerted. I dropped my pace to a saunter. It was a fitting way to finish this trek. I confess I missed my friends in New York and longed to be there with them. They were my past; but also, they were my future. To the outstretched arm of my destiny I now began to stroll. I was looking back over my shoulder to the life in Boston that had formed me (or at least informed me), and to that life I would briefly return for its coda. But the journey I was on had a destination and I was taking it step by step, not in much of a hurry to be out of the woods. I always loved the woods. I still do.
The evening and the morning were the seventh day, on which he rested.
[Presumably, Cal dawdled the rest of the week, taking that time to camp out and walk the 25.7 miles to Pawling. It would not do to be in New York too soon, as the party there had a date certain. There is an apocryphal story that Hunter used to like to tell of being stuck on a stretch of suburban road for hours by a snarling cur that was guarding its turf. It came running up and sat before him, down on haunches, fangs bared, growling its warning. Cal was forced to put down his pack and wait. Each time he picked up the pack to move forward, the dog commenced again to snarl. This standoff lasted the better part of an afternoon. Eventually, the owner of the dog returned and put the animal inside. The owner was a comely Up State New Yorker, her summer dress wrapping the willows of her form and her tresses flowing down her back, neck and covering her breast. She smiled beautifully and broadly at the now bearded and sweat-stained man who smelled of wood smoke and male musk. She was guarded solely by her dog. She invited him in, promising to draw him a bath. She quaintly bowed and curtseyed. Keeping her eyes on him all the while. In fact she could not help but keep an eye; she could not look away. It was as if she were seeing a ghost. Cal himself felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. If this were Eve, he'd never know it. If this were Guinnevere, it was David Crosby's woman, and he'd best be getting on. She had her dogs and cats, and this was not his yard. There was death up ahead, just around the corner. Not just for her, but for all who sauntered here. This was where Hunter saw the future and it chilled him to the bone. Although he told often of the dog, he never spoke of the woman.]
